Filtering Rainwater?

[GreenDuck]

It makes doodlebug's idea of extending his water capacity by converting a diesel tank into a water tank look quite sensible!

Or another way of looking at it could be the idea of moving a boat through 16 locks or miles and miles away to get to a water point before time when the stuff falls out the sky into a little water butt without one drop of sweat is rather daft;) Edited November 21, 2015 by GreenDuck

[Paul C]

Or another way of looking at it could be the idea of moving a boat through 16 locks or miles and miles away to get to a water point before time when the stuff falls out the sky into a little water butt without one drop of sweat is rather daft;)

 

True, its daft! BUT lots of people seem to be content, or tolerate, doing that. What I do, is go to the water point then continue in the same direction. If I don't need water, I pass the water point without stopping. Some days I've passed 5 water points.

 

If you don't need much water, there's always the option of going there but not taking the boat there - Aquaroll etc

[GreenDuck]

 

True, its daft! BUT lots of people seem to be content, or tolerate, doing that. What I do, is go to the water point then continue in the same direction. If I don't need water, I pass the water point without stopping. Some days I've passed 5 water points.

 

If you don't need much water, there's always the option of going there but not taking the boat there - Aquaroll etc

Sometimes the aqua roll is just not an option but I understand what you mean.

It's about having options and for me being as self sufficient as possible.

Thanks.

[Phil Ambrose]

Sometimes the aqua roll is just not an option but I understand what you mean.

It's about having options and for me being as self sufficient as possible.

Thanks.

If you lived in the middle of a field in a bender you could always dig your own well but that idea may be a bit too radical.

Phil

[by'eck]

When I kept fish I found that rain water was quite acid.

 

Isn't that because being so pure there is no taste, so its interpreted with one.

 

When I was up the Rio Dulce in Guatemala waiting out the hurricane season, a local bar offered us rainwater FOC. It was doubly filtered via dedicated micro-filtration system and then subjected to UV.

[Bee]

Rainwater isn't particularly clean. I think folk imagine it's like distilled water, but it isn't since the same air currents that keep the water particles up so they can form drops, also take up dust, dirt, smoke and other pollution, insects, bacteria and other microbes. Drops tend to coalesce around such particles. That is before the rain has fallen through layers of pollution again on the way down and been collected along with some bird poo. You'd probably be as well filtering canal water instead (depends on which bit of canal)!

Its raining, I am about to don the germ warfare suit I bought from Mr. Howard Hughes and go to Tescos, gets me some strange looks but you can't be too careful.

[ditchcrawler]

Or another way of looking at it could be the idea of moving a boat through 16 locks or miles and miles away to get to a water point before time when the stuff falls out the sky into a little water butt without one drop of sweat is rather daft;)

Have to be careful what I say here but if services are that far away and you are moored amongst lots of other residential boaters where there is not much water movement I am not sure that I would want to use the canal water in that area for anything.

You may read into that what you will.

[Pennie]

And fill your boat with steam

this was what I was going to respond with

[GreenDuck]

Have to be careful what I say here but if services are that far away and you are moored amongst lots of other residential boaters where there is not much water movement I am not sure that I would want to use the canal water in that area for anything.

You may read into that what you will.

Hahaha I know exactly what you mean but I'm out in the sticks alone even so I would never use canal water!

this was what I was going to respond with

I sometimes wonder if people post from hearsay or from actual experience because my kettle or a saucepan with a lid on does not fill my boat up with steam plus I'm steamy enough anyway lol!

[Pennie]

My kettle, with lid and spout cover fogs up the window next to the hob and so does the saucepan unless the lid is firmly on. This is only at a boil though, a simmer isn't too bad

[GreenDuck]

My kettle, with lid and spout cover fogs up the window next to the hob and so does the saucepan unless the lid is firmly on. This is only at a boil though, a simmer isn't too bad

I mean on the wood burner but it's near the vents on the front door anyway so is ok:)

[Daltonia]

Hello, If you plan to drink your rainwater, rather than just use it for washing, one of these may be useful (I use one when up in the hills for drinking from streams since it saves carrying litres of tap water). The filter doesn't catch nasty chemicals or viruses, though presumably these are absent from your rainwater?

[bizzard]

But in Arthur Ransome and Enid Blyton books the kids were always drinking rain and spring water and ginger beer of course. They eat mountains of eggs too, boiled, fried, scrambled or as Arthur Ransome called them, buttered eggs, they must have all been permanently seriously constipated, probably why toilets were never ever mentioned in the books. And some old caravans even had open water tanks on the roof to collect rain water which fed the taps by gravity.

[ditchcrawler]

And some old caravans even had open water tanks on the roof to collect rain water which fed the taps by gravity.

And some just had leaking roofs so the water dripped straight into the kettle

[steve7a3]

Lived in the Aussie bush for 10years and our only water supply was a big 25000l water tank that collected rainwater off the roof. When it rained, as it often did quite heavily in summer, we heard the green frogs croaking as they got flushed out of the down pipes. Once the rain had stopped it was common to find 4 or 5 big fat green frogs sitting on the mesh cover where the pipes all discharged into the tank. We never filtered or boiled the water before we used it (unless we were making tea of coffee of course!). Neither us or our two very young kids or their elderly grandmother got sick with anything.

 

This isn't a recommendation to use unfiltered/unboiled rainwater but just anecdotal evidence that it probably won't kill you.