How to build a rainwater tank system from IBCs?

[Bitpipe]

Yes, just garden water - mostly to meet BR and LA conditions so don't want to over spend !

[Bitpipe]

So just bought 4 clean IBCs for £18 each on eBay, delivery was expensive though but it still worked out cheaper than the specialist sites. Now off acquiring all the other bits and will update on progress!

 

 

[Bitpipe]

On 18/05/2017 at 08:43, Bitpipe said:

So just bought 4 clean IBCs for £18 each on eBay, delivery was expensive though but it still worked out cheaper than the specialist sites. Now off acquiring all the other bits and will update on progress!

 

 

 

Vendor emailed to see if I was happy with the ones on a wooden pallet vs metal or plastic, I said no so he's cancelled my order as the've run out of the non wooden type. Back to the search then!

 

[Vijay]

where abouts in the country are you Bitpipe?

[Carrerahill]

On 2017-5-15 at 12:13, Bitpipe said:

Thanks all - I'm in Maidenhead, Berks.

 

 

 

 

OK a bit far away - I could set you up with once used (for whisky) IBC's but transport would make them cost prohibitive at £50 a pop on a pallet line.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2017 by Carrerahill

[Bitpipe]

45 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

OK a bit far away - I could set you up with once used (for whysky) IBC's but transport would make them cost prohibitive at £50 a pop on a pallet line.

 

 

I believe you can stack two vertically and have pallet line treat as a single pallet (I see a few eBay vendors do this).

 

I'd be happy to clean out IBCs used for whisky production, might take a while, wouldn't want to waste any....

 

[Onoff]

Someone has a load on Gumtree near Maidenhead but £30 ea. Also says they've had light oil in them!

 

https://www.gumtree.com/search?featured_filter=false&urgent_filter=false&sort=date&search_scope=false&photos_filter=false&search_category=all&q=Ibc&tq={"i"%3A"Ibc"%2C"s"%3A"Ibc"%2C"p"%3A0%2C"t"%3A15}&search_location=Maidenhead&tl=

[Onoff]

With hindsight couldn't you have just built a concrete "pond" there?

[Bitpipe]

7 minutes ago, Onoff said:

With hindsight couldn't you have just built a concrete "pond" there?

 

I suggested a plunge pool but was over ruled.

[Onoff]

4 minutes ago, Bitpipe said:

 

I suggested a plunge pool but was over ruled.

 

Trap door more like, "Nag, nag, SPLASH!"

[Vijay]

I know a guy in High Wycome who might be able to help, they've gone home for the day but I'll call him Monday

[Onoff]

7 minutes ago, Vijay said:

I know a guy in High Wycome who might be able to help, they've gone home for the day but I'll call him Monday

 

Until then he'll have to "contain" himself... 

[Bitpipe]

Thanks all, will hold fire then. Wife acquired a bunch ex-farm chickens last week so i've a new chicken coup and run to assemble this weekend, will keep me busy...

 

 

 

[Onoff]

If you don't have any luck there's this lot...in Maidenhead:

 

https://www.yell.com/biz/drums-and-tanks-ltd-maidenhead-1848374/

 

 

[Bitpipe]

4 hours ago, Onoff said:

If you don't have any luck there's this lot...in Maidenhead:

 

https://www.yell.com/biz/drums-and-tanks-ltd-maidenhead-1848374/

 

 

 

Cheers, never heard of them but will give a shout on Monday!

 

[Onoff]

10 hours ago, Bitpipe said:

 

Cheers, never heard of them but will give a shout on Monday!

 

 

It's the "light engine oil" that's been in them would slightly bother me. To wash that out might take some doing with a decent detergent and then where do you put it? Maybe ask if they'll clean them for a few quid more?

 

I cleaned out all my 20L plastic oil containers I made totes from recently by first tipping out what I could then cutting the access opening. I then left them in the strong sun, tilted at an angle. Then when the bulk of the oil had run into a corner I poured that out into a one saved just for that purpose. Then gave it a scrub with a good slug of Fairy and rinsed out. All the oil in mine though was biodegradable hydraulic oil. Christ knows how you'd go about it with a 1000L, metal framed tank!

[Onoff]

Saw on the other thread that you're progressing with this. Where'd you get the tanks in the end? Any more pics?

[Bitpipe]

I've got this far - tanks were cheap but needed some cleaning (had PVA glue residue). One has a wooden base which I'm not crazy about but forgot to mandate plastic/metal. 

 

I have all the bits aside from the incoming filter, the one I wanted to get (that has a side access to clean the filter) is too tall so going to get a shorter 90 bend and just undo it and flush out every now and again. 

 

The incoming pipe has settled and now slopes about 2-3 deg the wrong way, we dug out on the other side to see if we could fix but it's been cased in concrete and this has obviously settled.

 

Still works fine, quite an impressive flow when it rains and on one day last week, the tank was almost full after a few hours.

 

 

[Nickfromwales]

Another 2 degrees and you could connect an outside loo to that

 

[Onoff]

Could you maybe slip a 3" pipe inside that 4" one to get the fall the right way?

[Vijay]

How deep did you dig for the chamber??

[Bitpipe]

There's an IC just out of shot at the top right corner where all the rainwater pipes (house and garage) converge. The outflow then descends to the pipe you see in the picture - needs to be at that level to allow a deck to run above it and be inline with a window into the basement.

 

The jaunty angle means that there is some rain water retained in the pipe but it doesn't seem to impede the flow at all, it fairly pelts out when it's raining.

[Bitpipe]

And we're done.

 

I was waiting on the grey inlet filter and fitting from Germany - the combined fitting with the vertical terminal was too tall for me so I went for the inline (with sock inside) and the adjustable height inlet.

 

Frank at fn-technik.de was super helpful, highly recommend his fittings.

 

Only took a day of messing about to do all the fittings - seeing how watertight it is now. 

 

Just need some rain.... although the first pic shows how much I can collect during a good downpour - won't take long to fill them!

 

Next job is the waterproof socket for the pump and the pump itself. Will extract from the tank with the red top.

 

One last challenge is getting the extract hose out of the concrete box - may just have a wall mounted tap on the inside.

 

Then I can get the deck built on top.

 

Many thanks to @PeterW for all the advice and links!

Edited October 9, 2017 by Bitpipe

[Bitpipe]

On 15/05/2017 at 20:08, PeterW said:

I'm going for a non submersible as we had a discussion on here about it as it supplies the house. You're slightly different as you don't care if it doesn't work as only the plants will die ..!

 

Cheap submersible pumps are just that - cheap ..! This would be fine Hyundai 540w

 

 

 

Looking to wrap up the project and add the pump. There look to be cheaper knockoffs than the Hyundai on eBay but happy to pay an extra £20 if it guarantees the quality.

 

We've now built a deck over the IBCs so my plan is to put the tap  / short hose reel under there and get it out as needed.

 

Question is what fitting do I use to go from the end of the pump to a standard garden tap?

[Jeremy Harris]

How are you going to control the pump?

 

The normal way to do this if you're running the water to a tap is to use a pressure set.  The pump is fed from the bottom of the IBCs and has a small accumulator and pressure switch.  When a tap opens the pressure drops, turning the pump on.  When the tap closes the pressure rises turning the pump off.  It makes things pretty simple to use.  If you don't want to tap off the bottom of the IBCs, then these pumps will usually draw up from a few metres once primed (some are self priming), so you can use a drop pipe with a crud filter on the end into one of the linked IBCs.

 

This is the sort of pressure set that would do the job: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBO-1-WZI250-BOOSTER-SET-WATER-PUMP-small-trailer-PORTABLE-2Ltr-pressure-VESSEL/172665736876?hash=item2833ae0eac:g:D3YAAOSwJ7RYTqZv