Anyone save rainwater for washing their car?

[Tasmania]

10,000 liter rain water tank with duel filters. Dont have acid rain in Tasmania due to zero smog, etc,etc

[jdbillin]

Why would washing your car with acid rain be any more harmful than driving around all day in acid rain? I'd be more worried about particulates in the rain water - roof debris, etc, you wouldn't want scraping on your car. The big stuff would settle to the bottom, maybe make sure you give it a day or two to settle after a rain, then draw from the top? A crude filter would be even better. The rain water would be softer than hard well water, less chance of spotting. Maybe wash your car with the well water, then rinse with rain water? I'd be interested in what you figure out.

I'll keep you posted, The tank it all filled up and I have one screen mesh filter installed. I was kinda worried about stuff getting into the tank as well thinking that if we were going to get a lot of rain ill let it rinse off the roof first then start filling up the tank but I don't know how practical that will be.

10,000 liter rain water tank with duel filters. Dont have acid rain in Tasmania due to zero smog, etc,etc

Do you have any problems with anything growing in the tank?

[jessica]

I would go for Tap Water rather than acid rain for my car.

[Tasmania]

I'll keep you posted, The tank it all filled up and I have one screen mesh filter installed. I was kinda worried about stuff getting into the tank as well thinking that if we were going to get a lot of rain ill let it rinse off the roof first then start filling up the tank but I don't know how practical that will be.



Do you have any problems with anything growing in the tank?

No not at all it has a 3rd filter to keep birds/mice out but we are clean people with no mess around
for anything like that to happen.

plus we keep a good eye on things. if you store water for to long it can get a bit of sludge at the bottom
but that is to be expected from any water source.

2x filters from the down pipes and 1x on the tank that only water can pass through, plus 1x at the tap end.

use it to drink or wash the cars, if you can drink it, you can wash cars with it. IMO =)

[AntonioG]

Nope, I didn't use that or save rain water for further use.

[jdbillin]

Figured i'd post an update, so far the rain water is working great. I got the tank moved inside and haven't had any problems with anything growing in it yet. I put a couple cap fulls of bleach in the water just as a precaution. I haven't done any black vehicles yet but so far I haven't had any problems with water spots which was the whole reason for doing this.

[chet31]

Thanks for the update. Do you do any filtering? Also, do you pump the water out of the barrel, gravity feed, or just dip a bucket in it?

[jdbillin]

I've been pumping the water out of the bottom with a small 110v water pump that I use to feed the power-washer.
I have one screen filter in-line before the pump.