Constant circulation of stored water?

If this has already been covered, I apologize for not finding it and I would appreciate links to relevant material.

I've been wondering if it would be practical to set up a series of barrels, or non-operational water heaters, where the municipal water supply flows through each container before being used by the household. The goal would be to have a fresh supply of water on hand without the need to refresh it manually on a regular basis.

Pros and cons are desired and I can take the heat if it's just an outright stupid idea.

Thanks for any info that you might provide.

Seems pretty clever to me.

The idea comes up from time to time. Everyone should do their own assessment of the kinds of events/risks that they are preparing for. To me, the one big drawback of any sort of continously refreshed stored water supply is that your entire water supply--or a big chunk of it--can be contaminated before anyone realizes that there might be a problem with the incoming water supply.

Just this past week, Gov. Schwarzenegger declared a water emergency in Barstow, California due to perchlorate contamination in the tap water, and New Orleans also declared a boil order. If no one is sure of when the contamination started, then I think most of us would at least be suspicious of that stored water. With the infamous Milkwakee crypto incident with their municipal water, the authorities did not realize there was a problem for weeks.

I think a storage system that is directly hooked up to the plumbing is very convenient, however, I don't think I would personally have it continously circulating water due to the contamination risk. Instead, I would manually refresh the water on some schedule. I assume that it might be as easy as twisting some bypass valve to redirect the incoming water through your in-line water storage for a while to refresh them, and then repeating again in 6 months or whatever interval you choose.

There's nothing wrong with "old" water that was stored properly--even very old water--except that it will be flat and possibly pick up a certain taste from whatever container it is stored in.

If you direct connect, you will need a way to cut off or bypass the supply and draw off the saved water. Since the water pressure comes from the municipal supply, you could use gravity and have a tap on the bottom of each tank, but that is inconvenient if the tanks are sitting on the basement floor. You could pressurize the reserve system (probably violating multiple municipal plumbing codes), but you would want a manual air pump in the event that electricity is off. You could also mount the tanks on a platform and tap from the bottom.

I agree with Arney that you should not routinely route your household water through your reserve supply, as all you have done is extend your available municipal water supply by 40 or 80 gallons....not enough time to react if your hear of a contamination problem.

For a small investment and in the same space, you can reserve 55 gallons of drinking water in a water barrel with a hand pump.

Arney pretty much sums it up. I rotate about once a year. If you're worried about stale tasting water just aerate it by pouring back and forth into two smaller containers or use drink powders/tea/coffee etc.

Thanks for the feedback. I reckon that I'll just store water without tying it into the municipal supply.

One solution would be to plumb the output to a seldom used sink or tap. A outdoor tap would allow you to water the garden when changing your stored supply.

I wouldn't worry too much about contaminated central supply if the system you are drawing from is reliable, as most are. What are the odds any major water supply fault would occur on the once a week average use pattern when you just happen to use that sink. Or, even rarer, if you were changing out the stored water on a schedule, when you were making the change.

There are also some central supply faults that can be corrected. If it is bacterial you could cut off supply to depressurize the tanks and manually add bleach.

Stored water, if clean to start with and kept away from light stored pretty much indefinitely. You don't really need to change out the stored water very often.

Lots of good points above. I would just add that old water heaters often have weak spots, and are notorious for blowing out and causing basement floods. So I wouldn't keep them under constant pressure from the mains. Your insurance company will probably laugh at you if you try to make a claim.

Yeah, our system is very reliable. I'm 50 something and cannot recall any time when the system was compromised to the point of a boil order.


This is the simplest, least expensive method so I'll just go that route for now. If I hit the lottery, I'll look into something a bit more elaborate.

Thanks to everyone that provided feedback.

If you build a constant circulation system there is no reason why you can't run it like a simple storage system. The difference is simply how you position the valves. You could run it as storage and simply use the piping to make filling and the rare draining and refilling easier. You could fill tanks with a garden hose and use the same hose to get it to where you want to use it but a piped system is going to be be simpler and easier once it is installed.

The difference in cost is little more than a few lengths of PVC pipe, straps, a couple of valves, and a few hours of fitting and gluing.

I've been thinking about such a system but I will have to agree with Arne. It is the only drawback to constantly circulating the water. If the municipal system becomes contaminated then your stored water and the system become contaminated. Then you're really out of luck.

But being able to isolate the stored water and change it out with a few turns of some valves would be better.

I've gone through a couple of boil water orders. The problem isn't the boil water orders, but the delay between the order being issued and wide scale notification.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/article_7613d888-bc6c-5403-828b-df4e6086582f.html
You can expect anything hooked up to the water supply to be suspect.

If I was to setup a "buffer", I would set it up with two buffer tanks. One would be isolated and stagnant, and the other would have water flowing through it. In the event of water contamination, at least one tank would still be safe.
1) Switchable valve from municipal supply leading to two buffer tanks. The tanks would not be in use at the same time.
2) One way valve to each tank to prevent backflow in event of loss of municiple water pressure
3) Gravity fed valve (faucet) on bottome of each tank
4) Second one way valve on each tank leading from tank to house water circuit

Flip valve in line 1 to alternate tanks on a regular basis.

If your water supply goes out on a regular basis, this might be worth the cost. Otherwise stay with bottled water.