[FrostyM]

Just in the planning stages at the minute but I want to capture rainwater around the place. We currently have a gutter and down pipe running into a bin collecting water in the poultry run. It is green, nasty and unusable.

I was thinking of changing the set up to possibly filter the water and then use some kind of nipple drinker system for the birds. I have recently built a pig shed and will be putting a gutter on that too. I also have a water butt from the house which I want to improve, it's mostly used for watering veg, washing car etc.

I was wondering if anyone could tell me if I need to filter the water for all or any of these uses. Is it better to use unfiltered water on the garden? Do livestock need it to be purified? I was thinking a mesh cover at least to keep out leaves and twigs. I have seen a sand filter which I could build pretty easily. Also has anyone done anything similar or have any advice to do with this?

Hopefully if this goes well I will be able to post pictures and plans up here if we can get something that works.

Thanks for reading 

[suziequeue]

We have a 1000 litre tank buried in the front garden which takes all of the water from the house and workshop gutters and we use that for everything except kitchen and bathrooms which come from the well.


I think there is a basic filter on it but that's all. We haven't had any problems with our sheep or veg. The chickens and pigs have their own gutter run-off from their coop/pigsty.


never really given it much thought tbh

[Fleecewife]

We invested in several of the 1000l black barrels (cheaper back then) when we first set up our water catchment system.  We capture rainwater from all our tin roofs.  The water in black barrels doesn't go green because they are covered, nor can mozzies hatch in them.  We have a gravity feed pipe running to drinkers with ball cocks in in each paddock for the sheep.  For the hens, we get their water direct from a black barrel, so we can scrub their drinkers every time we fill them.  Our land is on a slight slope, so we have to pump water from the lower barrels, using an electric pump, up to one in our veg garden.  This barrel is on a plinth to give a good enough pressure to use leaky pipe irrigation in the polytunnel.  That worked beautifully for a few years but then the pipe became coated with soil and algae, so now we just use a hose from the barrel.
We would never use the collected water for drinking ourselves, or anywhere in the house, although I suppose it could be used to flush the toilets.  It's fine for animals, fish, poultry and the garden though (we don't have any kind of filter) and we can keep our rather limited well water for the house.

Be aware, the whole system will freeze up in the winter.  We have had 80l barrels freeze solid, and the giant black ones freeze enough that they take a week or so to thaw once the outside temp rises above freezing.  So when it's cold, we revert to carrying buckets, often with warm water from the kitchen.

[FrostyM]

Thanks for the response folks. So I will try it without a filter first and see. I thought I might be over thinking things. I won't be using it for the house or anything so should be fine. Thinking of building a nipple drinker system for the poultry. Maybe a hose as well to fill a couple of buckets. I think the water being green might because we weren't using it much and let it go stagnant. I will get a container I can seal which should help. I like the ball cock idea for the pigs too.

Thanks again for the advice. Might stick up a few photos here if I get something sorted 

[Pundyburn Lynn]

We collected rainwater from the greenhouse roof to water the plants, but we had some horrible squirmy wormy insects hatch across the surface every summer, even when covered.  Just disgusting!  I have no idea how they got into the water butt.