A bit of honest info. 

Here’s some honest info from me that no matter what brand, how it's made, where it's made, how long the warranty is, what the marketing says, this is what can go wrong with a rainwater tank.  

Again, these things can happen to any tank brand, yes, even Rapid Plas.  

I'll start with one of the worst.  

Dead animal or bird poo 

A dead animal on your roof or in the gutter. I know, it doesn't sound good. If this happens, when it rains, yes something will get into the water. The interesting thing here is with a good filtration system, you can kill every bad thing in the water and still have perfectly good quality drinking water. Of course, if you're using it in the garden, who cares, it could actually be good fertilizer.  

This applies to other things that might get on your roof or in your gutter, like bird poo, this has happened for 100’s of years and does not have to degrade the quality of the water. With a half decent filtration system you can have this sorted.  

Can an animal get into the tank itself and die in there? While almost anything is possible, this is very rare. If the strainer is screwed on properly and the overflow is plumbed in right, there's really no way an animal can get in. With the strainer off, many animals can get in. Frogs are a popular intruder, but perhaps the worst I've heard of is a dead possum. Yeah, keep the strainer on.  

Algae 

Can algae grow in my rainwater tank? Yes, it sure can, and yes this can be dangerous, algae is not good stuff. But there is only one way for algae to get into your tank and grow and that is with sunlight. If no light ever gets into your tank, algae will never form or grow. A good strainer cover will fix this real quick.  

Plants in the strainer 

This one's a pain and does take a bit of maintenance and that is that plants can grow in the strainer. Small dust particles that come off your roof will over time build up in the strainer. Strainer mesh is pretty fine and doesn’t let much through which means if it builds up, a little pile of dirt will form, and all it takes is a seed to land on the roof from a bird, flow down the down pipe and land in the dirt. Already well watered it grows pretty quickly and healthy. It then blocks up the strainer and when it rains the water cannot go through and so it spills out the strainer onto the ground, floods the area, and at worst can wash away your tank base. This is very common and can be sorted with a good cleaning out from time to time. Just unscrew the strainer, give it a good wash out and put it back in.  

There are a few other things, but I'll keep them to a separate article on what can go wrong in the manufacturing of poly tanks.  At Rapid Plas we’ve never had a tank split and explode with water flooding everywhere, but I sure have heard of this happen many times with poly tanks, especially with non-mold in fittings. Find out more in ‘what can go wrong in the manufacturing of a poly tank.  

Written by Roy Firth