Water . . .

[Oldgreybeard]

Our water butt sat empty for weeks over the recent dry spell, and has barely filled much since. I redirected the drain from the aircon to it recently, but hadn't bothered to measure how much water it produces, so over the last couple of days I've put a 10 litre bucket under the drain and have been collecting the water that way to get a feel for how much it produces.

The good news is that it seems to produce between 6 and 10 litres of water per day. This is essentially the same as rain water, being just condensed out of the air, so should be fine for watering. Not a lot, but the effort involved in diverting it to the water butt was small in my case, just two or three metres of pipe and a tee fitting into the water butt fill pipe.

I know some of you have been fitting aircon recently, might be worth looking at ways to save the water. It's only maybe a watering can full per day, but that's enough to keep the pots on our patio watered for free.

[Stinsy]

Usefulness depends how you look at it.

Imagine grid down, no electric, mains water, or gas. It hasn't rained for a few weeks and has been wall-to-wall sunshine. Not only are you cool at home but you also have water to drink!

(Maybe I watch too many disaster movies.)

[AE-NMidlands]

The good news is that it seems to produce between 6 and 10 litres of water per day. This is essentially the same as rain water, being just condensed out of the air, so should be fine for watering. Not a lot, but the effort involved in diverting it to the water butt was small in my case, just two or three metres of pipe and a tee fitting into the water butt fill pipe.

I know some of you have been fitting aircon recently, might be worth looking at ways to save the water. It's only maybe a watering can full per day, but that's enough to keep the pots on our patio watered for free.

except that rain just drops through the air, whereas this water comes off a wetted grid which has air pulled through it, so it will act as an air filter and accumulate dust and any other particulate...
It's what makes wet cooling towers so dangerous as a Legionella risk. Birdshit input for a nutient source, water warmed, aerated and recirculated to build up the contaminants - including bacteria - and an ideal environment for bugs to multiply in.
If I was desperate for liquid for consumption I would filter condensate very carefully then boil it before using it. Keeping it cold and dark beforehand might be worthwhile too.
A

[Oldgreybeard]

The good news is that it seems to produce between 6 and 10 litres of water per day. This is essentially the same as rain water, being just condensed out of the air, so should be fine for watering. Not a lot, but the effort involved in diverting it to the water butt was small in my case, just two or three metres of pipe and a tee fitting into the water butt fill pipe.

I know some of you have been fitting aircon recently, might be worth looking at ways to save the water. It's only maybe a watering can full per day, but that's enough to keep the pots on our patio watered for free.

except that rain just drops through the air, whereas this water comes off a wetted grid which has air pulled through it, so it will act as an air filter and accumulate dust and any other particulate...
It's what makes wet cooling towers so dangerous as a Legionella risk. Birdshit input for a nutient source, water warmed, aerated and recirculated to build up the contaminants - including bacteria - and an ideal environment for bugs to multiply in.
If I was desperate for liquid for consumption I would filter condensate very carefully then boil it before using it. Keeping it cold and dark beforehand might be worthwhile too.
A

I really struggle to see why condensate water should be any greater risk to our lives than the rainwater it's adding to in the butt, given that all we are ever going to do with it is water plants - as I wrote, the water is being re-directed to our water butt. The rest of the water in the butt will be run off from the roof, so will have far more bugs in it than the air in our bedroom (which is where the condensate comes from).

Years ago I stayed with friends in Australia and their house, like all the others in that area, had a massive rainwater tank at the side of the house. That tank was their only source of water, they used it for drinking, washing etc as like all their neighbours they didn't have mains water. The only treatment the tank got was a cup of paraffin that was tipped in once a year or so to prevent mosquitos from laying eggs in the water. This drinking water arrangement was very commonplace there, probably still is, and it didn't seem to kill people.

[AE-NMidlands]

except that rain just drops through the air, whereas this water comes off a wetted grid which has air pulled through it, so it will act as an air filter and accumulate dust and any other particulate...
It's what makes wet cooling towers so dangerous as a Legionella risk. Birdshit input for a nutient source, water warmed, aerated and recirculated to build up the contaminants - including bacteria - and an ideal environment for bugs to multiply in.
If I was desperate for liquid for consumption I would filter condensate very carefully then boil it before using it. Keeping it cold and dark beforehand might be worthwhile too.
A

I really struggle to see why condensate water should be any greater risk to our lives than the rainwater it's adding to in the butt, given that all we are ever going to do with it is water plants - as I wrote, the water is being re-directed to our water butt. The rest of the water in the butt will be run off from the roof, so will have far more bugs in it than the air in our bedroom (which is where the condensate comes from).

Years ago I stayed with friends in Australia and their house, like all the others in that area, had a massive rainwater tank at the side of the house. That tank was their only source of water, they used it for drinking, washing etc as like all their neighbours they didn't have mains water. The only treatment the tank got was a cup of paraffin that was tipped in once a year or so to prevent mosquitos from laying eggs in the water. This drinking water arrangement was very commonplace there, probably still is, and it didn't seem to kill people.

I was really replying to Stinsy who mentioned drinking condensate, but I can't get this forum to do multiple quotes. Do you not accept that air drawn past a wetted surface (or jetted at it) will be cleaned by it? It's a standard industrial technique (an impingement filter) so by definition the stuff being carried in the air ends up in the water.

[Oldgreybeard]

I was really replying to Stinsy who mentioned drinking condensate, but I can't get this forum to do multiple quotes. Do you not accept that air drawn past a wetted surface (or jetted at it) will be cleaned by it? It's a standard industrial technique (an impingement filter) so by definition the stuff being carried in the air ends up in the water.

Why on earth does that matter for watering plants? I fail to believe that condensate from our bedroom can possibly be any more harmful than rainwater run off from the roof.

What I've done (as I wrote in the first post) is divert the condensate pipe so that it now flows to our water butt. We only use that for watering plants (as I wrote) so I'm really struggling to understand where the additional risk to our lives is coming from, TBH.

[Joeboy]

Usefulness depends how you look at it.

Imagine grid down, no electric, mains water, or gas. It hasn't rained for a few weeks and has been wall-to-wall sunshine. Not only are you cool at home but you also have water to drink!

(Maybe I watch too many disaster movies.)

Run it through a moss and charcoal filter pre drink then boil? As a free water source idea for plants its a belter!

[Oldgreybeard]

I think it's sometimes worth remembering that for the first ~300,000 years of the existence of modern humans on this planet the only sources of water were essentially rainwater run off in streams and lakes, where (like modern reservoirs) there were millions of birds, fish, insects, etc crapping in the water.

I do think we get far too wound up about the miniscule risks to health from using water that hasn't been passed through pipes that may be over 100 years old and come out through taps in our homes. We don't have mains water, but have a well and get all our water from there for drinking, washing etc. The only reason we don't use that well water on the garden is because it's alkaline and fairly hard (pH around 7.4 - lots of plants don't like that much and get nutrient lockout). For that reason we try and water the plants with rain water from a 500 litre water butt, but as mentioned in another thread, the butt ran dry during the dry spell this year, hence the idea to divert the condensate.

I mentioned the Australian rain water tank system earlier, seems these big tanks are still commonplace there: https://pioneerwatertanks.com.au/rainwa ... your-home/

In 2010, 832,100 households in Australia used a rainwater tank as their main source of drinking water? [Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010]

This means there are millions of Australians across the country utilising rainwater tanks in their homes - not only for potable water, but also in the laundry and in their gardens.

[Fintray]

I was really replying to Stinsy who mentioned drinking condensate, but I can't get this forum to do multiple quotes.

To get multiple quotes, quote the first one you want and when the reply opens up you can scroll down to the messages below and select to quote another message.

[AE-NMidlands]

I was really replying to Stinsy who mentioned drinking condensate, but I can't get this forum to do multiple quotes.

To get multiple quotes, quote the first one you want and when the reply opens up you can scroll down to the messages below and select to quote another message.

thanks
A