Cisterns

You're surely not serious are you in asking this question?

But please allow me to respond with tongue in cheek to advise as follows:

Both KMart and Home Depot sell a prefab cistern unit for about $8000.00. Of course you'll have to hire someone with a backhoe to dig into the earth adjacent to your house which I guess was built without a cistern...

Oh, of course, about filling the cistern from the top? Now that's a challenge. Oh yikes! This is so damned hard but I'll try to guide you as follows:

Buy a ladder which will reach the roof of your house. On the roof of your house, carefully place a large durable plastic container in which to contain water. Retreat down the ladder and then take a hose and go back back up the ladder and fill up the plastic container with as much water as possible. Should an overflow arise, evacuate as soon as possible!

I hope this helps!

Cisterns are usually built under a house. Typically they are poured concrete. They are hooked up to the house by way of a downspout. Water is caught on the roof and through a guttering system goes to the downspouts to the cistern. There is usually a hatch built to get into it to clean or repair.
To buy one commercially would be only a plstic tank that holds up to 1000 gallons orsome wooden ones that are made as well. Don't know the brand names on them.
Ronnie

Cisterns are an integral part of the homes built here. They are usually done at the same time as the foundation. Cisterns are filled when rain water collected by your roof is directed into them by means of rain gutters and spouts, which are also built in when the house is constructed. A cistern's capacity is a function of your roof area, usually calculated by the architect/draftsman when the house is designed.

You can enjoy your cistern and forget about it unless we have a dry spell and you have yo call a water delivery service to have it filled.

Cisterns are necessary here because most places do not have potable water as in the States...we are a little more self-reliant in that respect.

Thank You Ronnie and Native Son,

I did not know if cisterns are part of the foundation or a stand-alone container.

Would you say the majority of houses there have cisterns in the foundation or are the stand-alone containers?

Thanks Again,

Graham

Hello Graham,

The majority of houses have cisterns built into the house, into the foundation - however you want to look at it. It is not uncommon for a 2 story house's first story to be a small apartment and the cistern and then the second story a regular sized residence. In this case some rooms of the 2nd floor would have the 'ceiling' of the cistern as the floor of the room. And on the 1st floor one wall will likely be a cistern on one side of the wall and then the apartment on the other side - so you wouldn't want to hammer nails for hanging paintings on that wall. The cistern would have a overflow pipe which could double as a place where if you bought water by the truck load that the delivery people could insert their hose to fill your cistern. The overflow pipe would be basically at the top of the cistern with a screen over the end to prevent critters from entering. There is a trap door built in the 'ceiling' of the cistern (or the floor of the level built on top of the cistern if that is the case). The door is usually cement with a big metal screw in the middle or a handle of some sort. It fits snug. If the door/entry was part of the floor of a room you could tile it just like the rest of the room to hide it a bit, of course making sure you didn't tile it over, preventing it from lifting off. You would use this entry to gain access to the interior of the cistern for cleaning, fixing leaks etc. The water is caught from the roof of the house itself, either on a flat roof via drains (with screens on them) or a pitched roof via gutters. The water is lead from the drains/gutters through pipes down to the cistern.

There are quite a number of people that use tanks as well. Folks with small homes, wooden homes, trailers mostly; on construction sites also you might see them. And there are some folks with cisterns that use large tanks to collect laundry water or run off for use in the yard. Some folks have the tank exposed and some hide it in some way (with plants, partially buried, in a room built for it).

--Islander

thank you islander,

that helps a bunch. i was trying to inspect the cistern in the house that we just visited to get a better idea of how extactly they work. the house had 2 doors on the floor. i tried opening them but had no success. probably a good thing because with my luck i would have fallen in...LOL....

graham