kimi

Hi

Does anyone here have a borewater tank, that feeds into the house for household use? If so have you experienced any probs?

By the Avon

We live rural and we have a rainwater tank, I wasn't even aware you could have a borewater tank, I thought that borewater was strictly outside use and pumped straight out of the ground.(we're very new to this though so I'll be interested if it can/is done).

nzer57

It's different everywhere you go. Bore water varies in quality from place to place. It's generally not that great a quality and is often used for everything but drinking. Often has a high mineral content and can stain things.

Santa

Yep, some friends draw water from a bore which services their garden and house. They get the water quality checked monthly as they did have a problem some time ago with a rodent that had perished in the bore.
Everything has been fine up until this year, but the water table has dropped to such a low level that they have just bought a 40,000 gallon rainwater tank that will be used to service the house, the bore will now only be used for the garden.
One of the other issues is that if the water table is low, your pump will have to run almost full time, this will ensure a headache when the electric bill drops on the mat.

Gill C

We live in a rural area and use rain water tanks for the house and Dam water for outside, although the previous owners used it for the loo, we found that the toilet was always stained brown - not very nice, so switched it over. Our neighbour has bore water that he uses for his garden but it can be a bit smelly, think you need to check it out before using it indoors.

kimi

Hi

We have a place out at Gabbadah (hence the reason why I ask) and for 6plus yrs the house has used bore water but we are finding lately that the pipes are getting clogged up and wondered if anyone else had any probs like this or anything else.

The bore water usage was/is recommended by the local shire as being fine to drink etc.

jothefw

We're on all bore - did have rainwater too but of course that's run out. We used just for garden and toilets (don't find toilets go brown) but now, as I said, use for everything. Don't drink straight from tap but quite fine to boil and drink in coffee or to cook with (and it doesn't smell).

As others say - it depends where you are to quality and reliability. Our pump is at 65 metres down so don't have issue with running out, plus we're feeding out to about 20 stock troughs so water always being run through (doesn't get stagnant). Haven't heard of issues with pipes clogging, and we've a lot on our station! What it might be though is if you're hitting the "drier" areas you might get sediment, algae, tree roots????? There's plenty of specialists (well definitely in our area) so I'd get them out for a look see!

Jacqui

We live rural, and none of this area is connected to the mains, so we have no choice but to drink rain/borewater. Our experience has been that people don't drink from the bore (you've seen how much it stains things) and get a bigger rainwater tank, buy it in by the tanker-full, or buy bottled water. We are lucky in that our house plus the 3 neighbours are connected to a clean bore that comes straight from a fresh water aquifer. The bore only kicks in when the rainwater tank level falls below a certain amount. You can't tell whether you are drinking bore or rainwater, and we don't get any of that brown staining outside.

We have noticed each year when the heavy autumn rains come for the first time, that the washing-machine fails - hubby has to take off the pipes at the back and clean them out, because the filters are blocked up. We think it must be something to do with massive amounts of rain suddenly washing through the gutters complete with a load of sludge from all the grot on the roof and leaves in the gutters. There is supposed to be a "first-flush" device on the rainwater tank that should stop this from happening, but we can't see anything like that, and keep meaning to call somebody out about it. Next year we must make a conscious effort to clear the gutters out before it starts raining heavily. I can't help worrying about all the bird poo and other crap that must get washed through into the rainwater tank. I think your local Environmental Health Office would be the best place for advice; there was an article about keeping rainwater tanks healthy in the paper last week.

nzer57

Whooaaa scary stuff there girl

When you have a natural supply system like you've got you run filters in the system as standard.

Gutters - you can get quite cheap systems that eliminate or prevent about 90% of the stuff like leaves etc.

Anything going into the house should have at least a basic filter to stop clogging taps and appliances etc.

Cooking and more importantly drinking water should go through an even more extensive process. There's plenty of systems around that can do this very well and fairly inexpensively including charcoal and UV systems.

Showers, toilets etc don't need additional filtering unless shower heads suffer from clogging.

iPom

There's a very handy gadget which you can get for taking water from the top of rain water tanks. Dunno if they're common knowledge or not but thought I'd add this anyway.

It's a float which holds a pipe at the top of the tank water, so if there is gunge at the bottom, it avoids it completely.

It's advertised in the back of a couple of gardening magazines I've seen recently... small ads at the back.