Water Tanks - Cost per litre comparison!

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by Lumbuck Thornton, Jun 22, 2011.

  1. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Has anyone plotted the best value for money curve for types of water tank so informed choices and comparisions can be made. Very small plastic drums probably used for food are probably the cheapest and other really large tanks probably also have a very low cost per litre held. There are some small irregular shaped tanks that are probably very expensive per litre.
     
  2. adrians

    adrians Junior Member

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    to start collection of the data, my 30,000L plastic tanks were $3200 each (2 years ago).. making it 10.6 cents per litre (or $0.106 per litre) - a similar price for a 200L drum is $21 per drum.. however you also need to take into account plumbing.. which might be simpler and cheaper per litre for a large tank.
     
  3. permasculptor

    permasculptor Junior Member

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    Stainless steel tanks bought second hand will be worth the same as you buy them for. beer kegs perhaps?
     
  4. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    for us it is more about storing the amount needed to get one through dry periods, so we use 22.5k/l tanks, with the costing how does one factor in the length of service, say a good quality reputable poly tank lasts 25 years, the plumbing would be incidental as each persons needs would be different, this on demand pump is 5 years old now (think we pay around $600 for a s/s model so maybe factoring in teh power use could be used but then it ia all irrelevent if water is the expensive commodity one wants to store and use)and still going strong, the last one we had on another property was 6 years old and going strong. then side factors if you use it for all of house supply the hot water system is probably going to last longer with rainwater going through it than with town water.

    and the other factor is we are far better off drinking rain water than we are drinking town water with all its additives.

    so economics not always a good indicator.

    initially our tank cost around $2200.

    len
     
  5. ptpermaculture

    ptpermaculture Junior Member

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    It's been done. See Art Ludwig's " Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers, and Ponds for Domestic Supply, Fire and Emergency Use--Includes How to Make Ferrocement Water Tank" https://bit.ly/joMXAA

    It has a great graph. Turns out ferrocement is best. I'm away from my library so sadly I can't give you a scan.

    Harry
     
  6. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Thankyou for the great comments so far. Maybe the graph should be the dollar per litre over a 10 year period so if a tank is going to last 20 years the dollar per litre figure could be halved to give a more true cost per litre per time ?
     
  7. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    yes l/t,

    not like we are buying a new tank every year, even 10 years som far i have no heard of a bundy tank failing by natural causes beyond their 25 year warranty.

    len
     
  8. adrians

    adrians Junior Member

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    I think the original idea is a good one - the cost/litre is a measurable objective number, cost/litre per year.. comes down to a subjective measure of the lifetime of the tank. -

    My comments .. I think most people put in tanks that are far too small.. stuffing around with 200L drums seems crazy to me unless, I guess they are free or insanely cheap- and you have far too much time on your hands - water helps make abundance.. and a bigger storage helps maintain it when it gets dry (when it really counts).. measure the space you have and try to put in the biggest tank that will fit there. .. you still won't be any where near the desireable 15% of land area devoted to water storage that has been expoused by people including Bill Mollison.
     
  9. Woz

    Woz Junior Member

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  10. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    too us water is too important and valuable to be costed in such a manner like can we afford this car or that car, or which fridge or washing machine maybe?

    ok wehave 730sq/mts of yard the house takes up more than 1/2of that maybe even 2/3's, we found room for a22.5k/l tank, it doesn't look out of placebut its value far surpasses any other thing in the yard. if you can be sustainable in you own wate a pricecan't be put on that, i've seen where others allocate space to al-fresco or outside entertainment then squeeze in a little tank, small tanks may fill fastbut they are empty a long time.also seen yardswith littel tanks when they could have at least installed a 15k/l tank instead of 3k/l, which is teh minimum size to get the rebate.

    then on top of that we also installed 5 X 200 litre drums (cut that down to 3in the end) and used that water for washing clothes. the drums cost us around $35, plus one of those inline bilge pumps and a car battery pack to run it. those drums make good kennels for the dogs as well.

    don't think we come anywhere near the 15% that molleson talks about, the tank sits on about 9sq/mts of land.

    yep forget evaluations! allocate water the improtance it needs.

    len
     
  11. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    All good comments and thanks for the links.
    Looks like I still have quite a bit of researching to do !
     
  12. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Wow, wow wow wow wow..

    So much water being used, and kept... ..and all I got here is 250gallon cistern with a very slow flow pump (20-40gallons per 2 hours). I have run out of water once, and it was my fault, & I know I am in need of more work in this area. Like Thornton, I got research to do.
     
  13. ppp

    ppp Junior Member

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    I have two 30 000L tanks plus a 25000L tanks off the house plus one ~10 000L tank off each of my two sheds, (yes, ~~105 000L) plus a dam. . We don't, however have any town water supply.. so rely on this in wet years and dry. We see neighbours buying in truckloads of water after a few months of dry.. I would prefer to have more tank space than see water being trucked. The orchard and garden can be watered by gravity feed.
     
  14. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    that's teh one ppp,

    for us the debt is repaid after the tanks are full and we get through a dry, with water to spare. after that it, is all free. we had 3 X 22.5k/l tanks and we were sustainable with that through dry periods.

    len
     

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