Large Tank for Potable Water as Backup to Mains

optimusgrime

Hello,

I'm looking into getting a large tank (5000l+) that could be used for water for the house/drinking water in the event of mains water being interrupted.

I've seen tanks like this one: https://www.tanksireland.ie/p/7500_litre_potable_water_tank

Would it be possible to have mains water feed this tank and then have this water used in the house?

So in the event of mains water being off or pressure greatly reduced we'd get our water from the tank. Also if the pressure was reduced the tank would be topped up at the reduced rate still so we could have normal water pressure in the house.

Is this feasible to do?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

DGOBS

Is your mains water supply that unreliable?

optimusgrime

DGOBS wrote: »

Is your mains water supply that unreliable?

Thanks, I'd just like to have a backup.

youtheman

Are you installing a pump on the new tank. If not then you are going to run into serious problems with pressure.

optimusgrime

youtheman wrote: »

Are you installing a pump on the new tank. If not then you are going to run into serious problems with pressure.

Thanks, just to clarify I'm asking about this as I dont know if it's feasible/somthing that can be done?

Our water in the house seems to be pressurised to some extent so I'm guessing the tank would need to be also?

But just generally if anyone knows if this is somthing you could do/that is done that would be great!

youtheman

You can't pressurise that tank. It's not designed for this. Think of this big tank like a big toilet cistern. You would have to fit some type of ballcock valve that will essentially drop the mains pressure from something like 2 bar to zero. A full tank will have 2.5 metres of head pressure, which is only about 0.1 bar. So you don't have enough pressure to feed your house (assuming you put it at ground level). So you'll have to fit a pump to the outlet of the tank to raise the pressure again.

antoinolachtnai

I would be concerned that you won’t have enough demand to ‘turn’ the tank sufficiently frequently. Drinking water should not sit for days in an open tank, even a covered one.

I would concentrate on bringing your house into line with the regulations, ie providing a tank with one day of water storage and to function as a break tank if there is no tank there at present, and install a pump if needed.

Alkers

Your cold water tank in your attic should fufill most of this functionality. If you were concerned you could get a larger one of those which will do you for everything except drinking water, which you can buy in bottles. Much more workable sollution

Ubbquittious

Get IBC tank, connect down pipe. The bother will be purifying it. You can get some filters and reverse osmosis stuff for this if you like.

But you don't really need any filters bar a coarse one to stop your IBC filling with leaves. If you want to drink some of the water just boil it. Don't bother treating the rest & don't spend 1500 quid just on a tank. You could have a nice enough setup with filters and all nicely connected to the house with a pump for 1500