StillSmart

Ok, so it's like this at the moment......

I used to run my T500 on top of the washing machine, as it was convenient to have a water supply and drain there etc. Worked a treat.

So now, the builders have finished and erindoors has her shiney new kitchen etc and I've been relegated to the shed......

Now I can likely harvest enough rain water, though I'm gonna have to get some 220ltr plassy barrels, a small pump and some pipe connections etc, so I can connect either my RO filter or the T500 up.

I'd have thought that if I just ran the waste from the RO filter into a barrel, then that'd be fine for cooling the T500 and I can always top it up as and when needed...

Now I'm thinking that I'll just need to make sure about some sort of strainer or coarse in line filter from the actual rain collector barrel, because as it sits there, year in, year out, it does pick up some sediment and algae growth debris that I'd want to keep away from the RO filter inlet ? as I wouldn't want to have to keep putting new membrane and pre-filter stages in the RO filter ?

I'm thinking that maybe a small amount of sulphites or even very low concentration of bleach might keep any of the harvested rain algae and bug/germ free enough ? But at what sort of dosage ? A couple of capfuls per hundred litres ? Just so there's enough chemical action going on so that any algae can't grow, but there's no noticable taste or smell ?

Or maybe I could use salt, like when doing some of the fish tank medication i.e. currently got a shubunkin with swim bladder problems. While it's a fresh water fish, the swimbladder medicine is based on formaldehyde, but you add salt to the water first at 1 gramme per litre and then the medicine liquid at 0.5 ml per litre (using the tank size as a guide for quantity/dosage).

Maybe that's the way ahead ?

I'm gonna have to get 4 drums anyway I'm thinking, so that even for cooling the T500, I'll then be able to use the pump to transfer from the rain down pipe tank to a clean(er) working tank, that I can then just pump the water from to run through the condenser, then another to catch the cooling water - maybe for re-use after it's cooled or something.......

Anyone know anything about this sort of stuff ? As I can't just run a pipe down the garden from the closest mains connection now, as they fuckers have installed a water meter..........

A few alternatives,

1) Be nice to the wife, beg and grovel to be allowed to use the still in your new kitchen.

2) Put a board across the bath and then put your still on the board, you have drains and a water supply.

3)Tell her how cold it gets in the shed in winter and grovel some more.

4)Use Capt'n C's search engine and look up "swamp coolers".

5) The next time you take your shubunkin to the Doctors have a look in the Pond Section, lots of stuff there that will stop Algae growing in the tanks.

YHB wrote:A few alternatives,

1) Be nice to the wife, beg and grovel to be allowed to use the still in your new kitchen.

2) Put a board across the bath and then put your still on the board, you have drains and a water supply.

3)Tell her how cold it gets in the shed in winter and grovel some more.

4)Use Capt'n C's search engine and look up "swamp coolers".

5) The next time you take your shubunkin to the Doctors have a look in the Pond Section, lots of stuff there that will stop Algae growing in the tanks.

It's a 2 pronged issue Brian. No only no usable surface in the kitchen, but hard to adapt taps and the water meter.

The shed is the way ahead, for convenience if nothing else. Plus I've found a nice sized pump via screwfix, and an inline filter at the inlet end.

No so worried about algae etc if it was just for condenser cooling, the pump will do a max of 3.6 bars pressure so just keeping the needle valve adjuster tight should work fine (3.6 bar is about a very healthy mains pressure anyway), but because I want to be able to use it into the RO filter unit, I need to be able to keep the algae down to a minimum. I've yet to check the price of replacement membrane elements for the filter, but don't want to have to replace them more than once or twice a year.

I use the RO for my sugar turbo's as well as letting down high strength spirit etc, plus erindoors uses it to water her orchids......

It'd be great if I could find a euro pallet sized IBC (about 600 litres) as I have a space where that could go, but the ones on ebay are mainly standard pallet size/1000 litre (1200x800x1000 Vs 1200x1000x1000). I can't fit a standard size one in........

Hence getting 4 x 220 tanks and pumping etc.......

I could even find a small scale UV unit if need be and then the water is definitely as drinkable as it can be, but as with anything like this, they don't really want to sell us small scale kit, they want to sell "systems" for thousands, with the knock on of installation charges...... not gonna happen, I can only afford to DIY it......

If you can manage a half metre 'waterfall' for the water returning to the tank, I doubt you'll have any algae problems.

Biggest problem I can see is boredom. If you get into doing slow runs like wot I do, you'll be stuck in that shed for many hours each run. I'd put having wifi there one of the priorities.

It's supposed to use about a bathfull of water per run which is about 30 gallons/135L. Just curious, what does your meter charge for that?

A minor niggle as to the volume of a bath that John51 posted,I think it is larger,but hey,what do I know?
Also,while I would cheerfully use a swimming pool algicide to keep re-circulated cooling water clean,I'm not sure how this would work with RO filtering.
But agree 100% about spending hours in a shed,esp.at this time of year.
If you can go the aidanmac route of a dedicated facility,great.
Otherwise,it must surely be worth the effort of convincing your other half of the benefits of you being in the building,while you do what a man has to do?
Best of luck with that.
Robert.

Not too concerned about the time factor as it takes the T500 about 4.5 hours to run a batch, the wifi to the shed is a good idea (possibly power over ethernet too).

Though algicide chems wouldn't work. While I can just run the recycled rain through the RO filter first and the "waste" could be used too cool the condenser, it still needs to be chem free enough to use round the garden.........

Such a wind up as it's easy to locate small enough scale kit on the net, but its not available here as apparently theres "no market" for it - so getting hold of suitable stuff becomes prohibitively expensive......

But either way I have to focus on the shed, because when I finally get my finger out and get my home built keg based still running, it'd to too tall to practically use in the house (plus at least one nosey neighbour)........

Hey ho, life making moody spirit eh !

How are you going to get the rainwater through the RO? Mine uses mains pressure.

4.5 hours a run is using their recommended temps of up to 65'C iirc. For me there is a night and day difference in quality using 40/42'C to collect the fores and heads then increasing to 48/50'C for the hearts.

From turn on to collecting 500ml of fores/hearts takes me about 5 hours.

Any chance of getting a garden tap fitted? Then you could run a hose to the shed just for the run and save the water for the garden.

John51 wrote:How are you going to get the rainwater through the RO? Mine uses mains pressure.

4.5 hours a run is using their recommended temps of up to 65'C iirc. For me there is a night and day difference in quality using 40/42'C to collect the fores and heads then increasing to 48/50'C for the hearts.

From turn on to collecting 500ml of fores/hearts takes me about 5 hours.

Any chance of getting a garden tap fitted? Then you could run a hose to the shed just for the run and save the water for the garden.

Found a little pump that will go to 3.6 bar pressure which should be enough to get the rain water through the RO filter, but equally to pump through the condenser. From memory I only have to run it at 1 litre per minute.

The instructions that came with mine said something like between 55 and 65C but the warmer it is run at the faster it is. So I usually run between 55 and 60.

A garden tap is out as we're now on metered water. Obviously I can run a hose down the garden while I'm sorting it all out, but the aim is to be as self contained as possible - if I need 2 drums of water for a full run, then that's fine as it saves me the cost of getting a bar chiller or something like that.......

Hell, I could even run the occasional tap water through the RO filter in the first instance.....