Yesterday I enjoyed a long, lingering hot shower, the first I’ve had in quite literally years. I was looking forward to doing it again today – in fact I was thinking of bringing booze and making a sybaritic afternoon of it.
Then reality struck in the form of a phone call from Ian who left yesterday morning for an extended absence.
“Hey, Joel! I forgot to turn off the water to the fruit trees. You might want to check the tank.”
!!!
Between yesterday’s lingering etc and my own garden, I used quite a lot of water myself yesterday. So the boys and I went up the ridge to check the tank. Bone dry – gravity doesn’t need the sun for electricity, but defying it does so gravity has won.
Sigh – it’s rare days like this that point out the single big advantage of the more common water systems of our neighbors. They use AC pumps that require so much amperage they have to run generators to fill their cisterns – but they can fill them at 40 or 50 GPM. We use a DC pump that can be powered by a single solar panel – but it delivers water at a relative trickle. So it’s really important not to do things like leave a hose running for more than 24 hours.
Ah, the joys of off-grid life…
My last place in the Colorado foothills had little ground water and that was 600. down but it did have a spring at the bottom of the cliff I lived on. I was on-grid so what could be simpler than pumping from a lower tank to an upper tank in the house? Know what? Homemade systems really suck.
My off-grid place now has a pro installed well powered by 6 panels and a battery bank / inverter. So, so much better to just turn on the tap and not worry about running out of water half way through a shower.
Live and learn
I’m lucky enough to have a spring uphill from my building location. *UN*lucky in that it’s over 1000 linear feet away and across two roads. (well..one road that switch-backs)
I pondered this for many days and settled on using a ram-pump off the spring to pump even *further* uphill in order to avoid needing to cross the road, as well as provide extra elevation for municipal levels of water pressure via gravity (51 PSI if the math noodles out correctly).
Doing all this will increase the overall distance I need to lay (and BURY!) pipe by about 40%, but once it’s up and running I’ll never have to worry about not having power to run the pump that keeps the cistern filled.
On a side note… do you suppose we could get another update on your poly-drum septic system? I’m thinking about doing something similar and real world performance evaluation data is golden when it comes to making such decisions.
“I’ll never have to worry about not having power to run the pump that keeps the cistern filled.”
Well, unless the water table drops to a point where the spring no longer springs…
Never say never. It makes Murphy mad. 🙂 And then he has lots of ways to mess with you.
I’ve been thinking about that myself, Oh Nivenish One. Let me check one thing and I’ll get back to you on it. (the short version is it works just fine, but it’s about time to measure, um, something and determine exactly how fine it’s working.)