How to Install a Water Tank | Mitre 10 Easy As DIY

long hot and dry summers are great if you like the beach but they're not so great for our water storage some areas are prone to drought and some areas have even seen water restrictions as a result so the smart way to get around these and help conserve water is to install a water tank if you're wanting to store some water to use on your garden over summer then there's a range of tanks from 250 right up to 3 000 litres which are perfect for this and that's something you can install yourself no worries if you're going to be using the water in your house for drinking showering and appliances then you'll need a decent sized tank and it's likely you'll need a building or resource consent and a licensed certified plumber to help install it so check in with your local council for any regulations that apply in your area i'll show you how to install a 250 liter and a 1 000 litre option as well as a pump i'm going to kick off with something that's pretty darn easy and that's installing a 250 liter gutter tank and i'm going to install a water diverter so i'm going to cut a section of my down pipe out water's going to come down here and i'm going to connect the hose into my tank now build a plinth that my water tank is sitting on the higher you have your plinth the more heat of pressure you're going to have if you don't want to build a plinth then you're probably going to have to have a water pump to deliver a decent amount of pressure for your garden now in our pack of instructions here we've got this handy little sticker which details the process step by step and is also a cutting template so we just stick that exactly where we want it nice and level then install the two brackets that come in the kit 200 millimeters above and below the sticker as this is a metal sheet i'll attach them using pot rivets then simply cut the downpipe on the red dotted lines so we just slip our top piece in first making sure the black filter is in this top piece to stop leaves blocking or getting into the tank inlet check and rinse this every now and then and that's our diverter in place then attach the hose inlet that comes in the tank kit as well as the outlet tap connect the hose and you're good to go when you're all hooked up twist the diverter to on which lines up the outlet and diverts a portion of the rain flow into the tank and when it's full twist to off closing the outlet and sending the full flow back down the down pot to the storm water now i'll show you how to install a bigger tank and there's a fair bit more involved in that this is our tank it's a tall circular model which holds 1 000 liters we'll be placing it next to a down pipe and diverting the water through a rain head that'll filter out any leaves or debris you'll need a 500 millimeter full between the rain head and the inlet to the tank we'll also install a first flush diverter and then direct any overflow back into the storm water drain connecting an external pump means we'll get good water pressure and our garden hose will clip into the pump and finally we'll add a water level gauge so the first thing you're going to have to do is draw yourself up a plan and work out all the components that you're going to need and know exactly where they sit now if you are going to be using a water pump you're going to need to get a registered electrician to set you up an outdoor power point you'll need a solid level base for your tank to sit on because 1 000 liters of water weighs one ton so the area will need to be properly prepped to see how to do this you can watch our how to layer concrete pad easy as video or you can prep the area with compacted base coarse or you can just lay concrete pavers to do this you can watch our how to lay pavers easy as video so let's talk about pre-tank filtration what we have here are rain heads what they do is collect leaves and larger debris when selecting one consider which option will suit the aesthetic of your place and how little or how much maintenance you want to do now let's look at first flush diverters they're another form of pre-tank filtration this makes sure that the water going into your tank is free from any organic matter that will come off your roof after the first couple of millimeters of rainfall now there is a couple of options we have our simple and our advance which has a battery operated outlet basically the way it works the first couple of millimeters of rain comes in fills the chamber up and as it fills the ball rises blocks that off and you've got clean water that goes into your water tank and the collected water slowly drips out the bottom here and you can unscrew the base when you need to clean it before getting into it make sure to measure the diameter of your existing pipe work for example 60 or 80 millimeters so you know what size elbows and joints to buy and if you'll need any adapters or reduces to go from larger to smaller pipes or fittings now because my downpipe is pretty old and brittle as soon as i cut into this i know it's going to crack so it's going to be a lot easier if i just remove all of this and start from scratch i've made up a new configuration of pipes and elbows to get us into position when it comes to fitting our downpipe fittings to our guttering we don't want to glue that on we're going to put a screw in from the face that makes the down pipe easy to remove for cleaning and maintenance when needed now i'm going to start by attaching my rain head and i'm adding on to the bottom of my leaf catcher a 100 to 80 mil reducer because i'm using an 80mm downpipe but what i want to do first before you put any glue on you just want to mock everything up just to make sure you've cut things to the right length and the sitting at the right angle so i'm just going to squeeze that on there now i've cut another piece of 80 mil down pipe and that's going to slide in there and what i've got here is our first flush diverter so i still have to put the bottom part on that but at this stage i've just mocked up the piece that's going to be dropping into our tank what i'm going to do is just take that to the wall make sure you've got all the right angles the right length so that's looking pretty good there i'm just going to put some pencil marks on our elbows to our pipes to make sure nothing moves when i get down to the ground and all these points are going to line up i'm going to drill a hole in the center plug of my water tank i could drill a hole in the side if i want but there's no need because i'm not going to be using this plug for anything else so i'm going to take that out and then i'm going to fit it back onto our elbow and bring everything back up here i'm going to take this apart and start gluing it all up so this is exactly why i put the pencil marks on everything start at the top and work our way along putting pvc solvent cement on both parts now you don't have a huge amount of time to muck around with this so as soon as you put them on push it in nice and tight and then just wipe off any excess with a rag because this dries pretty instantly then do the same for the down pipes the first flush diverter head and the elbows feeding into the tank lining up the pencil marks as you go okay i've got myself a hole saw bit that is just slightly bigger than the diameter of my pipe now what i've done is fixed the tank cap to the bench and marked the center so i'll drill through file it for a smooth finish and fit it to my inlet elbow now just before i screw it to the wall with our little bracket here i just want to make sure that everything's looking good number one just want to make sure that our pipe is nice and plump sitting vertical then we'll fix our brackets on with stainless steel screws and then fix the cap back in place we're just about there as far as our pipe setup go so next is finish building my first flush diverter down the bottom here essentially when you buy a first flush diverter what you're really getting is two ends and a ball that goes inside the pvc pipe is what you're going to cut to length yourself so the average length of pvc pipe is round about from 900 to about 1200 millimeters but the bigger the surface area of roof that feeds the downpipe the longer the catchment pipe needs to be and at the bottom you've got this release cap with a filter on it so every now and then you want to remove that and give that a clean that goes on pop the ball in and glue the pipe in place and that's the first flush diverter done now if you're going to be using the water in your house then you'll want to consider post tank filtration to remove any sediment or odd taste if this is the case get a plumber in to help hook it up now it's time to install my tank overflow which is this little puppy here it's going to go at the top of the tank and it's going to sit just below this little crease now before i can connect into this i've got this 90 to 80 reducer that is going to be glued on there the outlet into our storm water is sitting out through here so what i've got to do is connect all our downpipe pieces into it what i've done is chopped a section of 80 ml downpipe i'm going to glue that into that elbow and basically i'm just going to make up a couple of elbows with a connection now obviously your scenario will be slightly different but this is how it's going to work here all i have to do is cut a section of pipe to go from a to b make sure that you allow the pipe to go inside your flange at least 30 millimeters on each end so that is 730 that'll go in there but that's all looking pretty good so all i have to do is drill by 95 millimeter hole at the top and silicon that in place okay so i'm just going to use the level just to make sure we get that pipe looking nice and plumb then i'll mark the center of the overflow vertically and horizontally then connect those marks to find the very center of the pipe okay so now it's time to drill our hole and our tank with our 95 millimeter hole saw but make sure it's nice and sharp because these drill bits can bite occasionally and you might want to get some help to hold the tank still while you drill after drilling follow up with a vacuum cleaner of the tank as plastic shards can get into your pump and cause issues okay so the next thing i'm going to do is drill some holes for the pot rivets then apply plenty of silicon to the back of the flange of the elbow and place it hard up against the tank then fix it in place with pot rivets for a super tight joint then connect up the final section of pipe from the overflow to the storm water now if you're not installing an overflow system on your water tank you will need to install a down pipe diverter what this does is let you manually switch from your water tank into your storm water once your water tank is full now this gets installed after your rain head and there's a few options to choose from like the mali twist which is what we installed for our smaller tank which diverts rain water to either the tank or to the storm water with a twist or there's a basic rainwater diverter with a simple open close switch to control the flow okay now it's time to install our water level indicator which is pretty simple i'm going to install this roundabout at the top here so i mean i'm going to put it in line with our outlet down the bottom just to keep it all looking nice and tidy first thing we do we pop our plastic cover off and i'm just going to bring this out level and we're just going to drop the gauge down until that is in line with the top of the outlet because that would indicate empty whilst that's at that position i'm just going to move the empty needle to the black one to indicate empty time to set our full tank indicator so if i just bring this all the way up now my overflow on the other side i know is about 120 millimeters down from there so that would indicate full there so what i'm going to do is move the green needle around to underside of the black which would indicate that the tank is full all i have to do now is drill a 32 millimeter hole in the top using either a spade bit or a hole saw again once you've drilled into the tank make sure you vacuum it out then drop the gauge in screw the head in place pop the cap back on and she's good to go there's heaps of other fittings and useful accessories like mozzie stoppers pest screens and a cow for ventilation each have different installation options so make sure you follow the instructions now it's that fun part of the job where we get to install the water pump the great thing about these once you've got it in position you're going to have fantastic pressure at the end of your hose there are a few pumps to choose from and which one you choose will depend on how you're going to use your water the pump that we've chosen will be fine to deliver water to the garden or to wash the car it'll also suit a small dwelling if you want to use this water inside your house now basically i've got an outlet on my water tank and i need to get water from there to our pump so we can use it out in the garden so a couple of things i'm going to need to install my valve that'll go into the tank i can then turn the water off and that isolates the water from the pump at the moment i've just going to dry fit everything and then we'll come back and put some thread tape on everything once i've cut it and i know everything is exactly right so this is going to screw in here on the top of the pump is my outlet so i'm going to put my garden hose connection out there now my water the intake on the inside here i'll connect that up to the tank with a combination of fittings and elbows now we want our water pipe to go about 15 millimeters onto our plastic piece there so i'll cut a length of pipe 130 millimeters and one at 80 millimeters now with tanks any bigger than 1000 liters it's best to use a flexible hose from the pump to the tank so the vibrations from the pump don't put pressure on the outlet bulkhead and cause issues okay that's all looking pretty good now one thing i am going to do now is take all this apart and put some thread tape on it because we don't want any leaks around the motor then go through and tighten all the connections with a large spanner just before i start the pump up i need to put some water in the primer here that's going to make sure it operates perfectly so just check the instructions on your particular pump as to how much water you put in it then cover the pump with a simple housing to protect it from the rain connect the garden hose to the outlet and you're all set look at that after a good couple of rains your tank will start filling up and you'll have yourself a decent amount of water to use around your house don't forget to subscribe to the mitre 10 youtube channel for more handy content or click here to watch more now

Channel: Mitre 10 New Zealand

Views: 146,789

Keywords: Mitre 10, Mitre 10 Easy As, Easy As, rainwater harvesting, watering, how to, diy, do it yourself, water tank, how to install, How to install a water tank, watertank, install a water tank, harvest rain water, rain water harvesting, off grid, sustainability, gardening, rain, tank, jojo, water, water pump, water filter, rainwater harvesting system, harvesting, water conservation, rainwater collection, water catchment, rainwater tank, rain barrel, diy projects, garden, off grid living

Id: AtM986IJOF4

Length: 16min 11sec (971 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020