Clean, clear, pure rainwater – a gift from nature.

Unfortunately, by the time it gets into your water tank, its purity may not be as intact. If you’re like most Australian tank owners, your water is collected from the roof, channelled along gutters, and fed into the storage tank. Plenty of opportunity to be contaminated with dirt as well as bird and other animal droppings.

If your tank water is used only on the garden, then there’s probably not too much to worry about. But if your tank is used for drinking water, you may want to consider additional filtration.

As the NSW Health Department points out, the water might look clean and not smell or taste too bad, but “contamination is not always visible.”¹

If you’re looking to drink your tank water, it needs to be free of disease-causing microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses and parasites.¹

While some people or households may have permanent filtration devices built into the supply system, others might rely on good maintenance of the roof, gutters and tanks collecting the rainwater. If the water you’re about to drink falls into the latter and you’d rather be safe than sorry, then you might want to consider a portable filtration device. This can be a personal device such as a LifeStraw bottle, or a system that allows water to be shared with others, such as the LifeStraw Flex water filter with Gravity bag, or even the LifeStraw Mission High-Volume Gravity Water Purifier. Another option for household use is the LifeStraw Home Water Filter Jug, in either glass or plastic varieties.

Whatever you choose, your filter should have the ability to:

• filter out organic matter
• filter harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella
• filter parasites such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium
• remove microplastics
• remove dirt, sand and cloudiness or turbidity
• improve taste (usually via an additional carbon filter)
• reduce chlorine

The LifeStraw range provides a number of options from the individual bottle to the high volume option that can filter 12 litres per hour. They remove 99.99% of bacteria, some even filter out viruses and parasites from the water they filter. The models that incorporate a carbon filter can also help reduce heavy metals, like lead, chlorine, organic chemical matter and turbidity as well as improving the taste of the water you drink. You can check the full range out here.

Sources:

https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/water/Documents/Rainwater-Treatment-Guide.pdf