YucaLandia
Aug 12, 2013, 6:08 PM
Post #2 of 14
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In an ideal world, there is no maintenance needed for your system. The real world is not ideal. The main issues arise from contamination of the water from potential:
~ leaks in the city water supply
~ leaks in the cistern
~ leaking around the lids/covers
~ accumulation of sediment/sarro (if the water is hard) ... or
~ parts failures like float valves that wear out (overfilling the cisterns or tinaco), pumps that oxidize (shaft seizure) or wiring/windings failures, plumbing problems, leaking pipes, a coflex hose leaking/failing at a toilet...
Fortunately, the likelihood of any single one of these things is low, which means one of them may occur every 3 to 5 years. Since these are all low frequency events, you can likely rely on full system checks just once every 6 months, and twice monthly(?) minor checks (walk through by a friend/neighbor) to make sure no leaks or overflowing water has occurred.
Leaks in the city water supply piping are very common and can result in soil microbes/bacteria entering your system, if there is insufficient residual chlorine in the water reaching your home. Standard disinfection of tinacos using normal bleach (no perfumes, no anti-spill gel-bleach), works out 10 mL per 100 L of stored water. For a typical 1100 liter tinaco/cistern (290 gal), you can add 110 mL of normal bleach => which conveniently equals 1/2 cup of bleach per typical black plastic Mexican 1100 L tinaco ~ as long as you have "clean" clear water ~ with no apparent TOC (Total Organic Carbon). If your water has suspended organic matter, (carbon), like old leaves or detritus or is cloudy, then remove the organic carbon source first, and then treat with bleach. Higher bleach concentrations are needed for suspended sediment laden (cloudy) water.
It is good to note that you likely should NOT add the bleach when you leave the property sitting unused.* Only add the bleach when you return, because when this level of bleach sits in metal pumps for long periods, it corrodes most pumps. When you return to use the house, add the bleach to the cistern you will use first and to the tinaco on the roof. At this concentration, it takes bleach 15 minutes of contact time to disinfect plumbing - as long as your system has visually clear/clean water without suspended sediment or organic carbon. To get your home plumbing system clean, mix the bleach well in the tinaco, wait 15 minutes, and then flush toilets and run faucets until you smell bleach in the water at each of these water outlet points.
This give you bleach-treated water with enough free chlorine to disinfect your pipes and faucets. Let the water system sit unused for 15 minutes with the bleach-treated water to completely disinfect the pipes - giving you clean water to use.
I know that some readers are shaking their heads at this advice (thinking it is unnecessary), but consider the research studies on typical Mexican city water systems. In the last big testing surveys on Merida's city water system (roughly 1 million users), 97% of the homes had clean, disinfected water at the meter at the street (entering the home). That number fell to only 75% with clean water at the kitchen tap/faucet on those same homes. This proved that 1/4 of the Merida homes had fecal coliform contamination inside the tinaco/pipes of their homes.... It also proved that even with good residual chlorine levels at the meter where the city water enters the house, the chlorine levels were NOT high enough to disinfect the homes that had contaminated plumbing/cisterns/tinacos between the meter and the kitchen sink...
This says => 1 in 4 Mexican homes likely have contamination inside the home plumbing... needing bleach disinfection.
*Note: If you have PVC plumbing on the roof - or PVC plumbing that is exposed to sunlight, these procedures are NOT enough. Since UV light penetrates PVC plumbing, algae grows inside the pipes wherever sunlight hits PVC (except for the new NO-GLUE "PVC-Plus" - pipes where you have to use thermal welding to bond the pipe-joints). When the PVC plumbing exposed to sunlight sits unused, the residual free chlorine levels fall in a week (no disinfectant ability left) and you start to have algae gardens growing inside the PVC tubing.**
Once the algae has grown thick, the best way to get rid of thick algae is to use high pressure water (from a pressure washer) to blast it out through an open spigot (to not clog faucets)... I have had to do this on 4 different friends homes - bleah.... This happens in Mexico (and not in Canada or the US very much) because the gravity feed systems used with common Mexican tinacos must have at least on tube to the city air for them to breathe - and algae spores float into the open breather tubes. ... *One way to limit the algae formation in sun-exposed PVC tubing would be to treat the water in the tinaco with bleach, mix it, wait 15 minutes, and then open enough faucets to flush and fill the sun-exposed PVC pipes with bleach-disinfectant-loaded water, and then moth-ball the system. (giving you hopefully sterile bleach-treated water standing inside the PVC pipes, but not in any pumps)
Good luck,
steve
**The algae garden inside sun-exposed PVC effect should be reduced by painting the PVC tubing black, or covering it with a UV blocking material. We also put a jelly-jar on top of each of the water system air vent tubes, where air still flows, but it makes a tortuous path for the algae spores to have to travel before they can enter the open air vent tube:
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Read-on MacDuff
E-visit at http://yucalandia.com
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