Rainwater collection for RODI

RobertP · Aug 1, 2018

Since I currently do not have a reef tank to take care of at present I find my mind wondering on a lot of different ideas for our new place. For those that do not know my wife and I sold our house and moved into a rental (that does not allow a tank) so that we could build a new house in the country on some family land. Unfortunately it is a NOT a fast process so I dream of the day it is done and I can restart my tank again. Yes, already have pre-approval from wife to go 500 gallons...but have to get the house done first.

We will be on well water and I have not yet tested it for TDS (the meter is in storage!) but I am planning to run my RODI with well water. However, I am considering a future project (yeah years in the future) where I collect rainwater in a cistern and pump back up for using in the RODI. If my well water isn't too bad for minerals I can use that and the only cost is the electricity to bring it up...we wont talk about the cost of the new well or the cost to get power out there! I seriously doubt I can justify it on a cost basis alone but love the idea of watering the grass with the leftover water. Even if I dont use it for RODI I could have the RODI waste water go to the cistern for watering the grass as well.

I tried to search for rainwater collection and cistern on here and did not find anything and was curious if anyone else is doing this already. Would love to see what you did and how well it does or does not work.

saltyhog · Aug 1, 2018

Sounds like a great idea to me. Like you say, even if you don't use it to produce RO/DI you could use it to collect the waste water for watering plants/grass. That should take some pressure off of your well if it's not a huge producer.

When my house was strictly on well water it wasn't a big deal because mine produced far more than I could use and never ran dry even in the worst of droughts. My neighbors were not so fortunate with many of them only having about 5 gall/minute production.

RobertP · Aug 1, 2018

Funny you should mention that. They initially put a 1.5hp pump on the well but it could not keep up with the 18 gallons per minute draw. So they switched to a 1 HP pump which pulls 12 gallons per minute and it was able to do that just fine. I will never use that much water at a time but they dont want the pump to run dry. None of the houses in my area have ever run out of water, and I am a little deeper than them. I just really like the idea of collecting water....