Using rain water instead of tap water

[Colin_T]

I had a foot of water in the bottom half of my house but it didn't come from rain. Stupid main roads department was pumping out ground water into a vacant lot next door. After a week the vacant lot became soaked with water and it had nowhere to go but my backyard. Split level house on split level backyard and I wake up to lightning on the floor (due to wet extension cords for the fish) and a ticking sound. I was fortunate the power point was 1 foot above the ground and turned it off before spending the next 4 hours moving everything upstairs.

This started at 3am and there was only an inch of water on the floor. By 7am I was in knee deep water. Numerous phone calls to main road who were shut and the water corp and eventually the pump was stopped. Too little too late for my fish books and magazines

 

[Chief Brody]

... and not for nuthin but the best way to utilize rain water is to dig a pond really. If only for a few months a year keep them outside then catch them in the fall. They'll breed like rabbits and show more color under the actual sun

Sent from my SM-G730V using Tapatalk

 

[AbbeysDad]

LOL

And where I live 1410.1mm, and sometimes we get most of that in a few days causing flooding, why just last year I had 4 feet of water in my house.

I live on a hill with a boat in the yard....no worries!

 

[AbbeysDad]

As for poop on the roof, a diverter system like @Colin_T suggested is the way to go.

 

[Zikofski]

Thank you everyone that has given me some advice and a lot of thought to think about sadly it is only a small shed, easy to clean the roof but is that rough stuff not sure the name, I was planning on adding a physical filter like some foam old filter floss to the top of the tank down shoot of the guttering to keep debris and bugs out.

I think all in all despite all the rain here in the UK the south east gets the least I believe, and it wont be enough esp during summer months, think my best bet is to just use that water to clean out my filter which will be safe right being non chlorinated?.. that will save me some money and water waste.

my plan is for a show tank kinda thing i really want to try and nail hair grass always failed in the past, Very high light, Co2 and EI ferts with some small fish and shimp in the tank.

The area I'm in is very hard water so I may need to solve that some how, thought about an RO unit but I'm worried the maintenance costs of that will be to high for me

 

[Colin_T]

Get a sheet of clear plastic from a hardware and make up a frame for it. Put it in the backyard and let the rain fall onto the sheet and collect in a plastic bucket. The frame only has to be high enough to guide the water into the bucket.
The bigger the sheet of plastic, the more rain you will collect. When it stops raining you pack it away until the next rain.

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The other option is to distil water or use a reverse osmosis (R/O) unit, however R/O units waste a lot of water. But you can make a solar still, which will work during the warmer months and can be brought indoors and used inside during the cold weather.
Get a plastic storage container and half fill it with water.
Put a plastic bucket inside the container and add some clean rocks (that don't change the pH) to the bucket to hold it down, so it doesn't float around.
Put the lid on the storage container and put a small weight on the middle of the lid to cause it to sag a bit.
As the water evaporates it collects on the lid and runs toward the middle and drips into the bucket. This water is now pure and has no minerals, and can be used to reduce the hardness of the mains water.

 

[NickAu]

I live on a hill with a boat in the yard....no worries!

Yes I keep a boat handy too.