permaculture

[Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>]

Toby, I'm not currently drinking roof caught water but am building it into 
my new house.  I have drank cistern water in Australia, South America, and 
Southeast Asia and certainly trust it more than well or surface water in 
those areas.  I don't know of a single case of anyone in those areas 
treating water with anything.  The primary safety measure is to have a roof 
wash mechanism which takes the first gallons that falls on the roof and 
dumps it in growing beds or some other useful place and then diverts the 
water from the cleaned roof to the cistern.  Other than using limestone, or 
marble chips to raise the pH I don't think anything else is necessary.
There is a natural biological process that takes place in the cistern which 
sequesters most organic matter in a mat on the bottom of the tank, 
therefore it is good to have your outlet some 18 inches above the bottom of 
the tank to avoid the accumulated material.  It is a bad idea to clean and 
sterilize your tank, unless you manage to get a dead animal in it, because 
it destroys beneficial bacteria.

One of the best sources on Cistern Catchment is through the CSIRO web site 
in Australia.  I have found them extremely helpful in the past.

Scott

At 07:49 AM 12/1/00 -0800, you wrote:
> I'm curious to know how many people using rainwater actually drink it, and
> what kind of treatment they use.
>
> We have a metal roof (colorbond) and a 5000-gallon concrete tank that we use
> for everything but drinking. Our well water sucks, so I'd like to begin
> drinking the cistern water, but haven't sorted out all the many possible
> treatment options.
>
> The other issue with the cistern is our wood stove. We haven't graduated to
> a masonry or other clean-burning stove yet, so the smoke wafts across the
> roof, and imparts a faint smoky flavor (creosote?) to the water, which is
> the main reason I'm not drinking it.
>
> Toby
>
>
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