the well is in

re: head, water pressure & the cistern:

1psi - 2.3' of head.  

Want 70 psi (the max most plumbing is designed for) ...  OH THAT'S WHY WATER TOWERS ARE SO TALL! 161'

(dig around, find some topo maps ...)

The well location is, at best making all sorts of assumptions about 40' contour lines, 80' above Ant Village.  Probably closer to 30'.  (based on topos y'all).  Pumping the water to the highest point on the lab (I think that's going to be above Dances with Pigs) it would be possible to reach well over 160' head.

Q: Is it worth it??

A:  I doubt it.  There aren't a lot of shower heads & kitchen faucets around.  We're talking about filling buckets and such, maybe some irrigation (yeah, doubtful.  its a maybe, more like a maybe cubed).  Its a lot of extra pipe - looks like 1500' minimum.  And now a pump that is rated for 300' lift in the well plus ~160' head.  And you might want to run a dedicated line from the well to the cistern, with a separate line coming back from the cistern (not sure, but I'm building a worst case scenario here).  And longer electrical wire runs.

The alternative is a booster pump - there must be such a thing at basecamp.  More power to consider in the solar situation, but  I'd think it a fair tradeoff vs 1500' feet of additional pipe/tube and assorted complications.

Ryan Adobe wrote:
What are you planning to use to pipe that water around the property?

Perhaps it betrays my humble origins but I was imagining a dozen wooden shoulder yokes so folks could easily haul their water buckets to and fro.  

But then again, I grew up in a pre-electric, pre-plumbing town where this (seventy-foot hand-dug well, large redwood water tank on upper floor, windmill-powered pump) was the municipal water source, so there was a fair bit of bucket-carrying going on.  

Congratulations on your well! Having had 4 major water outages myself in 2020 on our farm, and doing all the repairs myself, I am very in tune with water usage right now.
The idea of a cistern that overflows to a pond is a great idea. A means of capturing all the water for various uses is something a surprising number of people don't think about.
I'm not sure how things are in your neck of the woods, but where I live there are regulations that say only a licensed potable well installer can work on your well. Incidentally our system does not fit in any of the states definitions so I do my own work. That might be worth looking into if you haven't already.
Pitless adapter. Worth it.
What I do recommend is thinking through the system you want to end up with, and build that into whatever you do now. If that's confusing, what I mean is think through the system and add stub outs and extra connection points to make integrating an extra cistern, or another pump, or whatever, so when you need to make a change down the road it's really easy to do. I did that when I rebuilt the farmhouse water several years ago and I was thanking myself for it several times this past year.
Also, I recommend getting the pump you will grow into now. It's going to be the hardest to replace down the road. Adding solar panels, batteries or controllers at the top are world's easier than pulling 300' of pipe and and a pump.
Don't skimp on the pump. Looking forward to seeing what direction you go!

My well is 352 feet deep and at first produced 5 to 6 gallons per minute. This settled down to 2 to 3 gpm so I put in an 1800 gallon cistern. This is adequate for watering the garden and keeping three or four visiting kids happy. Interesting that at 300 feet we brought up petrified wood so there was a forest down there at some point. Neighbors who went 500+ feet have 10 to 12 gpm.

Water security is a major concern for me so I am looking for an off the grid way to ensure supply. I would love a wind mill that would keep the cistern full. We don't have wind every day but we sit above a draw and wind does often come up from the Kootenay river. People keep telling me that I need solar as wind is fickle but that's expensive. I would like to have a solar setup adequate for all of my needs, I use around 450 kwh/month, but I keep waiting for Elon Musk to come up with better batteries (that I can afford).

Now I am looking for a resource that can tell me how much wind we actually have, the Rockies not withstanding. There is a company in Texas that make beautiful efficient wind Mills. I would have to find someone to install one and it would be a risk without electrical or solar backup. In the meantime my son has purchased for me a lovely hand pump that will bring water from the cistern to my pressure tanks should we have an extended power outage. So who among you has had experience with windmills or can point me to other resources? Thanks for anything you all can come up with.

Wondering what type of hand pump Roberta put in?  Is your cistern made of cement?  I don't know too much about cisterns as in this area people set up poly holding tanks above ground, but I'd sure like to avoid the petro-products for drinking water.  What is the name of the windmill company that was mentioned in Texas?  

My cistern is made of heavy plastic, polymer? It's buried enough to keep it from freezing. All pipes are underground and as I live underground, earth sheltered, there is a minimal drop from the cistern to the pressure tanks in my garage.

The hand pump is the Excelsior E2 from Rintaul's Hand Pumps in Owen Sound Ontario. It was discussed in another thread here having to do with being off grid, as on the occasion of some natural disaster. Based on that discussion I also bought a Voyager solar crank radio by Kaito. It comes in several colors (mine is yellow), and it connects to NOAA for weather alerts. It has a lantern type light and will charge my phone.

The windmill people are Ironman Windmill Company. The windmills come in several sizes (and maybe colors as well) and are very efficient. You can activate even some of the larger ones just by blowing on them.

So let's hear it for elegant engineering. I daily whisper thanks to Elon Musk and reaffirm that I believe.