Advice for pond filters and soft water

[Lisak1]

@sissy - I wasn't being rude. I just don't share your fear of things in the gutters is all. You accept walking barefoot as a norm (and I only know that because you've mentioned it here before) so I used it as an example. Many would find that to be risky behavior because you can indeed get tetanus from the ground, among other things. I'm barefoot as often as possible, but I've been warned all my life of the all the horrible things that will befall me because of my bare feet touching the ground. I just don't live my life in fear of things.

Like I said, if you don't want gutter water going in your pond that's your choice. Just sharing a different viewpoint.

 

[GBBUDD]

Have you ever cleaned a gutter with built up gunk .Then you would never know ..The other house I bought was liike that and man the smell was bad ..Ask anyone who bought a house that the gutters were not cleaned and the answer will be the sane ,it stunk .My first house and second house up in NJ were the same way ,the gutters were never cleaned

there are so many gutter guards out there today from stainless screens to aluminum that closes off the top of the gutter only leaving a small gap where water can get by into the gutter but leaves and needles slide off the roof. as far as the shingles by the time the roof starts to fall apart it's mainly small aggregates of rock with a little dry asphalt stuck to it by that time there's not much leaching off into the waters.

 

[MitchM]

Regarding roof runoff, the amount of heavy metals in the water is low, but still detectable.
Here's a study that gets into more detail:
https://fortress.wa.gov/ecy/publications/documents/1403003.pdf

 

[Lisak1]

Interesting stuff. I didn't read the entire report - I wonder, did they compare the heavy metals in the rainwater that fell from the sky, too? I'll go back and read some more!

 

[Lisak1]

This was also interesting:

"Most notably, concentrations of total arsenic, copper, and zinc were significantly higher in the following roofing panels than in the glass control panels: treated cedar shakes (arsenic and copper), copper (copper), Zincalume® (zinc), and EPDM (zinc)."

 

[Lisak1]

I think this answers my question partially:

"Contaminants associated with wet and dry air deposition comprise a portion of roof runoff. For example, Sabin et al. (2004) found that more than 50% of the metals in stormwater runoff in Los Angeles was associated with air deposition. In a Swiss study, the ratio of the concentrations of metals in runoff compared to wet and dry atmospheric deposition ranged from as high as 27:1 for copper to less than 1:1 for zinc, depending on the roofing type and the location (Zobrist et al., 2000)."

 

[addy1]

lol I am letting you read for me!

 

[GBBUDD]

" Only new roofing materials (i.e., un-aged materials provided and installed by the manufacturers and their contractors at the beginning of the study) were used. " There are too many variables not addressed for a full analysis. duration of the rain., snow, ice. as they did say age was all new materials. So it would lead me to believe on some products such as aluminum or new is better then old as with tin. but assuming asphalt would be worse at new then it would at old

 

[Lisak1]

They do acknowledge age of roofing material as a factor to be considered: "Odnevall Wallinder et al. (1998) conducted an extensive study of corrosion rates of zinc roofs in three different locations in Europe. Zinc roofs ranged in age from new to 145 years old. They reported that the runoff loading was similar regardless of age." There's a chart that lists roofs of various ages that they tested, mainly metal roofs.


Duration and intensity of rainfall was also addressed: "He et al. (2001) reported a relationship between precipitation intensity and loading from copper roofs. At low intensity rain (drizzle or 1 mm/hr), copper loading increased more rapidly with accumulated volume than for light rain (8 mm/hr) or moderate rain (20 mm/hr). The 8 mm/hr and 20 mm/hour intensities showed no differences. This is in line with the work by Odnevall Wallinder and Leygraf (2001) who reported that copper dissolution rates were a function of relative humidity, and drizzle is often associated with highly humid air. Additionally, these authors demonstrated that copper and zinc runoff loading in terms of ug/m2 of roof was a function of precipitation depth."

Jungnickel et al. (2008) identified a relationship between intensity and duration. They reported substantially lower peak concentrations of biocides leached from a 40 mm/hr precipitation intensity within 2 hours (0.1 ug/L) than leached from a 0.3 mm/hr intensity (0.9 to 5.2 mg/L) in synthetic rain simulated runoff trials."

 

[JohnHuff]

I think the only way I would use roof runoff is if I directed the water to a tank where it would be mechanically filtered to catch and remove debris, then cycled through a system where it would be bio-filtered with regular media.