I remember my grandparents having system of cisterns on their farm that collected rain water. I am interested in constructing one on my property to use for my garden. I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has one.

Don't have one, but there was one on the old homestead.

They put gutters on the barn which went to a stone box, with a filter in the bottom of the box. From the box it drained into an underground cistern.

Snoop around some, many area's condemned cisterns for fresh water for people or livestock.

You may have to mislead or even be deceptive for a cistern for agricultural watering. Be discrete and reminice first.

Cisterns used to be constructed of concrete and collected rainwater as well as water from the pump. My farmer uncle had a large cistern under the house that collected both and the water was retrieved by a pump in the kitchen rather than one in the backyard. One thing to keep in mind is this will need to be cleaned about annually, emptied and scubbed because "stuff" will grow there that would not be good to have in your water.
It may be much less expensive to purchase plastic rain barrels to collect that water instead of building one of concrete. But even the plastic barrels will need that annual cleaning.

tom, why illegal???

I wouldnt use it for drinking. Cooking, bathing, irrigation would be fine. Any water other than well water that is pumped from deep aquifers need filtration and extensive disinfection. It is considered surace water if it contacts air and elements. There are things that chlorine will not kill. Cryptosporidiam is one of them. It can only be removed through reverse osmosis or membrane filtration. It enters you body as a hard egg pod that chlorine will not kill, then it hatches out and wrecks havvock on your intestines. Drinking untreated water is just not safe anymore. Sure years ago it was all we had, but lots of virul and bacterial adaption or evolution has happened since then. As well as immigraion into this country has brought over different strains of things that normal actions of disinfection just wont work on anymore. There is no way I would drink water from the old dug wells my grandparents had when I was a child. Or the cistern we had.
The old system was to collect water off the roof in months that had an R. SeptembeR, OctobeR,........all the way to ApRil. Then we would not collect through the hot Summer months. Was supposed to keep the water from getting contaminated and having mosquito larvae. But they still got them. My grandparents and parents too would put a few drops of turpentine or kerosene in the well or cistern to kill the larvae. Made the water taste like heck, but we used it. It was all we had. Amazing those folks that lived like that back then are the ones that are living to be 80 and 90 + years old.
Folks trying to live the healthy way since the 70s are the ones dying in thier 50s and 60s,. Children are dying of cancer and tumors, middle age people are dying of heart failure and stroke. Yet them old kerosene drinking, cotton dust using folks are still kicking.

quote:

Originally posted by farmhound:
Folks trying to live the healthy way since the 70s are the ones dying in thier 50s and 60s,. Children are dying of cancer and tumors, middle age people are dying of heart failure and stroke. Yet them old kerosene drinking, cotton dust using folks are still kicking.

I do think that there are lots of things going on today that are making people sick more..

But I also think that back then, all the weak ones died off. Just think how many little babies and toddlers died of 'summer complaint'.

that and the fact that the statistics are higher because the population is higher, much higher. There are more people, more children, etc. So naturally there are gonna be more sick, more problems to report. 1 out of 100 is 1. 1 out of 100 in a group of 1000 is 10. 1 out of 100 in a group of 10,000,000 is 100,000. So play with the stats on cancers, more like 5 or 10 out of 100 maybe even higher...yeah, numbers are gonna be high. But still, the base ratio has gone up since the early ages. Where it was 1 out of 100 in 1920, its now 5 or 6 or more per 100 people. Super viruses due to the over prescribing of antibiotics and anti virals, and again, new strains being introduced to our and other societies due to overseas travel commutes, vacation hot spots etc. Disease spreads. Rf radiation from cell phones, tv broadcasts, radio, microwave transmissons. Synthetic growth hormones in beef, pork, chicken, and just about any other commercially grown meat. Genetically altered produce, fruit and vegetables. We are killing ourself with our own technology. Not to mention stressfull hurry up lifestyles. Kick out more product, be more productive..I think we should go to 3 day weekends, have a mandatory one day per week recreation day. Go to the lake, take a kid fishing, walk through the park. Cruise the country and have a pic nic.
Ok, I am rambling. I will stop now..LOL

I grew up drinking both well water and cistern water. It was the only thing we had. But that was before acid rain.. (maybe) Farmhound.. I agree with a lot of your post. I wonder how much stress has to do with how we aer coping with disease. I know I am a lot healthier since I got out of nursing. Broke, and poor.. but healthy.

Well.. I wonder how much computer usage is reducing our ability to fight organisms on our own??? LOL!

At our cistern, we collected the run off water from the roof of the house and then the garage. We never ever had mosquitos in the cistern or well. The water was pretty far down under ground. I remember us digging and constructing the cistern. Big project. Lots of stuff smeared on the cistern walls to prevent leakage. God only knows what they used in the early 1960's for that! Anyway... Dad had researched this filtration stuff and constructed a box about 5'X 10' that was filled with charcoal, river pebbles (or something that looks like river pebbles as I don't remember the name for it), a smaller filtration box with something looking like aquarium filter gauze (it was the 60's) that was supposed to remove all of the germs, etc from the water. Heck.. back then no one cared about pollution particles, but we lived 10-15 miles out in the country, on a ridge up above the river and creek valleys. Anyway, I never got sick from drinking the water. But that was then.

We actually drank that water up until the 2004 ... after Mom's stroke... and then a water leak that made us convert the whole place to "city water" that came through in about 2001.

In the 70's Dad said he had read an article that a fast running stream could remove any particulate, bacteria, etc. over the rocks, and pebbles within "?" feet. With that info.. I used to drink water from the little stream on "Granny's place" which got run off from a pasture field... about 100 yards way... Never got sick...

Perhaps I have built up an immunity???

Actually.. let me add....

I remember that Dad kept the cistern closed. He had this thing looking like a water well station that we hardly ever used, it was for decoration. To even think about looking into the cistern from the well.. a door had to be cranked open. there was not other way to look into the well.


The cistern was so dark.. that I would think (as someone who has studied Microbiology) that not much would grow there... I never ever remember us cleaning out the cistern yearly... to get rid of scum, or anything... IT WAS BLACK AS PITCH IN THAT CISTERN!
In fact the only thing that made Dad drain the cistern completely was when he finally realized there must have been a crack in the cistern because we had had so much rain that the darn thing should have been full and it ran out of waer. Then he and buddies got in the thing, discovered a crack and repaired it.

Our cistern had about 7-10 feet of earth on top of it. That contraption I mentioned that was the only way into the cistern... was kept closed so it was so dark.. nothing grew.. THat was kind of how the wells were.. they were so dark and deep.. that while there may have been some moss on the upper walls of a well.. There was nothing deep down in the well...

How many anarobic organisms can survive on water alone? I would like to know!

Alaskan, still water from surface collection can be a breeding site for bacteria and misquitos.

Zoning, building, and health bureaucrats know all (and obviously) we're too dumb to fend for ourselves.

I'm sure diversion set ups to use grey water for agricultural purpouses are comonly illegal.

Over the past few years I have managed to accumulate 7, 55-65 gallon rain barrels. You'd think that 400 gallons of water would go a long way, well it doesn't. We've haven't had a lot of rain, but I've managed to fill them several times, in addition to some of the rinse water when doing laundry. But sadly, it is used up rather quickly. So, I'm thinking I'd need a 2,000 or 3,000 gallon cistern if we have more summers like the past few years. I have been looking into the large (ugh) plastic tanks, but not sure of the largest size available. The cost will probably be prohibitive. I would also like to put some sort of filtration system on it (not for drinking, but strickly used for yard and garden). With the rain water, you will definitely pick up bird and animal droppings, along with other undesireable matter. I think having a cistern is a great idea. Don't know if they are allowed in my area, but I would probably just be discrete.

Does anyone know where they have this "Prohibition" on rain water? I haven't heard anything about it here in KY.. or Ohio..

I think there is a conspiracy.. collecting rain water may interfere with what the city or county can collect from you...

I mean seriously.. Rainwater can't be used for livestock??? I smell a government conspiracy here... But tap water is better? I don't think so.. Especially is you live along a big RIVER... that lets industrial waste spilled in.... Big Brother... Conspiracy.. SPiro Agnew... Richard Nixon... OMG.. this is gonna get bleeped!

I think the concern in some areas would be mosquitoes and safety issues with children and pets. If they are allowed, I would imagine they would have to meet all safety issues concerned, the material it's made out of, the location, adequate run off/drainage for the overflow should that happen. The neighbors probably would not like it if run off did something to their property...like draining into their swimming pool, contaminating a well or some other home water supply. I don't think it really has to do with Big Brother so much as safety concerns.

Any microbiologists will tell you that the treated municipal water you drink is loaded with, even when chlorinated, bacteria. Daughter, when studying microbiology in college, compared our well water with the cities (treated) water and found little difference in bacteria counts.