Does anyone use cistern water from an asphalt shingle roof ?
Just wondering how it would work out if you used it for washing, bathing, etc. as is, but ran it through a ceramic filter (such as a Berkey) for drinking and cooking.
Anyone have any experience doing something like this ?
Welcome to the forum, Arky217.
We have had some rainwater harvest discussions here. Seems most of them were regarding using water off of a metal roof, but as for myself, I wouldn't have any problem with it. I would just research the drinking one a bit. Possibly we can search for links to the old discussions.
Our whole town here manages to drink water from the river and an open reservoir so I'm sure something can be done with clean roof water.
Hi. My only experience with cistern rain water collection goes back about 40 years on my uncle's farm. He had heavy particulates like the shingle granules that collected in the bottom of the tanks. There was also finer stuff, silt like. I cleaned it out once. Then there were lighter stuff like leaves, twigs. A lot of the crap was avoided using a "first flow" diverter.
IIRC the farms cistern pulled the water from about a foot above the bottom of the concrete tank. It was used for everything except drinking. Drinking water was hand pumped well water.
Are you going to have any kind of water supply system; small pressure pump like an RV, whatever? There are fine UV light powered systems for purifying water.
Those ceramic filters work very well from what I've read. You just need to size it correctly in order to have ample drinking water.
The only thing I worry about these days when it comes to using non treated (filtered, UV'd, whatever) water is keeping it away from my lips/mouth. Washing in something unsafe, then transferring some "bug" to my insides is not something I want to deal with again.
You can probably do that. Fine for most purposes if it's not a really new roof. I think I might prefer to drink spring water (although right now my spring is dry. Even if we're now supposed to be in just "exceptionally dry" or maybe the lowest category of drought right now.)