The Opinionated Bastard

So with all the flooding, our cistern/water got contaminated with bacteria. (Or they were always there and we tested and found ‘em.) So I’ve spent the last week and a half disinfecting our cistern. Given how hard it was to find information on the internet on how to do this, I figured I’d archive the results. (Some people are still stumbling across my “how to trap a skunk” write up. ) First, I’ll tell you how you should do it, then I’ll tell you how I did it. It turns out that as little as 1-3 parts per million of chlorine is enough to disinfect your cistern so basically, all you need do is add chlorine 1 cup at a time until it starts to register. 1-3 parts per million of chlorine is enough to disinfect, without you having to worry about drinking it, that’s pretty much the same amount that’s in tap water. As the chlorine interacts with the existing bacteria, it will go away though, so the amount you need varies. 1. Go to Home Depot, buy a set of pool test strips. You don’t want the little chemistry set, that’s a pain in the butt. You want the bottle of test strips that test for a set of 6 different things at once, two of which you actually care about. 2. Buy some real Chlorine Bleach. 3. Go out to your cistern, and add about 1 cup of bleach to start out for every 1000 gallon capacity of your cistern. 4. Wait about 20 minutes. 5. Run the water in the house for a bit so you have “new” water. 6. Run some water into a plastic cup, dip the test strip in and check it. 7. No reaction? add another cup of bleach go back to step 4. 8.>Reaction? Good. You’re done. You can scrub the top of the cistern with the water, or top off the cistern to get any bacteria hanging out at the top.< Then there’s how I did it.