Water-Purifying Rain Chains: How To Do It

Home & Garden Blog

Rain chains generally collect rain water and allow it to trickle down to the ground or into a collection pail, whichever you choose. If your intent is to use rain chains to collect rain water for personal use, you will still have to purify it if you are going to drink it. Here are some tips and tricks to purify the rain water your rain chains help you collect.

Active Carbon Filters with Silver

If you can find them, look for active carbon filters that can be cut to fit the cups in your rain chains. Better still, if you can get active carbon filters that incorporate silver filaments for bacterial control, that is what you really want. You could also buy rain chains with pure silver collection cups and silver-dipped chains. That way, the rain slips down past the silver links, through the carbon filters inside the silver cups and is mostly purified by the time it hits your collection tank, bucket, or barrel.

Activated Carbon 

Another purification route involves the use of activated carbon in the form of dust or pellets. This is placed inside the cups of the rain chains. Rain water slips into the cups, filters through the pellets or the dust, and continues a series of filtering as it goes downward through each cup. The only problem with this is that it has a tendency to make your purified water look black, but the discoloration is a sediment that should eventually settle to the bottom of your collection pail, tank, etc.

Ground Potassium Chloride

If you do not like the black or gray appearance of the rain water and the carbon methods, you can grind up potassium chloride tablets and use this powder instead. These tablets are commonly sold as water softener tablets in most stores, so they are easy to get. In addition to purifying the water as the water trickles through the cups and down the chains, it also leaves the water looking clearer and more pure. The only downside is that it will lend a slightly salty aftertaste to the collected rainwater.

Filtering Collection Tanks

If you want to leave the purification to the collection tank or bucket, you can construct a filter to fit over the top of your receptacles. This also tends to take the guesswork out of how much potassium chloride or activated carbon to use in the rain chain cups. The filter over the top of a receptacle works just like a water filter for collecting water at a stream, except that you do not have to travel to the nearest stream to get fresh, purified water.

For more information, contact local professionals like Rain Chains World.

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