Rainwater Tanks

Thanks Ray, for you reply.

Where I am building, in the Gold Coast, it is compulsory to have a minimum 5000L tank installed on all new homes and have the tank connected to the toilets and cold water washing machine tap. When the tank runs low, it just fills up from the town water. I just find that amusing that people are out there watering their gardens with 'rainwater tank water' when it just gets filled up from the tap

I am thinking about just going with them to do all of it, it is only $2000 in the scheme of things and if anything goes wrong, it is all their fault, nothing to do with me!

PPS - why does it do that? *** - all it was was s h o u l d n ' t i t
maybe I'll have to write
"should not it"

Everyone is rushing to install tanks. If it compulsory then fine, or if you live in rural areas etc..

But think about this.

Say it costs roughly $2000 to fit a 2000L tank. How much do you think it would cost to fill that very same tank from the tap??? About $2. Given the ammount of rain lately, it will take years and years to recover those costs. And if it does start raining again, well you'll be kicking yourself for doing it in the first place.

I say we need large scale solutions that are government funded. Like new damns, recycling etc..
Why should we pay for governments who don't act? They are quite happy spending money (and lots of it) on sporting facilities/events, conference centers, fast trains that don't actually go any faster. The list goes on and on. It gets right on my nerve !!

And fitting tanks to homes is a drop in the ocean compared to what a large scale damn or damns can hold.

End rant.

Does anyone know how the rainwater tank is connected to the mains?

I thought it would be a ball float operated system, like your toilet. But, you can't have it at high level or the tank would always be full, so no room for rainwater.

If it's at low level, the float would go under during rain, which would be a big no-no from the water board. You could then have cross-contamination of the town water.

An electric float switch at low level maybe?

Not exacly sure, but I have seen a Y pipe (for want of a better explaination) that when there is rain water in the tank, it shuts off the mains, and when there is no rainwater, it shuts that off and runs on town water.
There may be other alternatives, but in this case, the tank would not fill with mains water.

Ray.

Bud977,

Sorry but I have to say that I strongly disagree with your statement that water is too cheap. Perth is currently getting is desalinated sea water for just over a dollar per kilolitre. So the real cost is just aver a dollar with no significant environmental impact. (the power for the plant comes from wind power and the saline backwash affects a very minimal area).

If our lazy state governments would just bite the bullet and build these things, the problem would dissapear. We might have to pay 20 to 50% more for our water but with economies of scale, maybe not even that.

Perths desal plant costs about $350 million and produces about 45 Gigalitres - running costs about $20 million a year. Melbs proposed recycling and moving it to the power plans is estimated at $1.3 BILLION or there abouts and will save about 90Gigalitres a year - running costs about $100 million a yaer.

As for water tanks, I am going to get about 40 000 litre tank else it is just not worth my while. I will be using this purely to water the garden and I will also be using grey water for the garden. I expect to have a very green and lush garden.

Anyone have any ideas about how I can run piping from gutters from 4 corners of the house to the tank without having the piping running across the walls? Can i run it into the ground and then back up into the tank? I realise that this would leave water in the pipe at all times but does that really matter? The pipes would just be ating as an extension of the tank. Any views on this?

3xb