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Product Comparisons
On this page, we ask:
“…how well do other types of tanks available on the Adelaide market meet the needs of householders who want to substantially reduce their reliance on SA Water without compromising the amenity of their outdoor living space?”
In conventional above-ground tanks, there are basically two possibilities: round and slimline. Both types come in plastic and corrugated steel. Regardless, we conclude in the discussion below that round and slimline conventional tanks are unable to simultaneously resolve this contradiction between “form” and “function” for an increasingly large number of households.
This is because changing consumer tastes are resulting in the exterior space around the home being treated as an extension of its interior, carrying pride and prestige and worthy of a higher rate of household investment. At the same time, outside space is becoming scarcer as block sizes decline and house “footprints” become relatively larger. So increasingly, householders have a large investment and an amenity to protect from the intrusion into these spaces from large fixtures with a single unrelated function such as water tanks.
Our innovation, the Squareline Flexi Tank™, uniquely solves this problem, by offering householders enough storage capacity to substantially reduce their reliance on SA Water without compromising their financial and emotional investment in their outdoor living spaces.
Round tanks
To get 15KL or more storage capacity in a single tank, the best our competitors can offer you is a round, country style, water tank made of corrugated iron or plastic as one monolithic structure.
For example, with a diameter of around 2 metres, a 15KL round water tank will take up x square metres of your valuable outside space. These large round tanks need clear site access to install. If there are site access problems then expensive overhead cranes are needed.
So buying a large round water tank might be okay if you live outside the metropolitan area and you’ve got plenty of land to spare to exclusively designate to water storage.
However, if you live in Adelaide (or any other city for that matter), you are likely to have limited space and/ or limited access to install a large rainwater tank. In addition, if you have invested in a landscaped outdoor living and entertaining area it is unlikely that you will want the physical and visual intrusion of such a large monolithic object dominating your view.
Other slimline tanks
If you have limited space or access problems, you might consider the “slimline” shaped water tanks. These are substantially narrower than they are wide and will fit between say the “blind side” house wall and the boundary fence line.
In the slimline shapes however, our competitors can only provide you with up to 4KL capacity in a single tank.
In fact most of the slimline shaped tanks available have much less capacity than 4KL, with 1KL probably the most common. Very few of our competitors will supply slimline tanks with 3 or 4KL capacity. Slimline tanks larger than this, whether plastic or corrugated iron will simply not hold their shape due to inherent design limitations.
Being such small capacity a, single slimline tank from our competitors will not last through the Adelaide summer unless you aim to use it just for, say, drinking water—in which case you might get by with just 1KL capacity.
Multiple, linked slimline tanks
For Adelaide householders serious about reducing their reliance on town water and with limited space, the only slimline option (other than the Squareline Flexi Tank™) is to install more than one of our competitors’ slimline tanks and plumb them together in series. To achieve say 15KL storage in this way will require a row of up to 15 smaller circular or elliptically shaped tanks linked together.
Linking multiple small tanks together can have limited aesthetic appeal, imposing a visual intrusion into your outdoor space in a similar way to the large round tank option, discussed above. And the labour and parts involved can make this an expensive option.
Wasted space
Another disadvantage of linking smaller tanks together is the fact that it is a very inefficient use of space. Our competitors’ slimline tanks are round or elliptical. Round or elliptical shapes will not fit efficiently into rectangular corners and when they are butted together they similarly waste space between each other and between abutting walls. These “dead” areas between tanks and in corners can account for up to 20 per cent of wasted space. So for every 10KL of water stored in this way, up to 2KL of potential water storage is foregone. The wasted spaces and difficult-to-access areas between and behind the tanks can provide a receptacle for accumulating of detritus and provide a home for vermin.
As a high capacity solution (10KL or more), the slimline tanks of our competitors have too many disadvantages to be a practical option
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We service the Adelaide region in South Australia