What type and manufactor of fine inlet flter does most folk recommend after the leaf catcher. This will be going on a whole home use system. Thanks If you are using a kind of screen wiring to keep leaves and June bugs out of the gutter stream, then that is a good idea… the next step might be to route your water into a first flush tank so that the first flush from rain routes the sediments into this tank capturing most of the roof’s sediment. When the ‘first flush tank’ is full, then the roof is reasonably clean… a full first flush tank causes the flowing rainwater to over flow (with most of the sediments removed), through a kind-of drain funnel with another fiberglas screen on top of the funnel, to catch any particulate matter that might have floated out of the first flush tank…
In my setup, I route the water from the funnel and screen, into the trailer’s 300 gallon storage tank… I use this water for dishwashing, mostly, but will soon use it for showering too… Each month, I pour 6 ounces of bleach into the 300 gallon tank to keep bacteria from forming inside… the tank has a screw on top, so it is effectively sealed… and the bleach works really well… I use a 12 volt pump inside the trailer to suck the water out of the bottom of the 300 gallon tank, into the trailer’s pipe system… The water is clean enough for showering, dishwashing, and shaving…
For drinking water, I use a homemade Activated Charcoal filter, with three paper coffee filters on the top to pre-filter the water, before it gets to the Activated Charcoal. The Activated Charcoal filtered water I use for cooking and drinking, looks good, smells good, and tastes good… During these hot summer months, I drink about a gallon to a gallon and a half of Coffee Paper and Activaged Carbon filtered water a day. During cooler weather, I drink only about a gallon of water a day… In the not to distant future, I may add two (100 gallon?) sediment tanks in the water chain before the rainwater enters the 300 gallon trailer storage tank, but I haven’t done that yet, and I may not do this… still thinking about it.
To recap the water chain which starts when rain falls on the roof, the first 10 gallons of rainwater cleans or washes the sediments from the roof. This sidement filled rainwater then flows through a screen wire covered gutter. The gutter screen is used to remove leaves, small limbs, rodents, and bugs… then, the first 10 gallons of sediment filled roof water, flows down the gutter pipe into a small, 10 gallon ‘first flush’ tank which captures and holds most of the roof sedimets in that tank… when the 10 gallon ‘first flush’ tank is full, then the roof is reasonably clean and it is delivering cleaner water, so when the first flush tank overflows, it is overflowing cleaner roof water which flows into a funnel shaped drain with a fiberglas window screen on top of the funnel, to catch any debris or Pollen that may have floated out of the first flush tank… At this point, most of the sediments and floating debris will be gone from the rainwater chain and the rainwater is ready for the main storage tank.
In my case, the storage tank is my 300 gallon tank that I use for trailer use… I add 6 ounces of bleach to my storage tank on the 1st of every month, to handle any organic or bacterial problems… I also use a 12 volt RV pump to distribute the water from the 300 gallon storage tank into the trailer, and this water is good enough to shower, shave or wash dishes… Every day, I fill a water pitcher from the trailer’s kitchen faucet, and pour the reasonably clean water into the top of my homemade Activated Carbon filter (with 3 paper, coffee pre-filters on top of the Activated Carbon filter)… I empty the carbon out of the Homemade Carbon filter every 4 months and replace it with new Activated Carbon, and the 3, coffee paper filters have to be replaced every 4 or 5 days… By the way, these paper coffee filters are really cheap, sold at every grocery store, for about a dollar (more or less), for a 100 filters… they work good, and they do catch any remaining sediments before it gets to the Carbon filter.
It might be worth mentioning, that I have built a drain valve at the bottom of the first flush tank, to empty it after each rain… some people drain this water into a greywater tank to water their plants.. and some people, like me, drain the sediment rain filled rain water on to their driveway… :-D I hope this helps… and I hope to get a digital camera soon, so I can take pictures and post them online, on how to build this simple, effective, and inexpensive, Activated Carbon and Coffee paper rainwater filter.
Related posts: