benflux

The house we're looking at in Samford, QLD doesn't have town water, it only has 2x 25k litre tanks - should that be of concern?

bcworld

Um no, have you seen the weather!??

Seriously though, no, its quite normal out in the sticks, although Samford isn't exactly the sticks.

quoll

I should think that would be OK - that's almost 20K gallons. Tank water is good and it makes you independent of any urban crises that may crop up! Does it have a creek or dam back up? In a serious drought you may be faced with buying in water but as long as you are getting some rain and have a good collecting area you should be fine.

moneypenny20

We're on town water but have put in a 23k litre tank and have in effect switched off the town water. If the tank gets to a certain very low level the town kicks in but it's only happened once for a couple of days. I'd say go with the tank happily. Only bummer in our situation is that we still have to pay the water service charge

The weather we've had the last year, you won't have to worry about running out

POW148

You will need to know how much collection area (Roof Catchment) you have. You will need to find out the annual rainfall average for your area. you obviously know how many people will be living in your house.

50,000 ltrs of tank water does not sound that much but if Samford is in a high rain fall area (+1000mm per annum) then it should be sufficient. If not, then 100,000 ltrs of tank water should be ok. I would get your family used to be "Water wise". Buying in water can be very expensive.

To work out your rain water collection rate, use the follow equation:

10mm of rain over 250m2 of roofing will give 2500 ltrs of water.

barney

themerlin

We picked our block over bigger blocks up the road becuase it has town water, but we where fresh off the boat then and didn't like the sound of tank water.

People say the rain water tastes better then the tap stuff, must be the bird droppings washed off the roof

bcworld

Or possum poo.

Lenmil

People i worked with in Tassie had tank water and several times they had to top it up with a tanker service. But nothing to get stressed about really. Most people seem to cope with it. Probably worth it for the country life any way.

gillysm

A friend of mine has a 75K tank at Whiteside and she never has to buy in water - in fact they regualrly have spa baths and spray water around just to get rid of it over the past year as she has had loads of rain.

Another friend in Eatons Hill has 2 x 25K tanks and only once got close to having to buy water but as OP said it does also depend on your roof size/catchment area.

We have a 9K tank for pool and yard only and that's always overflowing!!

moneypenny20

Whatever it is, it's way nicer than town water. Not aware of it killing to many people and there are thousands who only have rain water. Unfortunately you get to the point where you can't drink town water unless it's filtered and chilled because you can't stand the taste

Kim67

We had a 100,000 litre tank on a property we used to own just out of Perth - we had to buy in water a couple of times in the summer. The rainwater tastes great, only problem we encountered was during blackouts - you couldn't shower or flush the toilet because of electric pump on the tank.

moneypenny20

Yup, you do need to get a generator. Thankfully we've only had a couple of outages since we've had the tank and can obviously flick the switch back to town but a gennie is nearing the top of our shopping list

lesleys

And get to know how the pump works! Ours has broken a couple of times - first time we had to call a plumber but the second time we knew what to do and had it fixed in minutes.

You do need a generator if you only have tank water (we do) and also a torch

annqldau

I like Samford and harder to find a nice priced house there now as it's one of the up and up places.

We have just over 50,000L's I think and live about 20 mins down hill from Samford which tends to get a little more rain because of it's height and general location. We've never needed our tanks filled in 3 yrs although we came close when we had family of 5 on top of our 3 once but that was exceptional circumstances in drought and it most certainly isn't a drought today.

Now much prefer tank to town, had a glass of tap water at someones house the other day and the stink of chlorine was overpowering before you even tasted it.

Although the bird crap must get in to some extent you will get a natural bio system in a tank like a fish tank to some degree but you do have to watch for Mozzie carried diseases but you can get some good filters that are supposed to filter most of those out.

melaniee

With the amount of rain we are getting in SE QLD I would not worry. We have 2 x 20,000 litres that are always over-flowing. Even though we have the mozzie filters, they are still coming into the tank. Someone said to add a couple of drops of parrafin to the tank-it attracts the mozzies to that. Don't know-have not tried it yet !!
I think rainwater is healthier though-straight from the sky ! Great !