g'day bronwyn,

we got 22mm out of the rain a couple days agao wahtever that makes
about 68mm for the month to date.

so tank water is bad for health hey?? then i should ahve karked it a
hundred times over hey, been drinking ours since the tank went in and
collected enough to drink. great scare mongers hey local gov'?

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:10:25 +1100, HC wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...

"HC" wrote in message
...
G'day Len...and others!

Did you get any rain over the last few days? 89mm was recorded just a
few blocks from where I live, but it was very heavy. Today clear,
bright blue skies and the grass is so lovely and green!


Yes another 40mm or so. The pasture and garden are powering on.

My small rainwater tank that I fitted 2-3 weeks ago is now full!!
Yippee!! lovely water to drink....ssshhhh!! don't tell the council
that I'm drinking it, they advertise that rainwater is NOT fit for human
consumption. So if I don't wake up tomorrow, at least I'll know what
killed me!! ROFLMHO!

How weird! I drink nothing but rainwater and it's better than any town
water
I have ever had.

gawd, me too. our rainwater's lovely. in town, the town-water they get is
just completely disgusting (so they probably all drink their rainwater in
secret, like bronwyn ;-) considering our only other choice for drinking is
dam-water (i don't think it's the yabby poo that makes it so brown and
crunchy, but i doubt that it helps ;-) i really do chuckle when townies are
told their rainwater's supposed to be for the garden or the toilet, or
something. dear me.

councils are almost always gaspingly useless, but i think someone from above
comes up with moronic rules with which to torture & exasperate the populace.
kylie

"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
How weird! I drink nothing but rainwater and it's better than any town
water
I have ever had.

gawd, me too. our rainwater's lovely. in town, the town-water they get is
just completely disgusting (so they probably all drink their rainwater in
secret, like bronwyn ;-) considering our only other choice for drinking is
dam-water (i don't think it's the yabby poo that makes it so brown and
crunchy, but i doubt that it helps ;-) i really do chuckle when townies are
told their rainwater's supposed to be for the garden or the toilet, or
something. dear me.

councils are almost always gaspingly useless, but i think someone from above
comes up with moronic rules with which to torture & exasperate the populace.
kylie



Until a few years ago some urban councils would not permit rainwater tanks at
all on the grounds that they encouraged mosquitos! There is no reason to have
mozzies in your water tank. It's just weird.

David

G'day David

Sure is weird!! I've lived on acreage and had to rely on rainwater for
many years and just hate drinking town water with all the additives that
spoil great tasting water. Anyway those days are gone now.

Good to see some rain falling.
Bronwyn ;-)


David Hare-Scott wrote:
"HC" wrote in message ...

G'day Len...and others!

Did you get any rain over the last few days? 89mm was recorded just a
few blocks from where I live, but it was very heavy. Today clear,
bright blue skies and the grass is so lovely and green!



Yes another 40mm or so. The pasture and garden are powering on.


My small rainwater tank that I fitted 2-3 weeks ago is now full!!
Yippee!! lovely water to drink....ssshhhh!! don't tell the council
that I'm drinking it, they advertise that rainwater is NOT fit for human
consumption. So if I don't wake up tomorrow, at least I'll know what
killed me!! ROFLMHO!


How weird! I drink nothing but rainwater and it's better than any town water
I have ever had.

David

Can't agree more, Kylie. Some years ago during a previous drought, we
had just finished building our house and of course there was no rain to
fill the tank so we had to pump from the creek...it was brown and not
from yabbies but the cows standing under the shade of a big willow tree
that grew near a spring. Marvellous what good filters will do though,
and of course, we boiled drinking water until creek levels improved.

Bronwyn ;-)

0tterbot wrote:

"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
...

"HC" wrote in message
...

G'day Len...and others!

Did you get any rain over the last few days? 89mm was recorded just a
few blocks from where I live, but it was very heavy. Today clear,
bright blue skies and the grass is so lovely and green!


Yes another 40mm or so. The pasture and garden are powering on.


My small rainwater tank that I fitted 2-3 weeks ago is now full!!
Yippee!! lovely water to drink....ssshhhh!! don't tell the council
that I'm drinking it, they advertise that rainwater is NOT fit for human
consumption. So if I don't wake up tomorrow, at least I'll know what
killed me!! ROFLMHO!


How weird! I drink nothing but rainwater and it's better than any town
water
I have ever had.


gawd, me too. our rainwater's lovely. in town, the town-water they get is
just completely disgusting (so they probably all drink their rainwater in
secret, like bronwyn ;-) considering our only other choice for drinking is
dam-water (i don't think it's the yabby poo that makes it so brown and
crunchy, but i doubt that it helps ;-) i really do chuckle when townies are
told their rainwater's supposed to be for the garden or the toilet, or
something. dear me.

councils are almost always gaspingly useless, but i think someone from above
comes up with moronic rules with which to torture & exasperate the populace.
kylie

G'day Len and Bev

Pleased you got some rain too. Councils have strange rules some times,
I'm sure some of them have never tasted rainwater.

Before I installed the rainwater tank I made a few of my own
improvements...glued a double layer of poly window mesh under the sieve
and also on the funnel in the roof gutter. Then, because the tank is
dark green and will face north, I want to keep the water cool so covered
the exterior with some cream shadecloth.

Bronwyn ;-)

len garden wrote:

g'day bronwyn,

we got 22mm out of the rain a couple days agao wahtever that makes
about 68mm for the month to date.

so tank water is bad for health hey?? then i should ahve karked it a
hundred times over hey, been drinking ours since the tank went in and
collected enough to drink. great scare mongers hey local gov'?

On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:10:25 +1100, HC wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

0tterbot wrote:
i really do chuckle when townies are
told their rainwater's supposed to be for the garden or the toilet, or
something. dear me.

When it rains, it flushes out all the industrial and motor vehicle
pollutants in the city/town air into rainwater tanks, which isn't as
benign as a bit of dust.

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:
i really do chuckle when townies are told their rainwater's supposed to
be for the garden or the toilet, or something. dear me.

When it rains, it flushes out all the industrial and motor vehicle
pollutants in the city/town air into rainwater tanks, which isn't as
benign as a bit of dust.

that's very true, but i wouldn't be supposing that town water (not directly
from rain) is any better because it ends up with the same stuff (or worse)
in it as well. conversely, country rain water can presumably end up with
shocking things in it (it comes out of the air too ;-)

i feel confident that the massive majority of water in australia is fit to
drink (including the crunchy water from my dam, if i was that desperate)
including or even despite the fact that storage dams for cities are full of
poo, dead animals (and occasionally people), giardia, and so forth. the
reality is that almost nobody in australia ever gets sick from water, even
though we know it's all full of traces of christ knows what, chemical
run-off, poo, and dead things. it irks me that incompetent bureaucracies
(e.g. most local councils) get to make these decisions from a completely
irrational base (the nsw govt 360 degree turnaround on rainwater tanks being
one minute banned outright in cities, & the next encouraged, is the sort of
thing i mean).
kylie

0tterbot wrote:

i feel confident that the massive majority of water in australia is fit to
drink (including the crunchy water from my dam,

As someone who bicycle toured through great areas of this country, I
felt that way in the 70's, but now I am much more caustious.

That wonderful little brown pill you could take to cure delhi bellie is
no longer around and the knowledge of an increasing range of long term
diabilitating 9sp?) diseases is worrying.

To be blunt, we have a hell of a lot more "arseholes" spreading diseases
around as our population has almost doubled(?) over that time and we now
have agricultural wonders such as feed lots that despite all they are
suppossed tyo not do, can do a very good job of concentrating certain
pathogens that overwhelm a normal watercourse's cleaning methods.

I've taken to filtering everything these days.

Waterhsed information for me was that polar bears in the artic are
contaminated with the old style cooling oil used in power transformers.
Problem was there are no power transformers scattered throughout the
artic. turned out this nice, lethal chemical was going through
successive evaporation, deposition cycles to wind up on artic tundra
vegetation to be eaten by browsers to be eaten and acculmulated by polar
bears, erk. Modern chemicals are wonderful.



. it irks me that incompetent bureaucracies
(e.g. most local councils) get to make these decisions from a completely
irrational base (the nsw govt 360 degree turnaround on rainwater tanks being
one minute banned outright in cities, & the next encouraged, is the sort of
thing i mean).

Absolutely no argument there.

In article ,
Terryc wrote:

0tterbot wrote:
i really do chuckle when townies are
told their rainwater's supposed to be for the garden or the toilet, or
something. dear me.

When it rains, it flushes out all the industrial and motor vehicle
pollutants in the city/town air into rainwater tanks, which isn't as
benign as a bit of dust.

You wouldn't think Sydney rainwater would be fit to drink, but Michael Mobbs'
wife is a scientist and insisted that their rainwater be regularly tested for
this sort of stuff as they live in one of the 'innerest' of inner Sydney
suburbs (Chippendale). They've never had a problem AFAIK, but they do use a
first-flush diverter.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Chookie wrote:

You wouldn't think Sydney rainwater would be fit to drink, but Michael Mobbs'
wife is a scientist and insisted that their rainwater be regularly tested for
this sort of stuff as they live in one of the 'innerest' of inner Sydney
suburbs (Chippendale). They've never had a problem AFAIK, but they do use a
first-flush diverter.

Unfortunately Mobbs testing =/= all of Sydney testing.

Personally, stuck out here in the wilderness ofthe SW housing estates[1]
I am not too worried about it all. We rarely get NW winds, from where
the aluminium stacks are and I figure all those certified safe food
stuffs are almost guaranteed to be loaded with higher levels of
pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, toxic colouring etc, etc, etc than
bad stuff in the rainwater I collect.

Mry real rainwater problem is just having sufficent space to install
worthwhile size of tank.

[1] in the territory of the dumb bunnies who once again volted in a
idiot ultra conservative as their local member. Now all those fools are
going to really find out where the money comes from, aka he just
presented the cheques and didn't get them the money.

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

i feel confident that the massive majority of water in australia is fit
to drink (including the crunchy water from my dam,

As someone who bicycle toured through great areas of this country, I felt
that way in the 70's, but now I am much more caustious.

:-)
that's because you're more informed, not because anything has really changed
much ;-)

i don't disagree with anything you've said whatsoever - my point is only
that if it's "safe" to breathe the air & grow crops in (for e.g.) sydney,
the rainwater must also be "safe" because all the systems are connected, not
seperate. shrug if the rainwater's not safe to drink (& while i'd not feel
entirely keen to be drinking sydney rainwater as compared to mine here, i'd
still logically consider it as safe as the tap water, seeing as how it's
essentially the same stuff!!) then it mustn't be "safe" to actually live
there, either.

my point is that ultimately, it's exceedingly rare for any water anywhere in
australia to be likely to make one sick in the short term (which i suspect
is all that councils were talking about - they're probably not talking about
multi-generational damage to dna or anything like that). in the long term,
we all know now that all of us have chemicals in our bodies & in other
systems which shouldn't be there, and might be harmful, which we didn't put
there ourselves and would never choose to have in a million years. however,
panicking about it now won't help either - it doesn't achieve anything. i'm
pleased that this and related issues are finally getting the notice they
deserve. big issues aren't served well by dim-witted local councils, though
g

snip

I've taken to filtering everything these days.

right, but you don't filter your soil or the veggies you grow, because you
can't. you're making a net benefit to your household and everyone else in
the world by the garden being there, though. and i think that is the more
important & more positive thing.

honestly, if people in cities don't want to drink their rainwater, that's
fine by me. but, it seems an odd distinction on balance. shrug

one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in the
legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to treat the
subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly mystifying. rain
water comes second. i was interested to read recently that one MUST have a
flush-diverter for "safe" rainwater. we don't have one of those (although i
do want one, to keep the tank cleaner, but we don't have one yet). but our
water tastes great, doesn't make us sick, and doesn't make guests sick (any
effects we're immune to through exposure would show up in a guest, yes?) and
is as clear as a bell. thousands of years' worth of rainwater drinkers would
be mystified to discover they "needed" a flush diverter all along, wouldn't
they ;-)

i think the truth of things is that once there's a "product" where none
previously existed, the combination of capitalism and fear of litigation
makes powerful people lose their minds. one example of this would be microbe
warnings on potting mix. i don't doubt there are people out there who use
potting mix while wearing a hazmat suit and gas mask - yet these same people
very likely muck about in the dirt without any "protections" at all, despite
that garden soil clearly contains (amongst other things) legionella, e-coli,
tetanus, etc not to mention the possibility of heavy metals, other
carcinogens & christ knows what. the only difference is that you can't sue
the earth if you got cat-scratch fever or tetanus, and you can't attach a
warning to a back yard. :-) if polar bears are contaminated with coolants,
one can only speculate what we & our soils are contaminated with - so
worrying about city rainwater _in particular_ doesn't really rate when you
think about it imo.

this is the sort of broader theme i was pursuing in my statement. by all
means we must always take care of ourselves & others. equally, worrying
excessively about small pieces of a bigger puzzle just doesn't help anyone.
fixing them helps, though - which is a broad thing to be doing, not a
micro-managing, fuss-pot, local-council thing. i really don't think we
disagree here, terry!
kylie

0tterbot wrote:

one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in the
legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to treat the
subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly mystifying.

Well, mistakes happen you see and if someone screws up on a valve in the
sewerage water recycling to drinking water plant, URK!.

My 2c is there is nothing wrong with a dual water quality system; low
quality, consisting of recycled sewearge water and collected stormwater,
for gardens and toilet flushing and high quality filtered for drinking,
cooking and showering.

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in
the legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to
treat the subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly
mystifying.

Well, mistakes happen you see and if someone screws up on a valve in the
sewerage water recycling to drinking water plant, URK!.

eek! although i did mean only in a home-situation (you know, where to direct
your grey-water goodies, and how, and so forth).


My 2c is there is nothing wrong with a dual water quality system; low
quality, consisting of recycled sewearge water and collected stormwater,
for gardens and toilet flushing and high quality filtered for drinking,
cooking and showering.

yes, me too. although i do feel doing it on a home-by-home basis is probably
better.... hm. particularly in light of your comment above.
kylie

"Terryc" wrote in message
...

[1] in the territory of the dumb bunnies who once again volted in a idiot
ultra conservative as their local member.

who's your local member then?

we got mike kelly, which of course only underlines eden-monaro's status as a
"bell-wether" seat, thus making elections hopelessly exciting. (i only ever
lived in safe seats before, where you can't escape the feeling that as a
voter, one is wasting one's time).
kylie