Water supply for a village home

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Ray.Charles
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Water supply for a village home

Post by Ray.Charles » April 17, 2010, 9:37 am

I have got to make some decisions on water for my soon to be completed 2-storey house in a village, with a bathroom at each level. It has two supplies. One from the village water system that has water for a few hours a day these days and it is rather dirty. The other is from a well on the property; that water is dirtier, and it also smells, not like roses.
My plans are to have a ground level holding tank, perhaps made out of concrete to collect the water from the village supply, and also the water pumped up from the well if and when the village supply would not be enough. This tank will have a drain at the bottom to clean out the sediments; with luck, some of the bacteria and the smell would be killed by the heat.
This water will then be run through some sort of a filter; don’t yet know what the choices in filters are.
The filtered water will then be pumped up to a tank placed higher than the upstairs bathroom to gravity feed all the bathroom fixtures. This tank would hold about 4,000 liter, that’s about a week’s need for water for our family of two. The week is a compromise between not having to pump water up to the tank too frequently, and not having the water sit too long in the tank.
Any advice would be much appreciated on the over-all system, and especially on the filter.



laphanphon

Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by laphanphon » April 17, 2010, 3:50 pm

check your pm's

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maaka
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Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by maaka » April 17, 2010, 4:03 pm

I will have a stab at this one considering I use a two tank, pump and filter system..mine collects rainwater off the roof into a 5000 litre outdoor concrete tank..its a bugger to clean because the drain hole is about 8 inches off the floor of the tank, so when cleaning I have to bucket several hundred litres by hand, a bugger of a job, so make sure you design your tank well..my outside tank has a 12volt water pump (my whole house is a solar power system running 12volt, but the amount of power means little in this case..) the pump is as close to the tank as possible to reduce the suction drag on the electric motor..I have a filter in the 1 inch plastic pipe attached to this pump..I like plastic piping as I can do it all myself, and it comes with a wide range of connections..

The outside tank pipe runs into the house and upstairs to a 250 litre header tank. this tank gives me my pressure, so it is high in the ceiling..if I had a hill outside I would put it up there..this tank also has a ball cock type of arrangement..its a plastic ball on a string, which sits on the water.the other end is attached to a mercury float switch..so when the upstairs tank gets down to 25% full, the ball ends up in midair, and trips the 12volt float switch on, which then automatically swtiches on the outside water pump...when the header tank is full the ball rises to a point that cut off the float switch, and there you have it....turn the tap on the and after 250 is gone on comes the mercury swtich, on comes the outside pump..it keeps running until the tap is off and the 250 is full....sorry if I am rambling on..

I also have another 12volt water pump which is connected just before my califont ( gas powered hot water system) ..this gives me added pressure for a special outside shower I have..shower on, pump comes on, shower off, pumps goes off..the beauty of this system is that it is self sufficent, no power bills or worries when the city power supply goes off..

For you, first off 4000 litres a week for two people is what I would consider wasting a huge amount of water..however you should remeber that one litre of water weights 1kg, so if you are going to have an upstairs tank weighing 4000kg when full, then you better make sure your house is built strong enough to take it..

I would use two filters. Cant have enough filters..One between the source (well) and village supply, and the outside tank, and one between the upstairs tank and the tap..the bigger the filter the better..

In addition , I would not rely on the heat killing any bacteria as you stated, heat and water have the reverse effect..if you want to kill any bacteria, get one of those clorine tablets they put in swimming pools, cut it in half and throw it in your 4000 tank..that will do the trick even so often....they also have a device these days which is a series of little plastic pipes laid out across the tanks floor, and using air and gavity it somehow sucks the floor of the tank clean and spits it outside..sort of a self cleaning thingy..

I think from reading your thread that pressure is something to think about if you are not using a pressurized city system..get the tank up high..plenty of filters, there are some nice big chrome jobos about, a clorine tab every 6 months, or a small amount of janola will do...

thats enough for now..if you have any more questions just give me a personal message here..
good luck

Ray.Charles
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Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by Ray.Charles » April 18, 2010, 11:01 am

Thanks a lot, Maaka. Learned a lot.
I will also send you a PM.

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rick
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Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by rick » April 19, 2010, 7:18 am

No experience in this area, but just a thought about sterilizing the water - how about UV? Could install a UV system like what is used with koi ponds.

justme
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Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by justme » May 5, 2010, 9:34 pm

I know a company that drills water holes.
Reliable and bone fide.
PM me for number

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Re: Water supply for a village home

Post by eagle » May 7, 2010, 11:25 am

Ray.Charles wrote:I have got to make some decisions on water for my soon to be completed 2-storey house in a village, with a bathroom at each level. It has two supplies. One from the village water system that has water for a few hours a day these days and it is rather dirty. The other is from a well on the property; that water is dirtier, and it also smells, not like roses.
Dirty brown can be ferrites, rain water mixed to well water or water containing soil. If you keep water in glass one day, ferrites will be thicker on the bottom and water clear on top. Ferriters can be filtered also using a magnetic field around water pipe. Sme applies to calcium (white water).

Black or gray water is usually manganese or sometimes color is from black stone and dirt.

Smell can be caused by manganese, rain water and dirt (smells like mud) or hydrogen sulfides.

One way to make water better is to oxidation and other is filtering. Manganese and ferrites can be solved by oxidation. Those and others can be also solved by filtering.

Number one is always to check the well and maintain it before doing anything else. If water comes from common pipe, it would be good to check water quality somewhere else, because problem can be caused by damaged or corrosed pipe. If system is ok and water must be cleaned, then choosing filter is based on problem. Ferrites and arsenic needs different kind of filters. I myself had problem with arsenic in the water and it was connected to ferrites and calcium. Firts filter was a magnetic filter around pipe removing ferrites and calcium. Calcium was not removed, but polarity was changed and it did not anymore stuck to shower etc. Next filter was based on sand and it removed all particles and filtered some smell also, because smell is sometimes combined to dirt. Replacing sand is quite cheap. Best for smell and i.e. arsenic is activated carbon. It also revomes smell. One thing is the price and need, because capacity varies from 50 l/day to 100l/minute. We finally used activated carbon to filter only drinking water and used other filtering for other household water with no filtering for garden water. That all was connected to drilled water from over 100 meter deep well. So drilling does not always solve problems.

This is only for filtering and solving water quality problems. My advice to supply water for a village home is to buy it from where water quality is good. Comparing water prices with transport and filter prices can give some hint. Anyway it needs lot of water to be consumed depending the distance to water company.

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rjj04
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Water supply for a village home

Post by rjj04 » May 26, 2015, 6:43 am

I thought I'd post this here as it is involving similar issues as the OP. The village water here gets shut-off and started again quite often. The last three months the water is rationed on weekends and is turned off between 9am-4pm. Anyway, since my home is down the hill a bit from the village, a lot of debris seems to be flowing down into my home's water system (PVC shavings, rocks, etc). This debris is clogging check valves, and causing frequent cleaning of filters/screens in the toilets and water faucets around the home. I could have sworn that I saw a metal valve like device that had a metal filter/screen in it that could be cleaned. This was a couple of years ago that I saw it.. maybe at Global or Home Pro. I haven't seen it since. Anyway, if anybody knows of a easy/quick to clean filter that can sit inline before the water gets to the home can you tell me where it is? It sure would save a lot of maintenance effort.

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FrazeeDK
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Water supply for a village home

Post by FrazeeDK » May 26, 2015, 7:02 am

you well water could also be contaminated from leaking septic tanks in the village.. There used to be a government office in Non Soong that did water testing to determine e-coli and other contaminants.

there are numerous vendors in Udon selling complete water filtration systems including UV treatment. Most of them will come out, assess your situation, design a system, install it and visit regularly to clean/install filters..

The solar system described sounds ideal for a country setting.. It sure would be nice if you could get one of those new 10kw Telsa home battery packs!!
Dave

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rjj04
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Water supply for a village home

Post by rjj04 » May 26, 2015, 7:51 am

As for drinking water, we have one of the drinking water filter systems (with UV) sold at HomePro/Global and the like . It seems to work well.... no emergency trips to the latrine. I don't see why I'd want to spend a lot of money filtering water for use in the toilet or shower or whatnot... just need an in-line filter for large debris (PVC,small rocks, etc) so that I don't need to open and clean all the screens in these devices so often.

Yeah, the Tesla battery pack sounds nice... one of my expensive pieces of garbage Globatt INVA 150ah batteries just shorted out a cell... that's only after a couple of months of service :( A lot of garbage products are shipped to this part of the world. Off topic though.

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Barney
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Water supply for a village home

Post by Barney » May 26, 2015, 9:21 am

rjj04

A independent filter is made just for washing machines, to clean debris prior to entering the Washing machine's internal filter system. Perhaps this section of a large store will have something large enough that may help screening your water.
Connects on the inlet hose . Just a thought.

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Water supply for a village home

Post by pal52 » May 26, 2015, 9:57 am

You can get Non return Valves with a built in Screen.
Just put a plastic shut off valve on the inlet side remove & clean the screen.
They have them at Do Home or Global house in all sizes.
The supply line to your house is probably only 25 mm max.

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fatbob
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Water supply for a village home

Post by fatbob » May 26, 2015, 10:31 am

Why not run the town water to a storage tank, 1000 or 2000 litre's, then supply house the from the tank with a pressure pump, any debris will deposit to the bottom of tank leaving your pipes and taps clear and you will have a back up water supply.

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rjj04
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Water supply for a village home

Post by rjj04 » May 26, 2015, 1:13 pm

pal52 wrote:You can get Non return Valves with a built in Screen.
Just put a plastic shut off valve on the inlet side remove & clean the screen.
They have them at Do Home or Global house in all sizes.
The supply line to your house is probably only 25 mm max.
I have a couple of the drop-down check valve types. In fact one of them is inline to the house so my small 100L tank that is on the roof will no backflow to everybody downstream. That check-valve itself is not working at the moment once again because it probably has a small rock in it preventing the door from dropping fully into place. I will definitely check for this type of check-valve when I go into Udon. Thanks for the tip.
coxo wrote:Why not run the town water to a storage tank, 1000 or 2000 litre's, then supply house the from the tank with a pressure pump, any debris will deposit to the bottom of tank leaving your pipes and taps clear and you will have a back up water supply.
I am trying to run my house off-grid now with 2.6KW of panels, a 4KW inverter and batteries. So, I'd prefer not to have to use a lot of that power pumping water around. That being said, I still want to get a well put in at some point in time and that would require pumping of course.

If I can find the check-valve that has a built-in screen and I can just unscrew the top and clean it, that would be a great solution for this problem.

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Water supply for a village home

Post by eagle » May 26, 2015, 3:18 pm

rjj04 wrote:I thought I'd post this here as it is involving similar issues as the OP. The village water here gets shut-off and started again quite often. The last three months the water is rationed on weekends and is turned off between 9am-4pm. Anyway, since my home is down the hill a bit from the village, a lot of debris seems to be flowing down into my home's water system (PVC shavings, rocks, etc). This debris is clogging check valves, and causing frequent cleaning of filters/screens in the toilets and water faucets around the home. I could have sworn that I saw a metal valve like device that had a metal filter/screen in it that could be cleaned. This was a couple of years ago that I saw it.. maybe at Global or Home Pro. I haven't seen it since. Anyway, if anybody knows of a easy/quick to clean filter that can sit inline before the water gets to the home can you tell me where it is? It sure would save a lot of maintenance effort.
Here is an example of my water system. Explenation below pics. As an answer I could recommend two from bottom for normal cleaning, not making drinking water. Blue one in pipe 100-120 thb and bigger box about 3000 thb. Washable filter, but few hundred for changing. I believe changing period has to be decided in use (when it is worn, does not filter or broken). Mazuma service shop is between BigC and Soi Nong Bua on the Ring Road, they have a map in Mazuma home pages (service).
Attachments
phase4.jpg
Only drinking water is filtered with reverse osmosis system. Very good result. Like this kind of systems, it should take more time to filter. Means that too fast water flow is not good. 5 filters. Bought from Home Pro, but installed by matsuma service shop. Should have bought there.
phase3.jpg
Our household water for showers inside and wash sinks plus also that above filtering system gets water through this. Sand and active coil. 1-2 years changing period, maintenance monthly. This water is ok to drink, but we filter again. From Matsuma service shop Ring Road. That complex piping is because I can use pump to almost all water outlets, but also municipal water without pump. Also some outlers for gardening do not go through filteration, but in worst case I can use filtered tank water for plants. Same with swimmig pool water. I can pump it to tanks and let chlorine to disappear and then use for planting. Same tanks, where I do collect rain water. In sauna I usually use unfiltered water, but with quests filtered.
phase2.jpg
Paper filter for incoming water. Takes only particles, but not taste or smaller dust/mud away. Washable filter. Saves money and extends service period for above two filters. Also from Matsuma service shop.
phase1.jpg
This has metal filter inside and it redirects bigger particles down and let only water and smaller particles go further. This is from Thai Watsadu, but almost all shops have similar. This one is a little bit modified.

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Khun Paul
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Water supply for a village home

Post by Khun Paul » May 27, 2015, 6:38 am

If as you say the water from the village which will go through some type of filtering before being pumped is not cleran, my advice would be to have it go through a tank, preferably a stainless steel one, as the output from those tankls are at least 6 inches above the base, the sediment has somewhere to drop into and every year or two you can clean out the tank through its bottom plug. this will alleviate some of the need for filtering as mostly good for showering and washing, you will only then need to filter water that is for drinking if that is what you want to do.

Also your well water can also go through the tank. having water delivered from anywhere, pipe,well, etc, without going through a tank is in this country NOT a good idea, also you can get a easily fitted in line filter for the bigger stuff as you mentioned very cheaply, I have one for my garden watering takns as they get the water off the roofs with all the crap that comes from them.

Keep it simle or otherwise the costs spiral and the maintenance becomes hard work.

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rjj04
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Water supply for a village home

Post by rjj04 » May 28, 2015, 6:54 am

"Eagle" you have a nice system there. The last picture with the filter that allows the heavier particles to drop down looks like it would do the trick. I'll have to try and find that at Thai Watsadu. Cheers!

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Water supply for a village home

Post by glalt » May 29, 2015, 5:31 pm

I Have two totally separate systems. The village water is like many other villages, on and off. Some days we have water for most of the day and some days none at all. I have an 1,800 liter stainless steel tank with a mechanical float valve. I use a household pump from there to supply the house. Originally there was a 1,000 liter cement jar. I keep it filled also but have never really needed it. It is connected with plastic pipe to the 1,800 liter tank with a valve in between.

For drinking water, I have a 1,500 liter fiberglass tank. It catches rain water off the galvanized outside kitchen roof. We pressure wash the steel roof before using it to fill the tank. Once filled, it will last until the next rainy system. From that tank the water gets pumped through a large stainless steel filter filled with activated charcoal (18 liters) and from there through a three stage drinking water filter with the third stage being a ceramic filter. The drinking water is odorless and tasteless. The system appears to do a great job and the water has no minerals to clog the coffee maker. I also use that water to top off my solar batteries and the vehicle window washers. The wife uses it in her steam iron with no problems.

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Water supply for a village home

Post by eagle » May 30, 2015, 9:26 am

glalt wrote:I Have two totally separate systems. The village water is like many other villages, on and off. Some days we have water for most of the day and some days none at all. I have an 1,800 liter stainless steel tank with a mechanical float valve. I use a household pump from there to supply the house. Originally there was a 1,000 liter cement jar. I keep it filled also but have never really needed it. It is connected with plastic pipe to the 1,800 liter tank with a valve in between.

For drinking water, I have a 1,500 liter fiberglass tank. It catches rain water off the galvanized outside kitchen roof. We pressure wash the steel roof before using it to fill the tank. Once filled, it will last until the next rainy system. From that tank the water gets pumped through a large stainless steel filter filled with activated charcoal (18 liters) and from there through a three stage drinking water filter with the third stage being a ceramic filter. The drinking water is odorless and tasteless. The system appears to do a great job and the water has no minerals to clog the coffee maker. I also use that water to top off my solar batteries and the vehicle window washers. The wife uses it in her steam iron with no problems.
Sound good for a village house. I live nearby Ring Road and we have tessaban water pressure good, excluding morning peak. Between 7.30-8.30 everyone wants to use water and it would need extrame huge pipe or pressure. Both are impossible, because size and pressure breaking weak pipes in houses. Drinking water I would do same way as you, but changing pipes afterwards needs too much work and I will do it only, if something maintenance is needed under the conctrete. Not we feed also toilet upstairs using clean water.

We are lucky to have water pressure during electric breaks. So can can have water almost all time.

When building the house, only main water system is in mind and no preparation for future water systems or some extraordinary situations.

We have rain gutters to collect rain water and store that using small 300 l tanks. Connect those together with only one valve. Can take water using a pump from any of those and it use water equally from each. Price for system almost same as using one big tank. Reason to use was to have a possibility to hide some of the tanks, because size is small enough to cover using whatsoever plants. Original plan was to hide all but one around the plot. Now this rainwater can be used for taking a shower etc. IF no electric and no water from tessaban. Really extraordinary, but can happen. Of course climbing up or opening valve below and getting water from big tank is possible, but not an option for me during darkness -remember, no electricity situation... to be honest, I would call to some friends. :pirate:

Solar energy is not an option, because 60-70% of electric breakouts are during dark hours. Batteries, yes, but no. One 250 W unit could run pump easily, but not in darkness, when mostly needed. Tanks is better and more traditional way.

Ps. One day those small tanks will be 10-20 cm underground. Mainly for protecting pipes. Still no problems yet.
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Tank.jpg

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Water supply for a village home

Post by cambsangler » May 30, 2015, 11:33 am

I did not see anyone mentioning salt in the water while reading through so will add this.....................

We started out with a bore hole drilled down to 21m, cost 7000 baht. The result was from from satisfactory. It appears we had running sand below and the water was always full of sand particles no matter how much water was extracted. We could filter most of it and get what looked like clean water but there was still some very fine sediment getting through. This became very noticeabe after a few weeks of using the shower as the tiles began to change colour in the corners of the room.

Next problem was the aforementioned salt. We just could not get rid of it all and all our taps and most fittings were made of metal - in hindsight that was bloody foolish but where do you buy a plastic tap for sinks? The tap washers got destroyed within 6 months but what little salt was getting through.

After a year we decided to get connected to the village water network, which until a few weeks previously was about 400m from our house and would have cost 200,000 baht to connect! Luckily a hotel resort was built nearby and the owner was happy for us to branch off their water feed so the cost was reduced to just 11,000 baht.

Our water is now good and pretty safe, stored in a 2000ltr tank which fills up when the village supply is running and pumped in to the house as and when we need it. We never run out of decent water now and if I was to it all over again, would use the village supply wherever possible. While perhaps not as perfect as back home, it is a far easier solution imo.

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