Re: Rainwater collection

["Darren J. Hanson" <djhanson@calweb.com>]

>Another alternative I know is r.o, but I think convincing my wife that
>its for household use, and not for my fish (after using 60-100 gals a
>week in my "room") just would'nt cut it! Plus my water is on a metering
>system and I pay for every last drop . We are on a limestone aquifier, 
>Tapwater : pH. 8.2 
>k.h 5  Tetra test , 
>gh. 9 Red sea test kit

A couple of thoughts that might help. If you can prepare your water in
advance, you should be able to drop the hardness and pH by slowly dosing
with an acid  (Phosphoric seems particularly appropriate since the
phosphores has probably all precipitated out already.) You'll need to keep
an eye on this or else you'll drop the pH too low. (You could probably
construct a system with a pH monitor/controller and dosing pump where the
controller was the major expense.)

Another option would be to look into a whole house RO or DI system. With
water that hard you're using more soap and detergent than you otherwise
would, extend the life of your hot water heater & plumbing in general, and
generally improve the quality of the water you use to cook, etc. Some of
theses systems do a good job as far as minimizing waste and can even be set
up to automatically regnerate the resins.

Finally, I can't be sure, but it's possible that your water is SO alkaline
and has so much disolved calsium, magnesium, etc. in it as to not meet
Federal drinking water standards. If you're on a public water system, you
might ask for a copy of their latest test results.

- -- dj