Rainwater Harvesting - Low cost solutions

millertime78

The amount of water coming off the slatted shed these last few days is unbelievable. It got me thinking of rainwater harvesting especially with metering. The shed walls are mass concrete so building a tank is one option. A good system could provide water summer & winter

Any experiences or ideas in this area? Please share..

Tora Bora

millertime78 wrote: »

The amount of water coming off the slatted shed these last few days is unbelievable. It got me thinking of rainwater harvesting especially with metering. The shed walls are mass concrete so building a tank is one option. A good system could provide water summer & winter

Any experiences or ideas in this area? Please share..

I was thinking along the same lines. However, I started a little test last year for drinking water for cattle in the shed. Used two troughs in the feed passage. One with mains piped water. One with rain water, carted in from the down pipe on the shed.
Cattle very slow to drink the rain water!!! Maybe it is short on minerals and such like compared to water which has filtered down through soil and rock etc,...
Have to say, I was taken aback!

Anyone else had this experience??

Have a fast running stream not far from the sheds. I'm now trying to think of a way to get some kind of sump in there so I could pump stream water as opposed to paying for council supply in future. I'm just concerned that any sump I dig out, will quickly silt up again! Ideas on this would be appreciated!

5live

Tora Bora wrote: »

I was thinking along the same lines. However, I started a little test last year for drinking water for cattle in the shed. Used two troughs in the feed passage. One with mains piped water. One with rain water, carted in from the down pipe on the shed.
Cattle very slow to drink the rain water!!! Maybe it is short on minerals and such like compared to water which has filtered down through soil and rock etc,...
Have to say, I was taken aback!

Anyone else had this experience??

Have a fast running stream not far from the sheds. I'm now trying to think of a way to get some kind of sump in there so I could pump stream water as opposed to paying for council supply in future. I'm just concerned that any sump I dig out, will quickly silt up again! Ideas on this would be appreciated!

Connaght agri have a pump driven by water to pump fairly short distances. Cant recall the price:o. And on water quality, i changed from scheme water 3 years ago to well water and yield went up by 1 litre in a day with same feed allowance. I put it down to the chlorine disinfectant in the water but dont know for sure

MOC1972

Hi There try looking up Ram Pumps on youtube they do not need electric
or anything other than a good flow of water it should be easy to make
and by all accounts are relible free water for a small investment. Also
there is a company selling them in the uk hope this is of help to you

bbam

Our underground feed to the slatted shed burst a few years ago.. We set up a 600 galon tank, (cheap as it was a seconds) which collects rainwater, and feed the drinkers of it..

When the water was reconnected to the shed we left it so we could top up the tank during dry frosty spells and kept the rainwater as the primary source..

It works well and since the tank is indoors it only froze in the worst -12 weather last year.. It has an overflow pipe fitted to prevent flooding.

It can be handy to drop in a submersable pump and fill an IBC in a few minutes for powerwashing or whatever..

millertime78

Tora Bora wrote: »

I was thinking along the same lines. However, I started a little test last year for drinking water for cattle in the shed. Used two troughs in the feed passage. One with mains piped water. One with rain water, carted in from the down pipe on the shed.
Cattle very slow to drink the rain water!!! Maybe it is short on minerals and such like compared to water which has filtered down through soil and rock etc,...
Have to say, I was taken aback!

V interesting experiment there. I wonder have Teagasc done any research in this area? I guess its all about taste. I remember my Dad saying the first time he piped water to cows they would still go for the tank water which was rainwater run off from the hayshed. He reckoned it was taste and that pipe water was harder having come through limestone

Pat the lad

Tora Bora, get a steel barrel and cut lots holes or slots in it - as many as possible. Dig the sump in your stream, place the barrel into the sump,put some clean rocks into the bottom of the barrel - to cover the floor, then place your submersible pump into the barrel and fill up the rest of the barrel with clean stones.
A metal frame for those ICB's would do as well

meathstevie

Anyone ever used the tank of an old rigid body milk tanker ? I've seen it used once on a farm in Belgium.It was used to collect the run off from cattle sheds and supplied water for the cattle and household water ( mains water as back up ) to the farm house as well.

MfMan

Tora Bora wrote: »

I was thinking along the same lines. However, I started a little test last year for drinking water for cattle in the shed. Used two troughs in the feed passage. One with mains piped water. One with rain water, carted in from the down pipe on the shed.
Cattle very slow to drink the rain water!!! Maybe it is short on minerals and such like compared to water which has filtered down through soil and rock etc,...
Have to say, I was taken aback!

Anyone else had this experience??

Actually had the opposite experience, a bit. Had a bullock with redwater a couple of years ago; housed him in shed and gave him tap / mains water for a drink which he didn't seem too interested in. Let him out later and he drank a good sup from a rainwater trough. (He had been on land where the water supply was from a river.)(He recovered fully, TG). Think they prefer natural water where I live.

bbam

meathstevie wrote: »

Anyone ever used the tank of an old rigid body milk tanker ? I've seen it used once on a farm in Belgium.It was used to collect the run off from cattle sheds and supplied water for the cattle and household water ( mains water as back up ) to the farm house as well.

Indeed... There was a dairy farm near Oldcastle that I saw this done on, it had a feed to a small shallow well pump to pressurise the system. That was a while ago and I don't know if it's still there

johngalway

I bet there is a taste off whatever coating is on the roofing material of the shed. I was on a stand a few years back across the way from a rainwater collection outfit from Carlow. Don't think you can use domestic rainwater collection for drinking water either at all or without substantial treatment.

millertime78

I wonder is there is there any treatment/ filter that can be applied to the collected rainwater?

Also what is the potential to add minerals etc?

pakalasa

I think "MfMan" is right, cattle will be slow to drink water if the smell is different. I think that's all it is. Give them time and I'd say they'd drink the roof water no problem.

jfh

millertime78, were doing the exact same thing as you now, personally i think it might be a lot of work in our case to get "free" water. but it's a great idea if you can do it.
any idea how your going to pump the water from the tank into the water troughs/bowls, the other posts mentioned this ram pump but that only works with flowing water, right?

F.D

has everyone forgot the birds sh1t on the roofs of these buildings, maybe that is wat is tainting the water, would there be a disease threat? say if they dropped some thing dead on it that decomposed, just wondering

bbam

F.D wrote: »

has everyone forgot the birds sh1t on the roofs of these buildings, maybe that is wat is tainting the water, would there be a disease threat? say if they dropped some thing dead on it that decomposed, just wondering

I appreciate the point, we have been doing this for 8-10 years and have never taken an animal from the shed for treatment for any reason,(jinx statement or what :rolleyes:) it only holds 15-20 each year so it's small scale.

My advice would be to go for as large a storage container as possible, this would increase the dilution ratio for anything in there, ours also overflows to outside so in our great climate it is continuously freshing itself..

Any concerns I would have would be the like of IBC's outside, the sunlight and heat from the sun would kick off all sorts of growth in the tank..

pakalasa

What about bird sh1te (as mentioned already) as a possible source of Salmonella. :eek:


Contaminated roof-collected rainwater as a possible cause
of an outbreak of salmonellosis*
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129778/pdf/jhyg00050-0135.pdf

Muckit

pakalasa wrote: »

What about bird sh1te (as mentioned already) as a possible source of Salmonella. :eek:


Contaminated roof-collected rainwater as a possible cause
of an outbreak of salmonellosis*
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129778/pdf/jhyg00050-0135.pdf

It's no worse a treat than rats or birds picking at feed/ration from in front of cattle in a slatted shed. Those that never have this problem on their farm raise your hands now:rolleyes: (Put them down!!!:D)

In saying that it is best practice to treat all drinking water even for animal consumption.

I have to agree with OP though that we are not making the best use from our rain water. It could safely be used for other jobs like powerhosing, spraying etc. Even at this, it will still require some form of filtering to remove dirt/debris

tabby aspreme

MOC1972 wrote: »

Hi There try looking up Ram Pumps on youtube they do not need electric
or anything other than a good flow of water it should be easy to make
and by all accounts are relible free water for a small investment. Also
there is a company selling them in the uk hope this is of help to you

I use a ram pump and its a great machine . there are two companies in england who sell them .my one is at least 80 years old and all parts are freely available ,it pumps about 500 gallons / day from a very small spring which would not fill a 2 inch pipe , there is a bit of work to install one but after that they are trouble free and will pump any distance or height