Rainwater Collectionand Cross-connections

What is a cross-connection?Why you should care?

What does it means to Rainwater?

Joe WheelerARCSA accredited professional

Board Member ARCSA and TRCAAttendee 1st Rainwater Harvesting Training Camp – Junction, TX

Potential cross-connections

• What are they?– Water providers worse nightmare?– Impediment to the furtherance of rainwater

collection?– A poorly understood hazard?– Are they manageable in the real world?

• Every toilet in the US has a backflow prevention device.

You have potential – Now What?

• Air Gaps– Fool proof? Depends on who you ask– Inexpensive and non-mechanical

• RPZ’s– Fool proof? Only if tested for efficacy (annual)– Costly (~$ 600.00 +)

It is all a matter of maintenance

• Well that and who owns the house next.What will the next owner/repairman do?Most private systems are not well

documented.Regulations alone look good?Reality is possibly the biggest problem.

Man dies from drinking out of the garden hose!

• In Kansas, a man died from drinking out of his garden hose. He had been spraying the yard with insecticide to get rid of the bugs and had connected his garden hose to the spraying device. Unknown to him, during the spraying, the main water pressure had dropped causing the poisoned water to backflow into the hose. It was enough to kill him when he took a drink from the hose. He had contaminated his own water. Over ½ of the nations cross-connections are from unprotected garden hoses!

Soda Machine Blamed In Illness At Restaurant

Managers of the restaurant said that carbonated drinks were the cause of the most recent illness. They blame the soda machine, which they said had backflow problems. That means carbonated water was coming into contact with copper

lines, poisoning customers with copper.