# Water barrel idea over!!



## Martin cape (27 Apr 2013)

Hi guys, 

Bought a water barrel to collect rain water to use in my tank. Basically to save money as I'm on a meter. 

Turns out though, water company charges £1.53 for 1000 litres. I use 100 litres a week max. So basically 67p a month!! Thought it was miles more than that. I paid £37 for the barrel and diverter! It would take 4.5 years to pay for itself 

Plus, just tested the rain water in the full barrel:

pH - 8.4
dKH - 1.5
dGH - 1.5
Nitrate - 0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Ammonia - 0.25 ppm

So basically the rain water is by far worse than my tap water. 

Could have bought some nice new plants or my new powerheads for that money


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## sdlra (27 Apr 2013)

Ouch


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## stu_ (27 Apr 2013)

Maybe put it up for sale in the classified section 
Seriously though,they keep for years.i've got a spare one that i fill with water from the weekly water changes.Then water my Tomatoes at leisure


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## foxfish (27 Apr 2013)

I wonder why your rain water has such a high PH?


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## Martin cape (27 Apr 2013)

God knows. I thought that too. Only thing in the barrel is carbon and a white filter floss. It's been rinsed out too.


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## foxfish (27 Apr 2013)

I guess acid rain is a thing of the past!
I used to use rain water & still would if i could be bothered!


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## Martin cape (27 Apr 2013)

Looks like ill be stuck using good old tap water lol


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## AverageWhiteBloke (27 Apr 2013)

I live about 5 mile from Martin, I bought some deio water to make 4dkh water and TDS tests showed the water coming out my tap had less dissolved salts than the deio  Where we are from the water runs through a little granite and mainly sphagnum moss into the reservoirs. The waters very clean and soft to the point of the local water company adding stuff to it to harden it a bit. I can only assume the water in the barrel must be affected by whatever the roof make up is. Water out of the tap round these here parts won't even register on a standatd KG/GH test kit.


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## Martin cape (27 Apr 2013)

That's true Neil. 

Was mainly cost I wanted to use rain water. Thought water actually cost than it does. According to my bill I used 47000 litres of water in 5 months. 

I must be having long showers ha!


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## jon32 (28 Apr 2013)

I used to use rain water years ago, I guess it saved a few ££ on dechlorinator. I use tap water and prime these days for my little nano tank.


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## ghostsword (28 Apr 2013)

Fill the barrel with tap water, get a solar powered pond filter of sorts, aereate the water, you will save on aquasafe..  

Also, you can fill it with tank water, and then use that water in the garden, etc.. 

Lot's of uses for the 1000L tank..


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## DrRob (28 Apr 2013)

I've cut one up and used it as a sump. Small footprint under the tank and good volume. Tap on the bottom is useful for water changes.


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## dw1305 (28 Apr 2013)

Hi all,


> pH - 8.4
> dKH - 1.5
> dGH - 1.5





foxfish said:


> I wonder why your rain water has such a high PH?





AverageWhiteBloke said:


> Where we are from the water runs through a little granite and mainly sphagnum moss into the reservoirs. The waters very clean and soft to the point of the local water company adding stuff to it to harden it a bit


I think "AverageWhiteBloke" is right about the reason for your very soft, clean tap water, and that the water companies now all add NaOH to raise pH (but *not dKH*), and  PO4--- to immobilise any Pb++ and Cu+ ions from old pipes. 

The metal ions are present because H2O is a very efficient solvent (once it has picked up some CO2) and picks up any soluble salts (or gases), so it could be the roof, or it  maybe a very small amount of soluble residue from cleaning etc in the water butt.

Because the dKH  is so low pH is a movable feast and not really telling you anything important. pH is just a measure of the ratio of H+ ion acceptors (bases) and donors (acids) and as you approach pure H2O any small addition of acids or bases will cause a large change in pH. This is exactly the opposite of what you get in hard water with a very high dKH (sea water, Lake Tanganyika), in this case you need to add a huge volume of acids to overwhelm the carbonate buffering and lower the pH.

Conductivity would be a useful measure, and I'd expect it to be below 100 microS (just to show how pure this is full strength sea water is 53,000 microS) and our very clean, but hard tap water from a deep limestone aquifer is about 800microS and 18dKH.

I'd always rather use rain-water than tap, even if we had soft tap water, partially because you can never be sure quite what has been added to your tap water (emergency chloramine dosing etc).

cheers Darrel


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## Martin cape (28 Apr 2013)

Funny you should mention conductivity. I analyse that at work. Deionised water has a conduct of 0.5 microSiemens. Never tested the tap water in the lab though. 

Only thing that concerns me with the rain water, is the ammonia in there. Thought that was really strange. Don't fancy adding it to the tank. 

Least I have water for the garden I suppose lol. Save a bit on my water bill


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## dw1305 (29 Apr 2013)

Hi all


Martin cape said:


> Deionised water has a conduct of 0.5 microSiemens


That is a high quality DI, possibly because of the quality of the water coming in. Can you test your tap and rain-water?


Martin cape said:


> Only thing that concerns me with the rain water, is the ammonia in there. Thought that was really strange. Don't fancy adding it to the tank.


I would suspect the test kit, ammonia is difficult to measure even with ion selective electrodes.

cheers Darrel


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## Martin cape (29 Apr 2013)

We use it at work. It has to be ultra pure water, it gets purified at work too. I'll see if I can check the tap water at work when I'm next in.


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