Rainwater quality - eucalypt tannins?

[lane]

Hi all,

I have an unusual and frustrating problem, which is high concentrations of tannins in our rainwater. We have numerous large gum trees around the house, and they constantly drop leaves on the roof which seem to rapidly leave behind tannins which stain our water brown and add a dusty taste also.

We cleaned the entire roof with detergent and a broom, emptied the tank and flushed it out and scrubbed down the inside of it, and cleaned the gutters. I was sure this would fix the problem at least temporarily until we got slack cleaning the gutters in future, but the tannins appeared immediately in the water again! Absolutely amazing, and very, very, irritating.

Coming from a wheatbelt farm I've never seen anything like this or even heard of it, and the local tank and water equipment supplier in Midland can't offer any advice either.

I have purchased one of those units which let go the first few gallons of water before switching to the tank, but I have no confidence it will assist, because I have a screen on the inlet to the tank anyway, so the leaves are not getting into the tank. The water is getting stained before it gets there. It's also hard to imagine that the staining is all coming in the first few gallons.

I've considered adding a leaf barrier to the gutters but the roof has a very low pitch (20 degrees or so) and so even if no leaves sit in the gutters they still sit on the roof.

Does anybody here have any experience of this kind of problem, and advice? Especially, does anybody know what kind of filtration would remove eucalypt tannins, including the colour and taste?

Cheers,
Lane.

Edit: I should add that it is apparently possible to get rid of tannins with chlorine, but that seems to me to defeat the purpose of rainwater. http://www.tank-pro.com/ads/tannins/

[isuzurover]

Any water filter system which includes an activated charcoal (carbon) filter should remove bothe the colour and the taste.

Colour/tannins are usually fairly benign, so you would only need to filter your drinking water.

Not sure why it came back so quickly though, unless it had leached into your lines between the tank and the house (or elsewhere).

[richard4u2]

i found at dunsborough the leaves were getting in the gutter mostly in the summer time and this was a really flat roof of a shed once i cleaned the gutters out at the beginning of winter things were okay but this summer i shall be putting in a gutter guard of some kind and the leaves should blow away and not settle in the gutter

[BlueWagon]

I've got large gum trees around the house and the leaves are a pain, although I find the small sticks and branches more of a problem.

I went the gutterguard solution with a mesh that fits to the top of the gutter lip and to the edge of the colourbond roof. With the old tiled roof I tried the Bunnings type mesh which inserts in the gutter but it trapped too many leaves and was hard to clean.

The gutterguard stops most of the sicks and leaves with minimum maintenance and the gutters stay pretty clean but need the silt hosed out about once a year. I have a large MELALEUCA tree with very small needle like leaves which go through the gutterguard but get stopped by the fine sieve filter on the tank inlets. this needs to be cleaned by hand fairly regularly.

I also recently installed a first flush device which diverts a user adjustable amount of the first runoff when it rains...this reduces the silt getting into the tanks but isn't much good for fine leaves or any floating stuff which gets pats the sieves.

I have also installed an inline water filter after very fine plastic shavings from the tanks blocked my washing machine inlet filter as well as blocking the mains/rainwater switching device in the electric pump. Apparently any fitting such as taps, connections, sieves etc all leave small bits of plastic in the tanks when they are fitted.

I don't have a problem with water quality but could obviously upgrade it by upgrading the inline filter. You would need to take advice on the filter because I would imagine that the wrong one could drastically affect water flow through the attached pump.

Cheers
Mark

[long stroke]

Yep same problem here, we have several huge gum tree's around our house, our water isn't real clean either:eek:
It's just stained as mensioned, i honestly rather the taste over any other water, not shore if it's real good for you though:angel:
We have tried high pressure cleaning the whole roof down and drained then scrubbed the tank out, fitted good gutter guard, but nothing really seems to prevent the water from discolouration, it improves the quality though:)

CHEERS TIM.

[lane]

Ah, so we're not alone. And yes, the discoloration was reduced after we cleaned our roof also. But a few months later it is back to as bad as ever.

I think a filter might be the only realistic option. I can drink slightly brown water without a worry, but the wife won't and she puts the kids off too... :(

[Chucaro]

Talking about filters, this week in Aldi they are super cheap!! Get them, i have the set and I am very happy with them. You will save $200 easy.
Cheers

[Vern]

chlorine. After the bushfires here this year, our water was contaminated, so our tank was flushed and new water was brought in, we disconnected the down pipes for a couple of big rains then hooked them up, soon after our water was all tannin coloured from the next lot of rains. South gippy water said to put chlorine in it (suitable amount, not swimming pool amout) and over a couple of weeks of doing this the water cleared up fine, and you could not even taste it or smell it, much to our suprise.:)