What type of cistern do you have??
 

Hello - I've only posted a couple times, mostly a lurker. But now that we're getting closer to building on our land, I have some questions. We just found out that to bring city water to our property, it's going to cost around $60,000!! So we've decided to go with a cistern. What different materials are they made of? I'm concerned about a plastic one containing BPA or some other harmful substance. If you have a cistern, what is it made of, is it buried, above ground, etc?? What other things should be thinking about when looking for one? We are clueless. I know I can look online & I will, but I'd like some first hand advice. TIA!!

I think regulations would differ depending on where you are. I have a 1500 gallon concrete cistern buried in the ground beside the garage that all the eaves troughs run into. My house and attached garage total about 1100 square feet and it doesn't take much of a heavy rain to fill it up. I think it was put there before the modern plumbing laws around here because it's plumbed into the house and I don't think we can do that here anymore.

Between the well and the cistern I never run out of water. I just wish I had a bigger one and I might add another one beside it some day if I can afford it.

You don't say where you are but here in Ontario we have to deal with winter and any year round cistern has to be buried in the ground.

Is it not doable to have your own well drilled??
What would be your source for the water in your cistern. Do you plan on getting drinking water from another location and hauling it there??
What state are you in. It's hard to know your situation when you could be anywhere from Japan to New Zeeland

Uncle Will - good questions. I didn't even think of mentioning those things - as I said, I'm clueless. We're in Northern Colorado. Some of our neighbors tried drilling for a well. Spent many thousands & never hit water. We all had the same realtor who told us there was water not too far down. I don't know about the neighbors, but I feel like an idiot for believing any of her lies. We should've done more checking. Anyway, a well is probably not in the picture. We will have water delivered. We plan on using this water for both drinking & everything else. I do have a Berkey that I use for drinking/cooking water.

Some of the western states won't even let you have rainbarrel to catch water off your roof. They claim every bit of water belong to the government or some such millarky. Is there any streams anywhere close. You might put a steel tank in your own truck and haul cistern water but have a seperate house water tank with hauled in water. ???

Based upon your location, I would suspect that you wouldn't be allowed to use a cistern, unless something has changed in the laws in Colorado. My parents have a cement cistern and two wells. The cistern was never plumbed into the house that I know of and I have no idea how to utilize the water in it. I do remember that there was some sort of a ladder in it the one time that I saw it without the cement slab over the top.

Martian Chick - are you referring to a cistern for collecting rain water? If so, I believe you are correct. If you mean a cistern to be filled with water that is to be delivered, where do you get your info that it may not be allowed?

collecting rain water in Colorado it technically against the law, it is my understanding there allowing it now on case by case situations with special permits, it goes back to water laws that were written in the 1800's

the use of a cistern, is legal for the storage of water, most windmills use some type of water storage, so most places had some type of cistern before electricity, when windmills were common,

basic law on rain water collection in Colorado now, http://www.ext.colostate.edu/sam/rainwaterbills.pdf

Yikes, that is a long term difficulty.

I have a cistern on my farm, buried brick/concrete/plastered. Holds about 2500 gallons.

Originally the windmill pushed water up to the cistern, and from there an electric pump drew the water to the house, or it gravity fed back down to the barn.

Currently the deep well feeds the house with water, and I open a valve to the cistern for about an hour a day (or up to 4 hours every 4th day) to refill the cistern, and it feeds water by gravity to the cattle at the barn.

So the cistern has been used for many decades.

There is a second cistern right next to the barn, I believe dad may have Used it when I was a very small kid, but the pipe got changed and I'm not at all sure how it would tie into the water system. The neck went bad (part above ground) and I put a new cement large tile on it for a safe neck, and was very surprised to see it was full of clear, good looking water.

You will become painfully aware of how much water a household uses, having to haul it all in.

Paul

Im in northern Arizona and have a 7500 gallon underground cement cistern that collects rain water off a 1000 sq ft roof. I also have a 1000 gallon grey water tank that collects shower, laundry water and is used for irrigation. I rarely have to buy water.

how much land do you have?
 

i know people that have ponds with purification systems,natural springs,cement cisterns in basement.....plastic beside of house.thousands of ideas and ways...
sounds like your state laws are a joke. take your time and do much research and thinking it through before laying out big bucks...consider making realtor responsible...........

I was only referring to the type of cistern that is used to capture and store rainwater. I doubt if there'd be an issue with one that merely stores purchased/trucked in water.

We use two buried cement cisterns for one of our water systems. The cement cisterns were new septic tanks. 1500 gallons each. We left the top showing so we can access the tanks for cleaning. One tank is filled via gravity flow from a slow spring. That tank then pumps water WAY FAR uphill to the 2nd tank near the barn.

The inside of each tank was plastered with.....something. Sorry but it was 6 years ago and I forget what it was. It was a gray plaster type stuff.

We have a pump in the bottom of both tanks. The lower tank has its own pressure tank in a little pump house nearby. The upper tank has its own pressure tank in our basement.

Since the power goes out up here sometimes, we drilled a hole in the top of the upper tank and set a cheap hand pump on it. We can prime the hand pump and get water from the tank when power is out.

We also have used, in the past, above ground water tanks for collection and storage of rain water. This system did not work too good but, we also did not put enough effort into it since we decided the cement tanks were safer. The rain water collection was easy enough to collect, but bird poop, bugs and dirt were in the tanks. Also, we never did figure out a good pump system. The cement cisterns are far superior for our use here.

Here are the three best sites I have found for reading, learning and information about water. Anything about water. Hope this will help. Water is so important and a long term good plan is essential.

http://www.oasisdesign.net/index.htm

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/

http://greywateraction.org/

I know this thread is old but I have a similar question.

We are in the process of purchasing some land a small cabin with a well already in place. We just found out that the well is only around 0.5 gpm with about 90 gal stored in the well pipe for use. I know it's terrible but we're still planning on buying the place and will close next week.

We are planning on getting cistern but are concerned about BPA in plastic ones and all the nasty chemicals in cement. Does anyone have information this?

It's just two of us so we way may be able to live with the well as is for now.

In the future we plan on implementing gray water and rainwater systems but will wait until we build a new house around five years from now.

Thanks!

The books by Oasis Design are some of my favorite on the fields of gray water and water storage.

http://oasisdesign.net/

referring back to the OP for this old thread, I believe that the current restrictions from catching rainwater from the roof in CO are for households connected to municipal water.

I can't advise you on the cistern, since it is something I need, too, but I can tell you your
low flow well will be fine for you, as long as it doesn't go dry in dry times. Or well is similar, we just conserve. We don't all shower one after the other. We let it recover after using a lot.

I fill two stock tanks consecutively, just very slowly. I swiped the restrictor disc out of a soaker hose and used it as the grommet in the hose I run to the tanks, then barely open the valve. I fill several hundred gallons in a few hours, then let it recover before we use more.

We have a low flow shower head and a dual flush toilet, that uses less water.

I still want a cistern to store water in wet times, or fill overnight.

OP, what did you end up doing? :)

.5 gpm x 60 min = 30 gph, x 10 = 300 gpd. (I used a total of 10 hrs because if it is that slow, it may run REALLY slow if you draw on it.) We use +- 700 gallons per week with no restrictions. I think - if the well doesn't go dry - you could be fine with a timed and float valve regulated draw.

Cement doesn't have nasty chemicals in it. Where on earth did you get that idea? It is lime, aggregate (rocks), and sand. If whoever orders it is a doofus it might have a retardant in it. Lime rocks and sand are what is in the earth.

The liner stuff mentioned above might have been thouroseal (sp?) which is a high lime sealant. Personally, I wouldn't have any problem with a few food grade 275 gal transport containers kept under cover and out of the sun or a stock tank (which is what we use).

For the plumbing experts. How high up would a cistern need to be above a 1 level ranch house to gravity feed with decent pressure? I am wondering if it would be viable to mount a 275gallon tote on a "tower" and then when im on generator power fill it anytime the generator is running and use gravity feed to use as needed. Would 8' above floor level be enough? I doubt i want to build a tower for 275gallon x (8lbs/gallon) 2200lbs plus the tote!!

So the foundation is finally being dug for our house. We're doing a modular home - which is finished & just waiting for the foundation - Yay!!. The holes for the casons are all full of water - which we couldn't find when LOOKING for water of course! We figure it's seasonal & we've had lots of snow recently. Anyway, we ended having a water tap
& lines put in. It cost a lot less than we originally thought - "only" around $25,000. We
couldn't imagine having to haul water or even having to rely on it being delivered. We
use a LOT of water & I would have been miserable having to watch every drop we used. Not to mention resale value. We do plan on looking into a gray water system & trying to conserve, however. And we will probably try to get a well dug eventually just for an extra source, even though it probably will only be there off & on. And I would like to have a cement cistern just to store some extra water.

8 ft will give you a very slow stream at faucets and not reliably enough to trigger proper opening and closing of toilet valves. The base of our cistern is about 8' above the sink taps (not the floor) and it is enough that we have water in a power outage but not what I would want for regular pressure. To get close to regular pressure you would have to go up thirty feet minimum, and seventy feet would be about right.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/homes...z80jazraw.aspx

Look at the slide show in the above article to see a tower. Otherwise, you have to pressurize the water with pumps.

Yea im pretty sure im not homebuilding a 70ft 2200lb carying tower!! Thanks

We'll be moving from blue drums to IBC totes here shortly but sometime this year I'm thinking on doing a ferro-cement cistern sealed with thoroseal. It's NSF approved for potable water.
We started by filtering rainwater with a berkey type but we get water from the neighbor, albeit limey, for general use and buy drinking water.
We'll get a well sometime I imagine but around here it's 100' to the limey water and over 300' to the good stuff. For 3-4k I can build the cistern and have enough left over for some ponds.

If you search online, you should be able to find plans for the ferro-cement cisterns.

Thanks for the information!

The production of cement has a lot of nasty chemicals. When concrete is wet, I can cause a dermal reaction. See this article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15068132. Here is some info on chemicals leaching out of cement: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...08884698002002. After some reading, it looks like cement may be okay.

Thanks everyone for the replies! We signed the papers to purchase the property today.

Wet cement is HIGHLY base in nature. The dermal reaction (which I have had from time to time working with it) is the skin saying "FOOL! This wet base stuff is as nasty for my tender tips as thrashing around in acid with sand mixed in!" Stick your hand into a hot apple pie being cooked in an oven and you will also get a dermal reaction. Not sure about the nasty chemicals in apple pie. :D