Rainwater Pump and filter box
I chose to place our our rainwater tank's pump and filter in the garden shed slightly away from the main house. This allowed for a cheaper pump outside the tank and minimizes in-house technical equipment and noise.
Table of Contents
Pump housing
The pump is located in an old garden shed, which is open to the elements. To protect it from freezing temperatures, I prototyped a box out of trash ceiling planks and my dad helped turn that into a a sturdy box using scrap wood obtained while deconstructing our attic space.
The front panel of the housing is held in place using nuts over two threaded rods so it can be easily removed to clean the filter.
There is plenty of space in the middle to still fit a back up tank with float valve to switch over the system to drinking water when the tank runs dry.
Pump
I bought a DAB Jetinox 82 pump with control-d pressure controller. I added a sand filter at the suction side, but in I wouldn't add one if I were to do this over.
I had a lot of issues with this filter drawing air, and would have already removed it if it was trivial to do. I will probably remove it rather sooner since its placement deep inside the box means the top panels have to be removed to sevice this filter.
Filter
I bought a Honeywell honeywell ff60 triplex filter. I fitted it inside the pump box so the water traveling the long pipe to the house can be as clean as possible. This way a minimal amount of dirt will settle inside the pipe.
Tools
I had to join a lot of valves together and bought a spool of Locktite 55 PTFE sealing cord. Worth the investment since you can untighten the joint a bit after tightening it.
Filter Routing matrix
At the front of the box I mounted an elaborate and over engineered combination of valves, T junctions and other things. This allows me to re-route the water when the filter needs servicing or if I want filtered water on the garden tap. It also allows to cut off and drain the garden tap so it does not break from freezing.
Inputs and outputs:
| A: | To the rainwater tank's floating oneway valve |
|---|---|
| B: | Coupling to connect a backup water tank during tank maintenance/cleaning |
| C: | Garden tap/hose on shed wall. |
| D: | Pressure line to house. |
| E: | freeze drain |
Valves:
| 1: | Shutoff of rainwater tank |
|---|---|
| 2: | Shutoff of maintenance supply |
| 3: | Filter input shutoff |
| 4: | Filter output shutoff |
| 5: | House shutoff |
| 6: | Unfiltered water to garden tap |
| 7: | Filtered water to garden tap |
| 8: | Garden tap winter shutoff |
| 9: | Garden tap drain point |
| 10: | Garden tap. |
Tracing
I have 2 meters of 10W/m tracing cable to prevent the pump and filter from freezing if temperatures were to dip under 0C for a long time. I still need to add a thermostat that activates the heating element.
Leaky filter issues
The triplex filter got leaky in december after having the pump turned off and the system presure dropped to connect a toilet to the rainwater system. The plastic lock rings came really loose, I had to apply a quarter turn to tighten them up!
I already observed the filter leaking a bit during the summer after dropping the pressure, and I'm not sure what I can do about this...
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