creek water for domestic use

[Lumberjack]

Well

first off the ground water is not considered drinkable.

Second. You dont want to filter all the water to drinkable standards.

Your first job will be to re plumb the house if you can. water for toilets, showers and other non potable applications should be supplied by a separate cold line. Sinks and any other drinkable outlets need to be fed by a second cold water line as well as you hot water heater. You set up the filtration as follows.

Cold water enters the house and runs to a bank of whole house filters placed in parrallel with each other. Iron will tend to clog the filters fast unless you use three or more but they will stop the majority of the iron. From here you tee off and feed the toilets and other non-drinkable fixtures. After the tee off you run to your purification filters and then on to the rest of the plumbing. This arrangement will save you a bundle in the long run by reducing the amounts purified and preventing the worst of it from ever reaching the expensive filters.

If you cant split the plumbing you should still pre filter everything as whole house filters are a lot cheaper. Protect that 4000.00 filter with a little cheap insurance.

Hope this helps. The last time I had to deal with this I could not fill a bath tub before the iron turned the water brown. After installing the whole-house filters we hard knew tthere was iron present.

[scesnick]

Lumberjack,

Yep, the iron is terrible ( out of my well) that is why I am going to use the clean stream water. It is iron free.  I am giving up on the well. It will still be functional and i will still be able to use the well if for some reason the stream dries up.

[snowcrow]

I have the same problem with iron in the water so I decided to use a rain water from the roof with a closed gutter system. By closed I mean screened to keep out birds, bug, and debris. I store the water in two 250gal food safe plastic containers, which had vinegar shipped in them, and only $40 each!! I think that these plastic containers may serve you better for storage than the septic tank will. Septic tanks are made strictly for waste water and may leash toxic chemicals into your water!!! I bought my containers from a foods trucking warehouse. They are about 4ft square and are in stackable metal tube frames, very handy!!!

[Nando]

REPLYING TO YOUR DISABLED MESSAGE

How much water are you using and what is the head of the stream to determine the type of ram pump you need to have (instead of an electric pump).

The best arrangement to capture water from the stream is to have an intake with a large screened area, in this case, holes around 1/8 inch or even less, laying down on the bed where the stream moves faster and always covering the screen for the water to take away the debris that may attach to the screen.

Make the screened area at least 50 to 100 times the pipe area, this way the water will enter the screen at low velocity which helps in not allowing the debris to hang on the screen if the water is covering it.

I have used Stainless steel Mesh, with 12 lines inch, this would clean the great majority of debris, then internally, use a woman nylon sock for ultra fine debris filtering, cheap and easy to replace at low cost.

This type of filtering, we have used for water pickups for rural homes and for small hydro electric systems with great results.

A better description of your stream with the head it may have, may assist to give you better indications for a Ram Pump to feed the water to a tank above the house and to have, this way, a pressurized water source to your home.

Place the purifying filtering system by the storage tank to avoid having the need to add a pump to have the necessary pressure.

WE normally make two sets, one working and one for cleaning and or replacement for cleaning the used one.

Nando

[Nando]

I HOPE THAT YOU HAVE MOVED BACK TO YOUR OLD message since the new has been DISABLED AGAIN for the second time, to MAKE you to go to the proper thread.

LEARN ABOUT RAM PUMPS to raise the water 100 feet, you need a head around 8 to 10 feet, sometimes less if you have a good Ram Pump.

If you are going to make a hydro (I connect to so many that I forget who is who, so I do not remember), then make it part of the hydro system.

I did one in where a pump was put in service via a small clutch and attached to the hydro using a small pump to reduce the electrical power since it was a very small battery system and every time the battery was full, the pump worked as a ballast filling the tank.

Nando

[thefinis]

What a bunch of BS just over him starting a new thread. Thank goodness he didn't misspell anything. I think we should encourage energy conservation as well as home made energy and an efficient system saves energy.

If you are running wire to the pump go with as small a pump as possible for the run and lift for flow wanted. If you just want to run pipe go with a jet pump with a foot valve(?) which will take 2 pipes in the trench. 1/2-1/3 hp pump if using a submersible pump at the creek remember to take into account voltage drop so use recommended wire size for a well as deep as the pipe run. A jet pump will take a little more hp 1/2 to 1 hp due to the pipe losses but may run about as cheap due to less wire losses.

Use a good screen filter at the creek with lots of area or fill barrel with coarse gravel bury it in the creek and use a slotted pipe in the middle. What ever you use it must filter out anything that might hurt the pump. Your home filter system will take care of anything else.

Good luck and when Momma ain't happy nobody is happy either.

Finis

[TomW]

thefinis;



What a bunch of BS just over him starting a new thread. Thank goodness he didn't misspell anything. I think we should encourage energy conservation as well as home made energy and an efficient system saves energy.

I disagree. It does not make sense to spread a discussion of one particular system / project across multiple posts. People waste time answering twice and get lost with updates across multiple threads. In fact, for extended term projects, a Diary is probably the best way to track it. Then new posts can be accessed by looking at that users Diaries.It is an energy saving technique that will streamline the information flow because folks need not follow multiple threads to keep current.

It is just how it is. It is not hard to do for the original poster and eases the effort required to help.

Note I did not kill the story just disabled comments in an effort to make the board more easily used by the majority of the users at the expense of one users bit of time.

I guess i can't please everyone so I just do what I feel is right. As usual, explaining will just bring on more wasted time and effort on complaints. But now you know "why".

I don't hear much about the commercial product pimping or Chinese spam none of you see because I kill it immediately, but you are welcome anyway.

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

T

[oztules]

Hi,

I faced a not dissimilar problem during the recent drought over here. We use roof collected rainwater but no rain for 6 months all but ran us out.

Our forest dam had clear water around ph6.5. I pumped it into the 5000 gallon tank while adding pool chlorine (8 grams of granular pool chlorine (calcium hypochlorite - 65% available chlorine) per 1000 litres.

 Enough chlorine should be added to provide a free chlorine residual of around 0.5 milligrams per litre (mg/L) after 30 minutes. As a general guide, an initial dose of 5 mg/L of chlorine will provide this residual. You can test the residual in your water tank with a swimming pool test kit or dip strips, which are available from pool shops.

After chlorinating, you should ideally wait at least 24 hours before using the water to allow for harmful microorganisms to be destroyed. The chlorine may leave a harmless taste and odour in the water, which should disappear in around 10 to 14 days. Boiling the water will remove most of this taste and odour.

If you expose the tank (top of tank off) to sunshine, the odour and taste will dissapate in a matter of a day or so. this is the route I took.

The water will be fit for human consumption, free of all bacteria, and clear.

If you wish to use your filters after that then away you go, else use it directly.

Most of the above info I lifted from this web site when i set mine up.

http://www.health.vic.gov.au/environment/downloads/your_private_drinking_water_supply.pdf.

So I did this until the rains came, and now back onto tank water from the roof. But the chlorinated, flocked dam water was crystal clear and safe as a house. 22000lts (500gal approx)lasted us about 80 days or so, then you do it again... etc.

it's dirt cheap, and provided no heavy metals or other nasty inorganic toxins are in the creek it will work. I would however get the local council authority to test the water for harmful agents first. If it's full of mercury or whatever, your back to square 1.

The first one i did, I used a pool pump and a zeolite sand filter, but the flocking agent actually does a better job.

I was going to try and use expensive filters, but this did brilliantly. You could see a pin on  the bottom of the tank 8 feet deep. And after "sunning the tank" there was no sign of chlorine taste.

On one occasion, I tipped in more chlorine than I should have on the theory "more is better". Dont do it, it just takes longer to get the taste out.

Hope this will help

.......oztules

[oztules]

sorry "22000lts (500gal approx)lasted us" should be 5000gals approx

oops

........oztules

[vawtman]

Hi Oz

 I was amazed last night during a moderate rain how much water one can get fmom 1000 sq ft of roof.

 If you expose unstabilized chlorine(bleach) to direct sunlight it will dissapate quickly.

 Then we have our buddy algae

 I wonder how an ozone system would work high upfront cost but maybe he could make his own.That will kill anything instantly and leave no residual.

 Just thoughts

[oztules]

Yes Vawtman, I have only 180sqm of roof here at the moment, which means for every mm of rain, i get 180lites of water.

The other week we had 100mm of rain over 4 days, so 18000 litres in a single rain event.

It all adds up.

The chlorination technique is easy, fool proof, and incredibly cheap...... and the main thing is it's available to everyone.

This fool managed to over do it though, but the only penalty is waiting for an extra day with the tank lid off and the sunlight in.

.........oztules

[vawtman]

Oz you just gave me crazy thought.

 One plan of mine is to use the turbine to heat water using a large tank has preheater.

 Maybe a diversion valve of some sort that when the tank is full the warm summer rains could go to another tank for other use or go away..Why heat 50 degree water when 80 is running off the roof.Not for winter use obviously.

 For me with kids and a wife that loves to do laundry and wash everything its not practicle now LOL

 Their almost gone though(kids)

 

[scesnick]

Finis,

Thanks, that is the info I was looking for. I didn't realize I was stirring up such a fuss just from posting another question. My first question was basically asking about the whole system and how you guys would go about it. The second quesiton was a specific question about which pump to use and filering device to use.

Anyhoo, I'm assuming that I can just hook up a jet pump inside the barrel to my pressure tank swich and this will turn the pump on and off just like in my original well.

[thefinis]

TomW

You do a great job most of the time and I would not want to even try and do it. I guess my biggest problem here is the fact that the software does not bring the threads with the newest posts to the top of the list. Especially for new folks this makes it hard for them to find after a few days. It would seem our original poster has given up looking because he did not know how to find replies to old posts.

No one suggested to this person about adding it to his hot list. The recent activity link is not even mentioned in the How to use this board FAQs.

The postings scroll by too fast. So when I check back in 3 days to see if anyone answered my question, I can't find the posting. Solution: click the "add to hotlist" link on the stories you are interested in following. Then they will appear in your personal Hotlist box with a tally of new comments and replies, and will be easy to find until you click "remove from Hotlist."

Hindsight is 20/20 and until wanting to make a good reply to your post I really had not dug into the posted suggestions on using this board. Not reading the directions for me seems to be common according to my wive.

Once more you do good work and keep a good clean board. I just felt that there was lots of hoopla made over the new post(s) and not enough answering his question.

Thanks for your time and effort on editing the board. Sorry if we tend to only say something when fussing.

Finis

[thefinis]

TomW does a great job on editing the board and he was more making a point to everyone to keep their subjects together rather than post a new thread just to keep it on top.

Yes your jet pump is just a pressure pump and will cut on and off with a pressure switch. A word of caution it must have water at all times and if the pressure tank runs dry it will have to be primed (no fun at all) and will need to be primed to begin with. I run a submersible in a weak well on a timer switch that pumps to a holding tank and then run a jet pump to pressure the house.

Any good well service company or business that sells pumps should have all the info that you are needing on how to set up the system and what size for your needs.

Good luck

Finis

[No2scout]

Hello folks...

Am a newbie here...don't know if i am posting right but i am sure you will tell me..

I also have well water .. although it is soft the iron is 20 ppm...

If i had to get a x-ray they had to keep cranking up the power to get a picture

but women find me magnetic ...

I found a cheap way to solve the problem... Put three of these filters on the water

line from the well.. they have a very fine ceramic structure with silver that filters out

the iron from my water... will try to post link below

.

http://www.doulton.ca/imp100.html

.

So far they work like a charm and they are cleanable...see smaller units..

.

http://www.doulton.ca/csty20.html

Well what do you think? clean water clean whites without stains

[spinningmagnets]

I don't have any experience with treating creek water that's high in iron, but...

I noticed when changing the fluid in my automatic transmission that there was a few large "button"-shaped magnets in the pan that had collected steel shavings.

I can imagine a filter shaped like a laptop computer on its edge. Make it from a non-magnetic material and fill it with sand to slow the flow, then cover the sides with strong magnets. I don't know if this cheap and easy idea would work, but...?

When I cleaned swimming pools I was amazed by how clear the water got from passing it through a powder called Di-atomacious-Earth (DE) that coated a cloth screen inside a plastic housing. Easy and cheap to clean-out when a pressure gauge indicated it was getting clogged. -Ron

"How many captains does it take to pilot an Exxon supertanker"?

"one and 2/5ths"

Also: "How many Paris Hiltons does it take to drive a car, etc...

[feral air]

If it was my well that was high in iron I'd try magnets on a string first. I'd try to hang it close to the well wall, or as far from the pipe as possible. Too close to the pipe and the iron could "clot" inside, I imagine, and eventually you'd have chunks entering the system...no good. Once a month or so take 5 minutes to pull the rope up and remove the excess iron from the magnets and drop it back down.

Cost would be low and if it didn't work then you'd have spare magnets, if nothing else.