treating and storing rainwater
 

Any of YOU treat and store rainwater?..
How long can it go untreated stored?
Should it even be treated?
What do YOU treat it with?
Been trying to find good material for rainwater collectors. Of course RW is about as pure water as you can possibly get before it lands on your roof goes down the gutter and into your receptacle. Thats where you pick up stuff you dont want on your plants. I never thought about birds/mammals/reptiles/ crapping all over the roof or fungus, mold and leaf rot just hanging out in your gutters. Or even parts of one them JET blue ice cubes dropping in off a plane...( uh thats not an asteroid son, thats a giant turd). Your collected RW picked it up, then you pick it up, and then your plants pick it up...
In ag areas you could have lots of nitrates and pesticides in the RW. In the city you could have more suspended particulate matter (smoke dust soot etc etc and junk from no telling what else.
I dont want to disinfect the water with chlorine as The use of chlorine to disinfect RW combines with any decaying organic matter to form trihalomethanes which cause cancer in lab rats..(mcdonalds causes cancer in lab rats too...).. I dont want to drink the water its just for plants but I never knew you could collect so much more than RW with RW.

Any clues here please fill me in and help a clueless RW collector figure out how to keep his precious supply of good ole durty south texas RW safe for plants and thank you again!!!:bowing

I have 3 rainbarrels around the house and we keep a rack full of gallon jugs full of RW. I go through it rather quickly, using about 8 a day, but I never treat it with anything. After a while, some of the jugs start looking a little green and they get tossed. Haven't seen any ill effects :Tup:

:goodluck:

If you keep it out of the sun, it should last for a very long time without issue.

When I lived in KY, it was very common for homes to have underground cisterns to collect rainwater for household use.

If you have to treat it to keep crud at bay, I'd think a small amount of Physan or bleach would do the trick nicely.

Forgot: I do add a little bleach to the misting system container in the room. I don't use it every day so by the time I fill it with fresh water the bleach has dissipated.

Mine is collected from the greenhouse roof pumped out of the catch barrel into 33 gal trash cans with lids there is a mosquito dunk in each can from there it is moved into the green house into another 33 gal trash can .

using a small amount of bleach or physan isnt a bad idea for the small amounts that I'm using which is about 5 to 7 gallons a day...Haven''t had any KNOWN issues. Just had a small fungus outbreak that took a few plants down fast and trying in the future to reduce any issues with my space. I didn't know until this week how fast a fungus can spread and trash plants in a tight area..My watering habits seem to be the culprit bec I didnt have any issues with the plants before I started using RW that had been stored in the cabinets. If the containers weren't cleaned out and sterilized with steaming bleach there chance of just about anything growing in there..Me playing with "mycorrizhael fungus spores" being the Mad Scientist probably didnt help any at all...

I pour tap water to the plants. That full of chlorine . You may having lot of space to keep rainwater . Gallons gallons of them. When you run short of RW what do you do?
I have checked that plants grow very faster and bigger when in the rainy season. There is another method we use rain water.
We can dig deep wells or shallow wells and rain water is collected in that. Just like " jack and Jill went up the hill " story.
And we draw from the well . Before the tap water came we use that way. No chlorine .No fungus.
Sue, you prefer rain water bec it is minus any preserver ?
I must repair my well soon.

well water is too hard, well too shallow, need to dig deeper to find better water and deeper into pockets more deep well is :)

I've only just started collection rainwater but so far I've not had to treat it.

I'm sort of keeping an eye on it to see if I think it's going to need it but so far so good.

I have those rain barrels to collect water from my gutters, and a few 5 gallon buckets to collect water where the trees drip off most.
I keep mine shaded, so they don't go green (grow algea), and keep covered to misquitoes can't lay eggs in them

I'm not exactly sure what you you are hoping to treat in the rain water.
There are ways of reducing the collection of nasties that gather on collection surfaces. The primary line of defence against particulates, bird borne pathogens etc is a first flush diverter, with proper design these can allow collection of rainwater of drinking quality in even heavily polluted areas so I'm sure orchids are going to not have any issues.

Here's one link to collecting rainwater including details of a first flush diverter, but a google search brought up heaps.
http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publicat...3rdedition.pdf

Since the accidents in Japan, and the discovery of radiation in cow's milk in Vermont, are any of you now hesitant to use rain water to water your orchids?

I catch mine in a stock tank it is moved to covered trash cans with lids no algae , the sun can not get to it .
I use mosquito dunks in the stock tank.
I use a lot of water it does not hang around for a long time . No concerns regarding radiation in it ..

Radiation will at least kill bacteria......?

I have rainwater collected from down pipes and usually have no problems but an African violet plug plant that I have had for three months has just developed crown rot. However its travelling companion is fine and healthy so probably not the water that caused the problem.

I usually just add a bit of hydrogen peroxide into my rain barrels to kill off mosquito larvae and algae..I also used to strain and nuke the water in the microwave, but that become a bit too much work.

I usually bottle the water in a gallon jug before leaves,insects,minerals..etc can get to it.Never had a problem, except for the time my stepmom drank it (and she didn't taste a difference or get sick, so I suppose I have good rainwater).

Hi all, I don't treat the water, I just collect it in 5 gal buckets and transfer it to clean plastic milk jugs...in the light it gets a bit green, but I use it so fast!

That link yields a "page not found," but I used that site's search function to find a working link:

http://www.twdb.texas.gov/innovative...3rdedition.pdf

Hi all, I don't treat the water, I just collect it in 5 gal buckets and transfer it to clean plastic milk jugs...in the light it gets a bit green, but I use it so fast!

I store rainwater in big underground cistern, which is 3-5 meters below the ground. This keeps the water at a constant temperature of about 10°C, and in complete darkness.
The water runs in from the roof and brings some diluted dirt from air pollution in a city and industrial area, and mainly from heating oil in wintertime.
But thanks to huge efforts air pollution has drastically decreased within the last decades. And there is enough rain to flush the cistern repeatedly.
Before use I store the water in a covered rainwater barrel to warm up. As long as kept dark, growth of germs is slow.
For uncovered water I used a small aquarium aerator. But now it is not needed anymore.
A friend uses a small watergate with ultraviolet light in order to kill biological germs.
Other people use hydrogen peroxide.
After all I can say that small amounts of dirt and sulphuric acid are not harmful. Think of air pollution by volcanic activities.
Bacterial and fungal germs are much more a problem.
Nurseries use to water in the morning (only at hot summer days in the evening) and then provide a thorough ventilation. This is the first step to keep infection rates low.

I recently installed a rain barrel and I second the mosquito dunk. The bacteria put in the water also cuts down on fungus gnat population.
A diverter is useful to dispose of the early 'dirty' roof runoff and collect the cleaner water after the roof has washed off. My 65 gallon will fill up on 3/16" of rain, so if the water is old or stagnant, it can be completely drained before a relatively light rain.

I also put mine in plastic jugs. I really like the bigger cat litter ones that hold more than a gal. I do get some bird poo from the roof but I don't worry about it. I have found some that has been in milk jugs for about 3 years I thought were empty, do you think it would be OK?

I collect and use rain water whenever I can. I have not installed a rain barrel yet, and instead catch rain water in a set of nesting plastic pans that go out on the deck when a good rain is expected. Everything I collect gets filtered through one of those re-usable plastic coffee filters as it is funneled into clean gallon jugs for storage. If you want a higher level of filtration, place a paper towel between the plastic filter & funnel as you fill the jugs for storage.

If the container was clean and the water was well-filtered before it went into storage, you could probably use the older stored water. Pour some into a glass jar so that you can look at it; if it looks clean/clear, no organic films / flocs in it, no odors, it is probably ok. If it is not ok, just discard & start over.

BTW, I have noticed that plastic milk jugs can start developing tiny leaks after a year in storage. You might want sturdier containers for long-term storage, though milk jugs work OK if you are only storing for a couple of months.

I have a large rain barrel near my worm farm and hen house. (Wow... I sound rugged. lol.) I use it to water my orchids, and since I only have fifteen, and considering the rain every night here, I have more than I need. I don't treat it, and put it directly from the barrel to the orchids. They flourish from it, even if it doesn't look all that clean.