Our Water System

Many people, especially city folk who aren't used to living with a well, are intrigued by our water system. This post is to help them understand what I'm talking about when I mention our water tank.

This system was put in place before we bought the house, and it works reasonably well, allthough I would like to make a few changes to increase reliability and availability.

We have a relatively shallow well--only 75 feet deep with the static level at about 20 ft. However, the well, on average, produces only about 4 gallons per minute (as observed during a flow test during a winter home inspection). That's an average of 4 gallons per minute, that is not a continuous flow. In reality, we can pump about 150 gallons out of the well at a much faster rate before it slows to almost nothing, then resumes again for a minute or two a few minutes later. If pumped continuously, the flow will start and stop every few minutes. This is not ideal for on-demand water use in the home. Furthermore, the well pump requires 120V AC and draws quite a bit of current, making it not feasible to run the well pump off of the house battery bank.

To solve this problem, a previous owner installed a 350 gallon storage tank inside the house. The tank is filled via underground pipes while the well pump is powered by the generator. I actually plug a cord into an outlet on the generator to fill the storage tank. This takes about 20 minutes and I only need to do it about every two or three days, and only sometimes more frequently.


Our indoor water storage tank, next to our efficient washing machine.


To provide pressure in the house, a 12V DC pump pressurizes a small tank to 80PSI. When the pressure in that tank gets down to about 40PSI, the pump pressurizes the tank again to 80PSI. The pressure pump runs off of the house battery bank and provides adequate pressure for household water use at conventional water taps through out the house, including shower, toilets, sinks, washing machine, and outdoor spicket. Hot water is provided with a propane-burning instant (tankless) hot water heater which uses electricity only to light the propane and to power the thermostat. So far it has worked well.

Pressure pump and tank

I would like to make some improvements. The underground pipes are not deep enough to prevent freezing in the winter. This may be because there is a lot of granite in the ground in the vicinity of the house. But it's also because the water pipes enter the well above ground where there is definitely the potential for freezing. I'd like to have these pipes enter the well casing under ground. I'd then like to put a hand pump on top so that we can still get water if something should happen to the well pump.



The insulation on these pipes is no match for the cold
winters here. They need to be underground.



I'd like to replace the 120VAC well pump with a DC pump that can run on power produced by solar panels. That way when the generator breaks down again, we can still get water out of the well.

And finally, I'd like to add some sort of water-level detection mechanism that can turn the well pump on when the water level in the storage tank gets to a certain level and then off again when it's full.