How can I trap, purify, and store water for drinking?

Question

One step to self-sufficiency.

Answer 1

The best way to do this is depends on where you live and what resources you have.  My first instinct when you say "trap" is that you don't live near a constant source of water, like a stream or river.  Instead you're interested in capturing something intermittent.  Assuming you don't live in a desert or other arid location, then rain is a good option.

Capturing roof run-off  is a decent option for volume in some areas, but you'll capture rain-dissolved bird mess, dust, microbes, and other airborne pollutants.  The cleanest way is to have tarps or visqueen that you can roll out/deploy when rain is expected.  Again, it is a question of space/resources.  You would store collected rain water in 55-gallon polyethylene drums.  When the drums are filled, you would transfer the water using a pump as described below.

Another great option is a domestic supply well.  Again, depending on your resources and where you live, this could be very feasible.  Powered by wind or a solar-powered electric pump, this might be able to provide all the water you need to live off the grid.  You may also want to keep 110-220 gallons of water in polyethylene drum storage.

Now, when you transfer water or pump it from the ground, you need to make sure that it put into storage correctly.  Otherwise, your first experiences with drinking this water are likely to be very bad.  It is important to designate clean versus dirty drums.  Clean drums should only receive pure, filtered water and dirty drums recieve unfiltered water.

To ensure safe, long-term storage, there are four things that you should do.  

1. During transfer of your accumulated water, only pump off the top 90% of the water to avoid drawing in sediment.  The swirl the drum and drain the remainder of water.  Bleach as needed.

2. Filter transferred water through a 5 micron filter.  This will filter out all bacteria and parasites.

3. Polish the filtered water with a dual chamber carbon filter.  This will remove potentially carcinogenic contaminants from your roof and the air.

4. After the water has been trasferred to a storage drum, add a water preserving tablet for long-term storage.

I hope you find this very helpful.

Answer 2

Good question! I am concerned with the tap water purity in this country. Who knows what kind of chemicals we are forced to ingest. It seems like if you trapped all the water from your roof and filtered it you would have enough for cooking and drinking.

PTTP!

Answer 3

Have the water that falls on your roof run into a rainwater tank.

As long as your gutters are reasonably clean and you don't live in a polluted area there is no need to purify it.

BTW you can buy a simple gizmo that goes on your gutter and lets the first bit of every rain run off befoe it goes into your tank- kind of like giving your roof a rinse first - that way you don't get as much dust and bird p**p off your roof - not that it will kill you anyway.

All our household water comes from  rainwater tanks as there is no town supply here.

Answer 4

try these links

http://rfcd.pima.gov/wh/

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/water...

# www.ci.tucson.az.us/water/tsnwtr/conserv...

Answer 5

Permaculture

what is Permaculture

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Water harvesting

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...