Mark Danilovic

So I am in the foothills of Fruška Gora, that's an outcropping in the former Pannonian Sea. We have a massive water shortage problem due to lack of rain and inaccessibility of city supplies, and few natural springs. But to get the pros in to drill a well down to unlimited water is prohibitively expensive - it's over 150 m (nearly 500 ft) to get to the Danube water table. However a shallower well of around 40 m (130 ft) can provide a limited supply (maybe a cubic metre a day, which isn't terrible for basic home and watering needs, though it probably isn't potable and will need filtering, which is OK). But even that is very expensive to get done professionally, so... I am crazy enough to try and do it myself, on the cheap of course.

It seems to me that cable percussion-type methods are very attractive - your percussion tool can double as both a "bit" to break up the material and as a bailer to lift out material, and a cable is much cheaper and easier to handle per metre than endless lengths of box steel extensions like for an auger. And "all you need" is an up/down motion, either by hand (OK, I am not that crazy), or more likely a fairly inexpensive electric winch on an improvised derrick. You don't need much more expensive, specialised equipment, or even much water to hand.

So how deep CAN you go with this method? Is it mostly just a time and effort thing? What are possible restrictions or deal-killers with this? If I plug away for weeks and weeks (yeah, my time costs money too, but I still have more of the former), making a few ft at a time, I feel like I would get into some sort of water eventually.

According to people around here who have already drilled wells, after the first few metres of loamy/silty stuff (which would be supported with a guide casing) you get into some quite dense clay, which sounds like a pig to get through, but not as hard as rock, which we don't seem to have until you get waaay further down. At 40 m no-one has got into sand either, and that's why all the wells around here are of a quite low replenishment rate. That can maybe partially be offset by ensuring we have a long filter section at the bottom, and or trying to do some kind of gravel packing. I don't know how much further you would need to go to get into a nice sandy, water-bearing layer. But the plus side of the clay is it is self-supporting - according to the neighbours they did not need to case as they went down, although I would put down a PVC casing if I got into water and/or sand. Also, pulling up a bunch of clay would be great, I need some natural pond liner, I'd do it just for that..!

Would love to hear your thoughts.

John C Daley wrote:Mark, you may be able to install fittings to you rigid pipe that allow a floating flexible inlet.
Also, you may need to clean the tank bottom with a suction trash pump.

Actually, that's a good idea, why not just run a flexible pipe off the rigid downpipe and rig it to float at or near the top (not right at the top as there is crud there too). I do want to get a bilge pump for emptying the tank (it doesn't have a floor-level outlet which makes fully emptying it and cleaning it a real PITA - I didn't build the thing :/) but there was also the suggestion of permanently circulating the water in the tank through some kind of sand filter (solar-powered, hopefully), so it can be kept clean that way throughout the year. Haven't quite found the parts I want for that yet, like a suitable low-flow solar-powered pump with a few metres of lift...

John C Daley wrote:Disc filters may be a better product, they are coloured for different # microns and simply wash clean.
Here is an explanation

These look really cool but I haven't seen them sold in my part of the world and I have already invested in the existing system. However there are some interesting centrifugal-type systems for removing debris which I would like to investigate, possibly they can be implemented using something home-made.

Eugene Kenny wrote:I also collect rainwater, and use similar filters.

1.) At the beginning of a downpour, I first flush the roof & gutters before taking-on water. There is almost always dust and dirt accumulation from dry spells & wind.

2.) I wrap my filters with disposable coffee filters, secured with rubber bands. That alone cut my filter purchase by two thirds.   (wet the water filter first, then begin wrapping - the coffee filters easily stick in place making it easy to apply the rubber bands)

Oh, cool idea about the coffee filters, don't they disintegrate though?

I do have a first flush which SEEMS to work but I can't really figure out how well it's a actually working. Pretty sure it's mostly fine stuff that gets through though, because that's what gets trapped in my final pre-filter (women's tights over the spout, lol). I think it takes quite a while for everything to get washed down, maybe the capacity isn't big enough but I don't have any more room to make it taller, plus I feel like I would lose a lot of water in those short downpours.

What order do you filter in, any thoughts about that carbon filter needing to be in between the coarse and the fine filters like I was told?

S Bengi wrote:Based on my limited knownledge it's not a good idea to wash anyhting smaller than 5micron and resuse it.
Carbon filters are usually only 5microns, and so suspended particles that are smaller than that will go thru, but they are good in that they will adsorb dissolved ions like chlorine. So it makes sense that it goes between. I would not wash and use the 1micron filter or the carbon filter. They both should be replaced.

If you have rinsed out these filters before I would just buy a new set of all 3 filters.

Honestly you're probably right, they aren't really expensive, it was just I didn't feel like I had got all that much use out of them, I put them in in spring of this year and they got dirty really quickly. But yeah, maybe I'll just cough up for new ones.

John C Daley wrote:Ok, I understand why the filters are so messed up now. I guess its a lesson for us all to clean out the system for a few minutes at the start.
I think I have read you posts, you are in Serbia, from memory, with the small bricked up below ground cistern.
Do you have any rain filtering equipment near the roof?

I went back to the post and see your cistern has a 7500L capacity.
Thats a good size to start with.
In Australia we have a system which draws the water to the pump from 200mm below the water surface.
It consists of suction pipe, sau 2-3M long attached to the existing water outlet, a float attached to the other end and a course screen at that end.
All water that enters the pump system is drawn away from the 'goopy' tank bottom.
It works a dream!

Yes, that was the post. The filtering happens with a coarse mesh "leaf-pooper" type filter, then a kind of first flush I constructed, and then a fine mesh filter - that's about the most I can do without restricting the flow of water when we have a big rain event (it never rains, it only pours round here in summer!) This is my very rough setup - actually I have refined it a little since I filmed this :D

Our pump inlet is submerged to about 10 cm off the bottom (I THINK, I can't remember without taking a look), which thinking about it is a bit low and could suck up sludge from the bottom, maybe I should hack off a few more cm, but then it runs dry quicker...

So your inlet is basically floating on the top, did I understand that right? Our inlet pipe is rigid so that would require some adaptations...

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:I am not familiar with water filters. However, the clean filter on the left appears to have more densly spaced fibers. I would guess it is the one to catch smaller particles.

Yes, now you mention it with the light at that angle I can see that, will try it - will soon find out if the last filter starts getting dirty before the first!

John C Daley wrote:I have a bit of experience with rainwater.
Where are these filters installed and how big is the tank they are connected too.
I have never seen filters so dirty, something is not set up correctly.
Water from any system I have worked with often does not need filters and the water is clear.
Large tanks allow sediment to settle before it gets to any pump, in the case you have shown us, you have far to much material in the water.

So, the filters are installed after our house pump that lifts rainwater out of our storage tank and gives us about 2-3 bar (more than enough).

Thing is, we've struggled with filtering the rainwater from the roof, I can't seem to find a balance between getting rid of all the crap (moss and various other organic material up to and including dead lizards :D) and capturing sufficient water so inevitably we get a build-up of organic material in the water. I've posted about this here before and am still looking into some kind of slow sand filter that we could run the water through on a continuous basis to help ease the load on the filters.

Most of the crud you see on the filters I would say appeared within the first week, and it didn't get much worse after that, so I guess there was quite a bit of stuff in there initially (even though I'd been in the tank and emptied and cleaned it last autumn).

Our other source of water is a local (unreliable) well which has a lot of silt in it and I think that's another reason why the filters got dirty so quickly. However they seemed to be performing really well, the water feels really clean despite how grubby these look, and the pressure is good too.

As I say, I've struggled with keeping the rainwater tank clean and so far the filters have actually proven to be the best way to get cleanish water into the house.

I'm feeling a bit dumb, I took out my polyspun filters to give them a wash as I reckon I can get more life out of them and I thought I could differentiate them but once they were washed it turns out I couldn't . And I plan to wash them a bit more, this was just one run in the dishwasher!

One should be a 1 micron filter, one should be 5 microns (if I recall since buying them earlier this year) but they look very similar in structure, any way to tell them apart? Obviously they need to go in in the right order.



Also talking of the right order, this is before I washed them (flow is left to right in my system) the seller swore blind to me that the carbon filter should go BEFORE the fine (1 micron) filter, does that make any sense? I would've thought you want all the fines out BEFORE you do the carbon filtration...



Really happy with the system though, no UV lamp, I am not trying to make drinking water, but this basically eliminates all the smell issues we had with rainwater.

William Bronson wrote: Sean at Edible Acres just posted an aerated compost tea setup.
Instead of an aerator he uses a pump , and not to drive a fountain or waterfall.
Instead he inserted the hollow tube from a ball point pen into the hose that carries the water, and via the venturi principle air is drawn into water.
It can operate at no head whatsoever.

Never miss an Edible Acres video :). Watched that one but didn't look up exactly how this works - I understood it's basically sucking air through the ballpoint and aerating the water as it goes through?  I know aeration is one way to mitigate organic material (and anaerobic bacteria) in water as well as volatiles (basically what they do in water treatment plants), though I believe there will still be a build-up of sludge (floc) in the tank which I guess I was wanting to get rid of. Neat system, yes, it wouldn't require lifting the water anywhere much.