Using an old cistern for rain harvesting...

Well, I think the other thread died, and it was a bit of a hijack anyway, so I thought I'd make this its own thread:

I have something in the neighborhood of a 1000 gallon cistern outside my house. It's concrete tank, buried so the top is just a few inches above the local ground level. About 4x8 is visible, and I haven't tested the depth. It appears that it was the original water source for the house, then later became an adjunct to a well, then got turned off. I assume the pump is still in the tank, because all of the indoor parts are still there. No, I do NOT use this water!

It's got water in it - I have rain gutters directed into it right now. Someone at some point chopped a crude hole in the roof of it and ran a pipe in from the gutter runoff. I've kept that in place so far.

I'm thinking of reviving it for irrigation use only. I plan to do a complete re-working of our water system, maybe later this year. The line coming in from my well currently enters the basement at the highest corner, and that's where the equipment sits, so any leaks would run diagonally across the basement floor to the sump. Brilliant! The line from the cistern comes in from another corner, and feeds into a dual-tank filtering apparatus (of unknown type), then into the rest of the plumbing system. It is still connected (plumbing, anyway -- the electric feed has been disconnected), but the valves appear to be in the bypass position. It's obvious that the current well is the newcomer, as it is tapped into older pipe. One pressure tank.

Since it's all old equipment, and the cistern is still part of the system (though shut off), I want to get rid of it all and start fresh.

I plan to run the working well line around the perimeter of the basement (I;ll need 2 or 3 90s to do it) and put the new equipment near the sump. Water heater and any filtering/treatment equipment will also go there. I'll use an irrigation pump for the cistern water if I go that route.

Any thoughts on this, gents?

We had a similar issue at our house, the original water source is a pump dangling in a concrete cylinder on end where a spring pushes water up out of the ground near a creek bed.

That ran into the house and into the pipes for the house. We have added the meter and now have the water district water for in house use.

That transition left a good bit of old and convoluted piping in its wake. I have slowly reordered it, I guess my situation is easier as the equipment and piping is the right spot, the copper piping and pvc just have needed some straightening out.

If I had to do it again, I would consider using PEX and getting the fittings to use that in all my new work in the house. I may still start doing that as some of the work that has been done needs redoing ( one bathroom is taking water from before the water softener so the toilet and sink gets hard water deposits, the bathrooms run off 1/2 pipe instead of 3/4 ) etc....

Decide ahead of time where you want things, what materials ( copper/pvc/pex ) you are going to use, plan lots of shut offs ( use the new 1/4 turn ball valve shutoffs, they are more reliable and much easier to use ) plan where you want the drain outlets to drain down the pipes when you need to do repairs...

I have such a snarl now it would be nice to just send the wife and daughter on a week long road trip and just redo it all....