Having Fun With Some DIY Plumbing

[marvoni]

We're in the middle of a drought with 'day zero' estimated around May next year so I've decided to go off grid, or partially off grid in an effort to ensure I still have water at home.

I decided to use my borehole water for most of the house and just use council water for human consumption such as drinking and cooking. This has meant I've had to split the plumbing into two circuits, borehole water now supplies the 5 bathrooms and council water supplies just the cold water on the kitchen sink, the coffee machine and the soda machine which are both permanently plumbed in. There's also an option to revert back to council water for the entire house as well.

It's meant some serious DIY plumbing, although probably not plumbing as you know it, over the last month or two.

 

[ShaunCorbs]

You would need it running 24/7 marv esp you could have things growing in between cycles

 

[marvoni]

@oz-plumber the UV-C fluorescent tube sits inside a quartz glass tube of a slightly larger diameter that's closed at one end. The quartz glass tube is easily removable so it will be cleaned every month or maybe every few months depending how much crud has accumulated on it between the first couple of cleans. Hopefully it won't be much because the upstream filters are removing everything down to about 1 micron.

The biggest problem I have is that living in the bum-end of nowhere, the UV-C tubes aren't available locally so I was hoping to extend the life as much as possible. I was going to operate the UV-C lamp via a delay timer so it comes on instantly when there's water flow and over-runs for maybe a minute or two when the water flow stops. I could even introduce a cycle of 5 mins on every hour as well regardless of flow.

@sammathias the imperial hand benders are old school but they've got lots of uses. I've got sizes ranging between 1/4 in all the way up to 1 1/4 inch and you'd be surprised how often they get used for all sorts of things including shaping heater tubes when I make custom shaped heater elements to name just one.

@ShaunCorbs I'm considering it, letting it run 24/7. I'm going to phone around a few more suppliers in Johannesburg to see if I can find stock. If I hit lucky I'll dump the flow switch idea.

 

[oz-plumber]

It doesn't matter what filters you have, what attaches itself to the quartz tubes is bacterial growth.
Once the growth starts, it just blooms and cover sections of or all the quartz tubes.
Also the quartz tubes are delicate and do deteriorate over time, so it might be worth having a spare quartz tube and a couple of uv globes on hand when needed.

 

[marvoni]

Okay, the good news is I've found a supplier who had both the quartz tubes (they call them 'thimbles') and the UV tubes in stock so I've purchased enought to last me a few years hopefully and I've dumped the idea of installing a flowswitch. I'm just going to leave the sterilizer running 24/7/365 which I'm guessing will also prevent any algae or bacterial growth fogging up the tube.

 

[oz-plumber]

You will have to check the quartz tubes on a regular basis.
I would start monthly and see how they look.

The UV light will only kill the bacteria it can reach.
Once you get a film of material on the tubes the UV light will render itself useless in a short period of time.