Tennentslager

Nice wee project. I take it you don't fancy collecting off the roof due to all the trees around you?

Just a thought, would it not be a whole lot easier to treat it like a caravan, fetch your water from the standpipe in an aquaroll, and deliver it to the taps with a caravan 12V submirsible pump?

45 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Just a thought, would it not be a whole lot easier to treat it like a caravan, fetch your water from the standpipe in an aquaroll, and deliver it to the taps with a caravan 12V submirsible pump?

+100. 

Not just easier, but safer and more hygienic. . 

Stop what your doing and don't drink that water, eg no brushing the teeth in it. 

This is not a good idea, and I'd only use that water to fill a flushing toilet.

Sorry to piss on the chips but you really shouldn't pursue this imho. 

A pump will give you useable force at the taps, and it'll be fresh clean water from a roll along butt. The fact it's a second hand tank also worries me, I certainly hope it's not an old F&E tank? Do you know what it was doing previously?

Not a fan of this idea,  sorry 

 

Nice hiut though lol. 

Well this version uses no electricity, so that has to be a good thing.

Dose it with a capful of Milton once a year, well that works for boats anyhow.

You get any rats / other vermin in the boat ?

When did you last see a caravan with an open water tank on its roof ? . 

An open tank will get contaminated with bacteria and mould spores within minutes, and it's pot luck as to whether any of those contaminants find the conditions in the tank benign enough to multiply.  Closed tanks, like those on boats, are a great deal safer, because they only have a small vent hole, they tend to stay cool all year around and there tends to be a lot less harmful bacteria and spores around at sea.

 

If this tank was sealed, like a boat or caravan tank, and kept reasonably cool, then just dosing it with a small amount of hypochlorite (which is all Milton is - but a lot cheaper) every now and again will keep it sweet and safe enough for brushing teeth etc.  Right now, the water in an open tank like this is about the same as the water in a toilet bowl after it's been flushed. 

Oooh!

It will be filled on arrival, otherwise empty tank but vermin (well big furry vermin) proof as it's inside an OSB box.

Tank drained at the end of a weekend then filled with lovely clean loch Katrine water.

@Nickfromwales what's a F&G or whatever, it was formerly a loft tank and made of plastic...stored under a hut for a few years after being liberated from a semi.

It's got lots of spider webs and stuff inside??

@JSHarris where does one get cheap hypochlorite?

 

Ordinary bleach!

The best bet is to buy dry powder calcium hypochlorite.  Ebay is as good as anywhere else.  A 200g bag will cost under a fiver and will disinfect around 20,000 litres of water. 

 

The easiest way to dose the water reasonably accurately, given that so little is needed, is to make up a stock solution, then use that to treat the tank periodically. If you add about 5g of calcium hypochlorite to 5 litres of clean water you will get a solution that will treat around 500 litres of water.  If your tank holds, say, 50 litres of water, then adding half a litre of the stock solution will treat it OK. 

 

The stock solution doesn't have an infinite shelf life, and needs to be stored in a sealed bottle, in a cool dark place.  It should last around 6 months or so, but is cheap enough that you can throw it out and make a new batch when it gets time expired (five litres of stock solution is only going to cost you around 12p or so).  Time expired stock solution will still be active enough to use for cleaning patios etc, so needn't go to waste.

 

Don't add too much of the stuff, as it will make the water smell and taste unpleasant.  It's also best to not use the treated water for an hour or two, just to let the free chlorine come off a bit, which reduces any unpleasant taste. 

 

At this concentration it will kill around 95% or more of water-borne pathogens within about 30 minutes, good enough for making the water safe for cleaning your teeth etc.  Boiling the water will drive off the remaining chlorine in the water, removing any remaining slightly unpleasant taste. 

15 minutes ago, jack said:

Ordinary bleach!

 

Only if you can buy unscented, unthickened, bleach that doesn't contain any additives to delay the breakdown of the solution.  Often household bleach contains stuff that you wouldn't want in a drinking water supply, although if you hunt around you can find plain 70% hypochlorite solution bleach.  It does degrade fairly quickly though, so ends up more expensive than making up your own stock solution from calcium hypochlorite.

Edited September 16, 2017 by JSHarris

Try agric outlets - hypochlorite is used by dairy farmers to clean the pipes that carry milk between the milking parlour and the bulk tank.

F&E

Feed and expansion tank aka a header tank for central heating. When you stick your head up your nans attic you'll see two plastic tanks. One is the F&E and the others the CWS ( cold water storage) tank. The F&E will have spent its life full of ferrous corrosion and possibly inhibitor chemicals ( which will kill you if drunk ) so best to be sure what your water will be sat in. 

What size is the tank? A CWS will usually be 24"x24"x18" high or so and an F&E will be be around 12"x18"x12" high or so. 

Nans attic...lol, stick your own head up brother?

It's a CWS for sure. 

As ever, thanks to you all free giving knowledge monkeys. 

Learned a new phrase I like recently; 'pay forward'...

It's a form of giving back...freely given support, advice, mentoring and even money

But, on one trusted no commitment deal, that at some point whenever in the future you are in a position to 'pay back' you do so and keep the cycle going.

It's why I love the forum, an everyday example of this philosophy in practice

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

Only if you can buy unscented, unthickened, bleach that doesn't contain any additives to delay the breakdown of the solution.  

 

By "ordinary", I meant unscented and unthickened. I wasn't aware of any additives in cheap bleach of this type - I'm sure I've read in more than one place of its usefulness for sanitising drinking water in small amounts.

 

Whether I'd want to rely on a household bleach for more than emergency/apocalyptic use is perhaps another question.

8 hours ago, jack said:

 

By "ordinary", I meant unscented and unthickened. I wasn't aware of any additives in cheap bleach of this type - I'm sure I've read in more than one place of its usefulness for sanitising drinking water in small amounts.

 

Whether I'd want to rely on a household bleach for more than emergency/apocalyptic use is perhaps another question.

 

A lot of "domestic bleach" is thickened, often with salt or one of the methyl/ethyl cellulose compounds, perhaps, to make it "stick" better to thing like toilet pans.  Sadly, it's hard to tell from the product label alone whether this is the case.  If the bleach is just like water in consistency, and only smells of chlorine, then there's a reasonable chance that it may just be hypochlorite solution.

 

I looked around on the local supermarket shelves for pure bleach, without success, though, when I was disinfecting our borehole.  Even the "own brand" stuff contained thickeners - shaking the bottle was the easy way to tell that it was more viscous than water.  In the end I bought a 5kg bottle of "pool shock" which is just pure calcium hypochlorite granules, and made up a strong bleach solution.  Buying a 5kg bottle of the stuff was a ludicrous overkill, as I only needed about 5 litres of standard strong bleach solution to clean the borehole.  As a consequence, I still have the best part of 5kg of the stuff sat on the shelf.  That's enough to purify around 500,000 litres of water................

9 hours ago, Tennentslager said:

Learned a new phrase I like recently; 'pay forward'...

It's a form of giving back...freely given support, advice, mentoring and even money

But, on one trusted no commitment deal, that at some point whenever in the future you are in a position to 'pay back' you do so and keep the cycle going.

It's why I love the forum, an everyday example of this philosophy in practice

 

I've been a very strong advocate of this for decades, as I've always been of the view that you get out of life only as much as you put in.

 

There is a slight drawback to this; every now and again you come across someone who is suspicious of your motives, and can't believe that you're not doing it for some other reason.  My personal view is that those that think like this may have been influenced by the greedy, self-centred, selfish society that was the product of a certain political leader's policies in the 1980's, but then again that might just be my own personal bias.....................

A quick Search on.line will bring up all manor of water treatment chemicals. Including Sodium Hypochlorate tablets and pure liquid  bleach.

 

 

Edited September 17, 2017 by Triassic

Here you go, £4.25 for enough to treat around 20,000 litres of water: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/200g-Calcium-Hypochlorite-High-Purity-Powder-bleach-Water-Disinfectant-/172864256699?hash=item283f833abb:g:gisAAOSwA3dYVF7P

 

 

52 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

A lot of "domestic bleach" is thickened, often with salt or one of the methyl/ethyl cellulose compounds, perhaps, to make it "stick" better to thing like toilet pans.  Sadly, it's hard to tell from the product label alone whether this is the case.  If the bleach is just like water in consistency, and only smells of chlorine, then there's a reasonable chance that it may just be hypochlorite solution.

 

I looked around on the local supermarket shelves for pure bleach, without success, though, when I was disinfecting our borehole.  Even the "own brand" stuff contained thickeners - shaking the bottle was the easy way to tell that it was more viscous than water.  In the end I bought a 5kg bottle of "pool shock" which is just pure calcium hypochlorite granules, and made up a strong bleach solution.  Buying a 5kg bottle of the stuff was a ludicrous overkill, as I only needed about 5 litres of standard strong bleach solution to clean the borehole.  As a consequence, I still have the best part of 5kg of the stuff sat on the shelf.  That's enough to purify around 500,000 litres of water................

 

Interesting. Can't remember the last time I actually bought bleach, but certainly many (perhaps many, many!) years ago you used to be able to buy the plain watery stuff. I thought it worked better in toilets because it dissolved easily rather than just sitting on the bottom like the thick stuff.

 

No point even considering bleach though, if the pure stuff is available easily and cheaply.

 

 

I can remember buying large (perhaps around 2 1/2 litre or so) bottles of plain bleach, from the local hardware store (now sadly closed), and I agree, I thought it worked better.  I think that when Domestos started marketing their bleach as "thick", implying that this was advantageous, many other manufacturers followed suit.  The thickened bleach definitely doesn't seem to dissolve as easily; it just seems to run down into the water along the sides and sit there.

Not sure about my design to hold this up, it's a bit slap dash but hey ho it's not the Hilton.

This is where it's going...

I plan just two posts as the back of the tank house will be screwed through the corrugated tin to the gable wall.

Lifted it into place today and then realised the error of my judgement. Could not hold the box in place and get a screw in at the same time.

Used all my energy lifting the heavy box and was on the top rung of the ladder. Oh dear @recoveringacademic will give me a bollocking, had to push the box to one side while I jumped the other way.

Box survived intact, result! Me, just one little bruise but feeling a bit sore and stupid tonight.

Be careful out there builders...

Sounds to me like you chastised yourself. May your good luck follow you!

It works a treat!

Not great looking but I'll improve that and paint the pipe green.

All drinking etc water is still from bottles but wonderful to rinse dirty plates under the taps...oh how easily pleased I am???