An aging, overburdened water infrastructure that is becoming increasingly less reliable in providing water to homeowners combined with lower and more erratic rainfalls is forcing South Africa’s city dwellers to become more proactive in ensuring they maintain a constant water supply to their homes. JoJo Tanks is helping residents overcome these challenges with its range of water storage tanks.

The wide range of tanks and tank accessories JoJo supplies provides homeowners wide scope in achieving a water storage solution that is customised to their unique requirements (in terms of cost, complexity, available space, and so on) – whether this be for municipal backup supply; rainwater harvesting; or a fully integrated water storage solution that combines the two.

“These solutions describe not only the applications for which our tanks are being used; they define the various domestic user profiles and priorities of people aiming to become more self-sufficient and less reliant on municipal bulk supply,” explains Grant Neser, Managing Director, JoJo Tanks.

Users frustrated with bulk water delivery issues, such as unplanned interruptions and infrastructural problems, are increasingly banking on JoJo tanks as an emergency backup / buffer water supply solution. While this is normally accompanied by a pump, a growing number of urban dwellers are looking to implement a very basic buffer against interruptions in municipal bulk water supply at the lowest possible cost.

“In this case, a 1 000-litre tank is a viable, cost-effective storage option that can help an average-sized household keep a constant water supply and weather the impact and inconvenience of protracted water outages,” Neser explains. Fitted, ideally on the incoming bulk water feed, before it reaches a home’s internal plumbing, this basic solution can be implemented with relatively easy installation and minimal plumbing requirements.

“Rainwater harvesting is gaining popularity amongst consumers who want to adopt a more environmentally friendly, sustainable lifestyle,” Neser explains.

By collecting the rainwater that falls onto the rooves of their houses and retaining it before it can seep into the water table, households can become more self-sufficient as well as reduce the energy costs associated with the treatment and delivery of an equivalent volume of municipal bulk water, thus reducing their environmental footprint.

Like other water storage systems, rainwater harvesting solutions can be implemented with varying degrees of sophistication (and costs). A basic rainwater harvesting system that can be used for non-potable domestic purposes such as irrigation, filling swimming pools, cleaning cars, and so on, is a relatively low cost solution and relatively easy to implement. These solutions become more complex and expensive when the water needs to be pumped into the house, and thus treated to a potable standard.

“While rainwater harvesting can be implemented with any tank size, solutions that can achieve really meaningful water-saving initiatives require larger storage volumes, linked to larger roof areas, and so the effectiveness of this solution largely depends on the homeowner’s own degree of commitment to rainwater harvesting,” Neser continues.

For this reason, many homeowners are combining rainwater harvesting and municipal backup systems into a fully integrated water storage solution.

The fully-integrated system is a higher-end solution, requiring a pump, level sensors, filtration and UV sterilisation, in addition to any necessary modifications to plumbing and guttering.

“Fully integrated solutions are designed such that bulk municipal water fills the tank to a determined point, with the remaining tank volume reserved for rainwater,” Neser explains. The outflow of this tank is then filtered and sterilised, and is converted to the main water feed of the home.

Guiding homeowners Consumers implementing water storage initiatives need educating about the wide range of options available to them in designing and customising the storage solution they need, as well as the technical difficulty and costs of executing that solution.

“It’s not just about the range of sizes and the colours the tanks are available in, but the range of accessories, fittings and ancillary products that can enable wide customisation in how these storage solutions can be implemented,” Neser explains. “For our channel partners, this means helpful in-store presentations of product ranges that cover targeted storage solutions – a demonstration of the necessary products not just anywhere in a single store, but in a single space within that store.”

By keeping a permanent supply of water on their property, homeowners can become more self-sufficient and less reliant on municipal supply; if they are able to harvest rainwater for domestic use then they will achieve this while also lowering their utility costs.