Drinking Water from a Cistern

[Studhauler]

For those of you that are using your cistern as a source for drinking water, what are you doing, if anything, to treat it? I would like to find a good way to treat water from a cistern that does't use electricity.

Thanks,

[Rick]

I'll be watching this thread.

I know one Lady on here uses various size filters and ultraviolet light which of course would use some power.

You could bleach it and filter the chlorine back out. We've done it, but I don't know the amount we used.

[Old Swampgirl]

I grew up on cistern water. We just passed it thru a piece of screen & picked out any "wiggles" when we saw them. But nowadays, I'd boil it before drinking.

[Studhauler]

Swampgirl, your reply made me smile. I am sure that is how it was done in day past. But somehow today that just don't seem right.

Rick, that is what I am leaning towards.

[Ken Scharabok]

Can you use the citern water for everything but drinking and cooking? If so, perhaps you can find a source of clean water you can bring home in 2-5 gallon containers.

I get my water directly from a spring. Only a 20mm filter inside to catch most of the grit and such. When it rains a lot, water turns a bit cloudy.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Studhauler

Swampgirl, your reply made me smile. I am sure that is how it was done in day past. But somehow today that just don't seem right.

Rick, that is what I am leaning towards.

I forgot to say, I saw a you-tube demo about building a large scale water filter, following a link from a thread here. The guy walked you through exact sizes of holes to drill. It was 2 stacked 4 or 5 gallon buckets and used Berkey filters.

We buy Culligan water at WM, or use an Aqua-Rain to soften our well water. I want to build a unit like I saw tho.

[houndlover]

We filter/treat (sand filter, ozone, UV) before it's stored, then use as we need it. Our water source is a river that has several farms/homes upstream from us.

[6e]

Before we got rural water we used a cistern of sorts. We hauled water in and put it in a tank outside and then pumped water out of the tank and into the house as needed. The tank had a lid, but it still managed to get it's fair share of dirt in it and then one time, a dead mouse because the kids forgot to put the lid on. We had a whole house filter inside the house and that is all we ever used. Once a year we cleaned and bleached the tank and every once in awhile shocked it with chlorine. You can treat your cistern water with chlorine to kill contaminants. You can also just use it for everything except drinking and buy one of those Culligan water machines for drinking. We had one for awhile and love it, but it finally broke and we never bought another one. I don't know where your water is coming from that you're putting in your cistern. If it's filling up with run off water or pond water, then you might want a better filtering system, but you can buy them reasonably priced. For us, a whole house filter was all we ever needed.

[Harry Chickpea]

<shrug> Berkey. Some gets distilled because of kidney stone issue. Next question?

[stockdogtta]

I dont do anything but pump it dry every 4 or 5 yrs and clean it out and scrub it down good. Been doing it that way for years....use for drinking,cooking, everything.

[Nevada]

I lived out of a cistern for about 4 years, and yes we drank it. I filled it from a fairly deep well (140 feet). Water didn't usually stay in it more than a month. I treated it with a little laundry bleach after each fill to prevent algae growth, but not enough to give it a bad taste. It kept the tank clean.

[tnyardfarmer]

I grew up drinking water from a cistern. Gutters ran from the barn to the cistern where the water was pumped to the house. No filters or chemicals were ever used. Only drawback seems to be that we all (9 kids) have poor teeth from lack of flouride, But nothing that a dentist can't fix. Sometimes during really dry years we would have to have a truckload ofwater delivered. I do remember when I was 16 or so that the water started smelling and tasting bad. After a week or so it was so bad we couldn't drink it. My father had the 3 oldest boys pump out as much water as we could and then using ladders and buckets on ropes take out the rest of the water. When we got to the last 6 inches or so we found several dead mice that the younger kids had thrown in. No one got sick but it took awhile to get comfortable drinking the water again. 2 years later we got city water.

[littlebitfarm]

Pick up a cheap test kit for pool chlorine. You want to maintain a slight chlorine residual, not enough to taste or smell. 0.1 PPM would be fine. After awhile you get the hang of it and know how much bleach (unscented) to add with every rain.

A simple carbon filter at the faucet will take the leftover chlorine out. Bleach will kill the bacteria but won't touch cryptosporidium. A good filter will take that out.

Water off a metal roof will be a better quality than water off asphalt shingles.

Kathie

[bourbonred]

Growing up we ran the roof water through a screen, then into a gravel filter. We used a little bleach occasionally as needed. In winter, we didn't collect the water while we were burning the wood stove or the water would taste barbecued/smoky. I have a cistern at this house I'm trying to talk DH into putting back into use, or at least stocking gutters that we could hang if needed. Water isn't expensive, but it would be one more step toward self-sufficiency. We both grew up on cistern water.

[big rockpile]

Originally Posted by stockdogtta

I dont do anything but pump it dry every 4 or 5 yrs and clean it out and scrub it down good. Been doing it that way for years....use for drinking,cooking, everything.

X2

big rockpile

[Studhauler]

My cistern will be filled with well water. It is good water that we use every day. My plans for the cistern are; for extended periods of electrical outages. The cistern would be filled with the well pump run off a generator. The cistern will be buried underground on top of a hill near my home. It will have a bottom outlet, so that it provides pressurized water to the house.

I am glad to hear all of your replies. I was a bit concerned about using cistern water and all the treatment that would be needed according to "official government sources." Thank for informing me on how the real world does it.

Big Rockpile, Stockdogtta, TNyardfarmer, how long would your water sit in the cistern before it was used up or refreshed with more water? I am wondering how long you stored your untreated water? Days? Weeks? Months?

Thanks

[davel745]

I would like to put a cistern up on the hill behind me we have a nice spring.
What is the cistern material?

I am going to run the water through a whole house filter.

[Ken Scharabok]

Go to a farm supply store. They typically carry flat topped, round white containers for water in various sizes. I've also seen water wagons which tow behind a vehicle. They have an oval tank on them.

[Ronney]

By cistern I take it you mean a tank to collect/hold water? I've lived with tanked water collected from the roof for most of my adult life which is now getting on a bit. None of it is filtered in any way and never has been. In a drought summer we will direct water from a spring (which has never been tested). As somebody stated earlier, the tank gets cleaned out every 4-5 years or when somebody remembers it might be a good idea to do it. I'm still here, the kids are still here, the visitors went home without gastro enteritis and at the end of the day I wonder how the hell our ancestors survived without all this modern preoccupation with sanitation.

Most household water is boiled in one way or another anyway - tea, coffee is made from boiled water, vegetables are boiled etc. Toilet, shower, washing machine and dishes hardly matter and much of it has gone through the hot water cylinder anyway. If it's a worry for drinking cold water or making up cordials for kids, boil it and keep it in the fridge.

Cheers,
Ronnie

[davel745]

Thanks Ken