Smelly House Water

I would call a water treatment company like "Culligan " or a local water treatment company and have them tell you what equipment you need to make this water safe for drinking.

The smell is hydrogen sulfide . Causes are bacterial action in decomposing organic material or bacterial action breaking down inorganics such as sulfate. One can smell less than a ppm of H2S. It is not harmful at low levels where it can easily be smelled. In any case the bacteria need to be killed . Bleach (chlorates ) is the most common way to do that ; it needs to be controlled to not add other smells to the water.

A rain collection system will always have organic matter in it, mostly from bird crap and leaves on the roof.

If it's conventional asphalt shingle roof it will also have various petrochemicals in it.

One way to reduce this is to throw away the first 50 gallons of every rain event.

• Take a 45 gallon food grade barrel. Remove the top.
• Near the bottom drill a 1/2" hole and stuff it with a synthetic sponge.
• Cut a disk of styrofoam to fit inside the barrel.
• Put port in the top of the side of the barrel and connect to your cistern.
• Install a screen over the port.
• Screen the top of the barrel.
• Allow the roof water to fall on the screen.

In normal use this is what happens.

• it starts to rain.
• The barrel starts to fill.
• As the barrel fills the styrofoam disk floats. Water coming thorugh has to flow around the disk.
• Once the water level reaches the output port, water flows out the port, but the disk still separates the initial dirty water from the later cleaner water.
• The sponge in the bottom leaks, and over the next day drains the barrel for the next rain event.

Tuning: Smaller hole/tighter sponge slows down the reset. May want to do this if you get frequent light rains.

Maintenance: Clean the screen when you pass them. Clean the port screen 2-3 times a year.

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A system like this is still asking for trouble. Dead squirrel or bird on the roof? Yuck. I would consider either a chlorine system for the tank, and bring in your drinking/cooking water from an outside source, or at least putting the kitchen cold water tap on a UV sterilizer lamp.

Here we can send a water sample to public health for either a bio-contamination test (coliform bacteria) or a chemical test (crud in the water) I would suggest doing a coliform test with the first batch of water after a long dry period, and a chemical test whenever some major aspect of the system has changed. New roof, new tank, new sealant somewhere.

If it's a shingle roof, when time to replace consider a metal roof instead. Asphalt is worst for leachates during the first year or so.