how potable is roof rain water?

[johnrex62]

Hee hee, you said "moose".

I hate it when those pesky moose knock my tv antenna over. :laughing:

 

[Artisan]

Everything, and I mean everything floating in the air, settles on the roof. Along comes a rain and washes the roof clean. In Los Angeles County one would be a fool to do this, SMOG is horrible stuff.

Having said that, one should install a device whereas the first 80 or so gallons of heavy run off get flushed to ground, everything thereafter into the cistern. I too am in favor of the UV light treatment and additionally, a few drops of chlorine bleach will kill every living organism known to man, I do believe. You need to look up exactly how much bleach to how many gallons.

I am not a pro, just using common sense. Asking q's is a GREAT step before implement. I too will be reading the replies.

 

[kleetus]

i could always start my own reality show.. "Dysentery Roulette" each week i can try a new method of purification then drink a big glass and see which produces the best out put..

btw my land is 272 acres just west of Dufur Oregon.. so smog isnt an issue.

here is a pic of the view..

and yes I like to show it off.. cause its freakin awesome

 

[teg]

:drool::drool::drool: Well, You're not a liar... I use a Carbon filter for all the water I drink.

 

[rsewill]

One teaspoon pure bleach per ten gallons should do you. Then filter. But I do like the UV light if you get the right light.

 

[Egon]

You could make it guaranteed-safe with a simple pre-filter and UV treatment. Because it's rain water, it's soft, so no softener is required before UV exposure.

Rain can be acidic.

 

[powerpace]

Look up "Texas Manual on Rainwater and Harvesting. You are probably better off collecting water yourself than what some people have to put up with.
In my case and several thousand others it's mercury and arsenic natural occuring.

 

[Recoveryhill]

Most Caribbean islands utilize catch water and cisterns as the only source of potable water for both residential and commercial buildings. In the towns there is usually a high priced feed of desal water, but most use rain.

We have the advantage however of well over 2,000 miles of open ocean to our East, the direction of the weather, so other than lizard and bird crap and some dust, the water is very pure and quite soft, as someone mentioned.

I hit my 16,000 gallon cistern with a gallon of bleach once a year, (if I remember to do it) and have low tech filters on the taps where I draw cold drinking water. UV filters are fairly common here but cost a fair amount.

 

[Ken45101]

As a kid, I remember a family friend who used rainwater for drinking. They had a diverter on the downspout to flush to first part of a rainstorm. Being back in the 1950's, I'm sure they didn't have any high tech gadgets.

Our current house has two cisterns fed with rain water, no diverter, directly into a pump in the basement. However, county water was put in before we bought the place.

For your RV, you could do what we do with our camper: bring some water jugs from home (1 gallon to 5 gallon) for actual drinking/cooking water. We don't usually sanitize the RV tank and we just use it for washing dishes, washing hands and showers.

Ken

 

[moored4]

i could always start my own reality show.. "Dysentery Roulette" each week i can try a new method of purification then drink a big glass and see which produces the best out put..

btw my land is 272 acres just west of Dufur Oregon.. so smog isnt an issue.

here is a pic of the view..

and yes I like to show it off.. cause its freakin awesome

Ah! Yes the big metropolis of Duffer! Nice little eatery in down town Duffer, We eat there every time we pick up our alfalfa hay from a ranch out on China Springs Rd. For your roof water I would use it with the right Filter system as others have mentioned.