Do you have a backup water system?

Do you have a backup water system?

  • Yes

    Votes: 153 46.1%

  • No

    Votes: 95 28.6%

  • No, but looking into it

    Votes: 73 22.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 11 3.3%
  • Total voters
    332
mpdjhb said:
Ours is the same - just need a plumber to plumb to the house as we also have the filter already.
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I keep telling myself I’ll call a plumber to connect the tanks to the house but the garden hoses I’ve been using keep working.
 
bwana said:
I keep telling myself I’ll call a plumber to connect the tanks to the house but the garden hoses I’ve been using keep working.
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Forget the plumber. You already know what is required. Check the regs and just DIY. The biggest regulatory problem is to prevent inadvertent backfeeding of your water into the municipal system and that is easily prevented with the correct installation of a non return valve.
 
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Stephen! said:
20 000l rainwater tanks - Used for garden and flushing toilets.
2 000l tank for municipal water storage.
Our municipal water is all pumped and loadshedding has been playing havoc with water supply. May need to consider a borehole too.
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There are dc operated pumps
 
Johnit said:
I have 12 500 liter rain water capacity using two Jojo tanks and a pump. I installed this during the previous big drought in the Western Cape. Feeding this to the house into the house water supply is easy in my case, but the Municipal regulations require very expensive switch over valves (health and safety reasons?). I have not added filters for providing potable water - that is next phase!
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My understanding you must not be able to backfeed into the city supply. I am planning to disconnect COCT supply completely and plumb straight into the house.

But should I not, I would to install one way valves which is inexpensive i.e. only allow water to go one way but not the other.

One way valves:


 
CommonSense said:
Then we will battle them in the streets. Every man for himself.
Been through this scare tactics before. CoCT spend billions in the Day Zero fiasco.
How many desalanation plants were actually producing drinking water at the end of the day?

People bought Jojo tanks which at the end is not suitable for potable water use without expensive filters and pumps and whatnot.. Most of those tanks were for capturing rain water from polluted roofs (even asbestos roofs).

And most of those tanks would have run dry within a week or two in any case, even if used for flushing toilets and showers.

A lot of ground water is not suitable for drinking in any case without very expensive treatment due to heavy metal content and other seepage.

It can be done, but at a huge premium. The bottled water industry will just step up their production.
Or we will drink brandy and flush with whiskey.
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If the end goal is drinking water I agree with you, but with an inexpensive +/-R5000 filter system, I can get a lot of **** our of my ground water making it suitable for everything else and simply buy my drinking water. Should the **** really hit the fan I can add the additional filters and a RO to get it to drinking quality.

This route means that you have to just keep spare filters to avoid issues.
 
mpdjhb said:
Ours is the same - just need a plumber to plumb to the house as we also have the filter already.
Click to expand...
Plumbing of water is not difficult, if you have a leak you will know it immediately, if it is outside, you will just get wet.

I bought flux, solder, fittings and 1 metre of copper piping. Watched Youtube and practice. Once I practiced enough, I bought some more pipe. I plumbed my two washing machines and an outside brass tap from the my tanks, these are connected to a pump which is controlled by an automatic pressure pump controller. Open the tap, pump switch on, close the tap, pump switch off. My wife uses the washing machine and open the valve at the machine, pump switch on. No leaks.

I use the blue pvc pipe from the pump up until it goes into the garage for the washing machines, there is adaptor which connects from the pvc to copper. Its not a bad job if I do say so myself. When I installed the blue pvc pipe, I connected a T which is connected to a ball valve, this is right next to my municipal main house water supply. Once I buy my filtration system, I will do something similar here.
 
Borehole + pool.

Could drink it if I boiled it, I guess.

But would probably buy drinking water. May need to do that anyway, not sure that the tap water is safe to drink any more.
 
rh1 said:
My understanding you must not be able to backfeed into the city supply. I am planning to disconnect COCT supply completely and plumb straight into the house.

But should I not, I would to install one way valves which is inexpensive i.e. only allow water to go one way but not the other.

One way valves:


Click to expand...
the spring loaded nrv have a diaphragm ,they fail ,you get 2 types of brass nrv ,one has a rubber seal on the flap and one is brass on brass ,installation of the brass ones is critical otherwise they dont seal properly ,vertical is best or horizontal as long as the cap points up is ok .the brass on brass are ok for a geyser but dont seal 100% for reverse flow .
 
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Geoff.D said:
Forget the plumber. You already know what is required. Check the regs and just DIY. The biggest regulatory problem is to prevent inadvertent backfeeding of your water into the municipal system and that is easily prevented with the correct installation of a non return valve.
Click to expand...
Only if you are not all thumbs like me.
 
frankvw said:
We're at the KZN South Coast. We've had municipal water for maybe 3 days in the past 6 months (if that) and so far things are only looking to get worse. Everyone subsists on tanker truck water (which costs around R350/kL on average).

I installed a 5,000L rainwater harvesting tank last November and we haven't used a drop of metered water since. I did the work myself (for an IT guy turned brewer I'm not a bad plumber at all, not to mention one heck of pool boy) and I broke even on the investment months ago.

Since the rainwater quality at the coast is excellent we're even drinking it. I've got leaf traps and a first flush diverter to get rid of most of the contaminants, and I'm chlorinating the water in the tank with Calcium Hypochlorite. (No, NOT pool grade HTH!) I run the water through a 3 stage filter (one 5um sediment filter, one GAC filter and one carbon block filter) and it's excellent.

If you are located in a different area (closer to industry, power stations and/or major traffic) I would not recommend drinking it, though. The risk of toxic pollutants in the water is just too high. Here at the coast, though, we're lucky. (Not that tap water, when it was still available regularly, was safe to drink, either!)

Chlorination remains the biggest pain, though. After the rain I've got to put the step ladder next to the tank and drop in more hypochlorite, but over the next few weeks the amount of available chlorine gradually drops. I'm looking into an in-line chlorinator but that requires an additional contact tank which I haven't installed yet.

I'll install a second 5kL tank first, though, so as to make sure we're never caught short during the dry season. It's a no-brainer, really.
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If you are not using any municipal water are you still paying the ridiculous mandatory fees for the honour of being connected to a piping network that is dry more often than not? Mandatory sanitation is charged before you use a single drop of water then sewerage is charged based on your water consumption so if your municipal consumption is zero then you're only paying the mandatory fees I presume. Ugu Water will have absolutely no idea how many kilolitres you flush every month. I like it.
 
We have been off the water grid since March 2020.
Very large 3 stage filter, 15kl of water, plumbed in.
After the rain we buy a food grade water sanitiser (hydrogen peroxide) from our local Co-Op and one bottle is sufficient for 3 of the tanks, the fourth one is mainly for our pool and garden.
We installed Eco tanks and we recently installed another 2 400kl tank (even consumer shrinkage in the water tanks...tsek) which is not connected to the other tanks; mainly a backup for toilets and pool/garden although we do have a pump which, if needed, can be used to pump into the tanks housing the household water. It is also treated.

To date, we have not yet run out of water, despite the rains being very scarce here in some parts of the Eastern Cape.
Sadly we still do pay the mandatory "connection" fee which is ridiculous. We submit a zero reading every month. Thankfully we dont have sanitation charges as have a French Drain and a Septic Tank.
 
Busy building a filtration system for dam water.

1725438326592.png

Water will be pumped from the dam, go through a mesh filter, then enter the first 210 liter drum from the bottom.

Water rises through the drum and exits at the top and goes into the bottom of the next drum, then a third drum.

Top of the third drum will be fitted with two 110mm to 75mm reducers to accommodate a section of 110mm pipe which will house a 75W UV-C sterilizing lamp.

The first drum will be filled with pool filter sand, the second with zeolite and the third with activated carbon.

Each drum will have 100mm of coarse stone at the bottom and top with a layer of geotex fabric to separate it from the sand/zeolite/carbon.

Furthermore, the first two drums will have manual air release valves at the top and all three drums will have purge valves at the bottom.
 
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I has a wellpoint at home and I want to connect it to the toilets in order to cut down of water consumption. Only issue is the cost of electricity will erode any savings in this regard. I can gravity feed but I don't want raised tanks in my yard.

Any other ideas?

Also it is swimming season now which would require constant top ups with municipal water. Perhaps if I connect the toilets to the wellpoint these 2 will balance each other out.

I assume the below wont deal with iron in the water.

1725438949029.png
 
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jdido87 said:
I has a wellpoint at home and I want to connect it to the toilets in order to cut down of water consumption. Only issue is the cost of electricity will erode any savings in this regard. I can gravity feed but I don't want raised tanks in my yard.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Solar power?

jdido87 said:
Also it is swimming season now which would require constant top ups with municipal water. Perhaps if I connect the toilets to the wellpoint these 2 will balance each other out.

I assume the below wont deal with iron in the water.
Click to expand...
Doubtful. That's a polypropylene filter and two carbon filters.
Carbon filters need a pore size of 1 micron or less to filter out iron.

AFAIK, "manganese greensand" is commonly used to remove iron.

Affordable Water Purifiers & Filters | Blue Spot Water | Gauteng

Affordable Water Purifiers & Filters | Blue Spot Water | Gauteng
www.bluespotwater.co.za www.bluespotwater.co.za
 
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