When I put in the catchment system, I connected it with garden hose parts. I didn’t want a hardpipe connection to the tank, as the tank and garage need to move separately in an earthquake. The whole purpose was to connect to the washing machine, and it, too, uses garden hose connectors. I find garden hose fittings available (even on this island!) and easy to work with. They’re also inexpensive, and I wasn’t sure my crazy idea was even going to work.
It worked great, and we’ve been enjoying our catchment-fed laundry (and emergency water back up system) for well over a year. This morning, though, as she was leaving, HA said “there’s a little puddle on the garage floor.” Uh-oh.
I moved the cruft that had gathered around the plumbing, and as soon as I moved a pipe water started spraying out of the manifold. I unplugged the water pump, turned off the supply valve at the tank, and investigated. I removed the manifold, and found that the threaded collar on the intake nipple had cracked. We caught it just in time — the puddle was small, but it wouldn’t have stayed that way.
By the time I discovered the problem, HA had gone to town and had started to head back. She was willing to go back into town and get a new manifold. She brought it home and I installed it with little trouble.
I also read some reviews of that particular model (it was an exact replacement for the one I removed) and learned that they commonly fail after about a year. It was all they had, though, and I wanted to get us back on line quickly.
I’ve ordered a brass manifold, which I’ll store next to the plastic one so it will be available immediately when the new one fails.
As plumbing goes, the job went smoothly and quickly. Had I used hardpipe, such a repair would have been a lot more difficult. On the other hand, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have broken in the first place. There’s often a tradeoff between making something really durable, and making it easily repairable. I tend to err on the side of repairability because, in my experience, no matter how tough you build a system it will still break eventually. I cringe at houses, for example, where much of the infrastructure is buried in concrete. Protected, sure, but a disaster when the inevitable failure does occur.
—2p