[Steven White]

A windie friend of mine told me another cleaner is using rain water. Apparently it has a TDS of 19ppm which is about what it comes out of my RO at (before DI), tap water is about 480ppm in my area. Although I had reservations that rain water could have all sorts of dirt in it apart from dissolved solids I'm wondering if this is possible, as I could give my RO membranes a rest every time I got a water butt full and just polish it with the DI. If true this could save on the water bill too. Anyone else know anything about this?

Steve

[HampshireWindowCleaning]

Yep, do this myself, get loads off my garage roof and run it through a 25 litre Di.
I'm gonna get another 4 x 1000 litre IBC's in the garden and save loads of rainwater, will get my mains water usage right down and lower the old water bill.

[Steven White]

Cheers for the reply. Just a couple of questions on that then.

How do you get water pressure from your rainwater collection to the DI? Do you use a submersive pump?

How do you stop bits of twig, leaves and guttering debris from ending up in the DI? ... maybe guessing you use a fine mesh before it runs into your storage tanks

Is algae a problem?

[HampshireWindowCleaning]

I use a Pure Freedom transfer pump to pump the water through the di.
I use the wifes old tights to filter the water on the way in to the storage tanks 
No algae problems yet as I've been using water butts, but with the IBC's I am going to paint them black and cover them over, as long as no sunlight gets to them they should be ok.

[andrewlefkas]

I collect rain water , I have series of water butts and ibc which I keep covered with black polythene to keep sun off and algae away .Transfer from tank to di with hoze lock water butt pump,been doing this for years so water bill for cleaning is nothing. I had to cut a larger circular hole in IBC to get pump into tank then fitted a plastic screw top lid to hole works a treat so I love it when it rains.Only slight down side is our tiles give off tiny red particles but by time it gets to third water butt tds is 25 . Definitely makes sense but give some thought to winter as your butts (!!) and tank can freeze ,insulate with king span or better try and build small building or if your luck. A garage based system with small heater would be best case scenario.I bought a large down pipe collector from one of big harvesting companies,can't remeber name but was £50 ish with built in filter and ability to turn water straight down drain when everything is full .