What water systems are on your homesteads?

Just curious to see what water systems your using. I know it’s a VERY broad topic but it will be fun.

Water systems in the sense of everything. Do you guys have wells? Do you use cisterns? Does your well use electric or is off the grid? Are you on solar? Do you have a hand water pump?  
Have you found better ways to water animals with automatic Water bucket?
Do you have a Rainwater collection, for your garden?

With the craziness happening right now the number one thing is water. We all can get by being skinner but the homestead has to have water. For our family’s, animals and some gardens.

I’ve been wanting to put in a hand pump for a back up for my electric well. I hate the idea of having to haul water. But if it came down to it with the bamboo In the back was thinking of just making a cheap bamboo piping that goes down hill to certain crops and animal water troughs.

Has anyone seen any cool water systems that they wanna try or look into more?
Do you have a perfect system for your region that works?

Yes we have been thinking whilst building our Tiny Home about water currently we have a 15L filtered ceramic drinking water in the house and a tank out the back that we use a hand pump from the dam and creek when it is up. We love the idea of relying less on petrol/diesel and more on the simple physics.

In terms of watering the garden we have rainwater collection that runs from our roof along the fence that feeds into irrigation tubes throughout our garden beds. It works quite a treat as we can either collect into the tank or open up and let the watering of the garden happen automatically via gravity. I love the bamboo idea... if any of the pipes happen to crack I will definitely just replace with bamboo... how fantastic!

I have a well. I'm off grid. The well pumps only during the day up to two tanks totally 5500 gallons. The water is gravity fed to the houses. I have some rainwater collection but will be adding lots more as money becomes available. The property has large structures so the limiting factor is the cost of tanks. The property has two ponds and a seasonal stream. I'm looking at using these for animals. Unfortunately my well is deep, 300+ feet so a hand pump is out of the question. I do have a second well that doesn't produce well and have considered developing it with a stand alone solar drip pump, we will see.

We have 40 acres in southern Colorado, in "gas country", with all kinds of oil/gas exploration & production. We are off-grid, as it was going to be about $30k to bring the grid to us. We are off-water, as every well in our area seems destined to go dry, produce bad water, etc. (due to oil/gas, fracking, and other madness).

Every once in a while, water from a well catches fire ... but that's another story, and part of "why it's fun to be a volunteer firefighter" in our area.

To be off-water (no utility provided water), we just set up a storage tank in an insulated utility shed, plumbed it to the house, and haul water with a similar tank. Because we conserve water so well, we haul about once a month or thereabouts; less than 300 gallons/month. The process is down to a fine art ... takes me about an hour. Luckily, this water comes from a lake high in the mountains, so a good long-term source with our area having 1st use of it.

We actually have a 200' well, which produces water that contains "sulfur" (smells when it is heated); still working out the details & infrastructure to clean and store that water without massive/expensive filtering systems. And, get this done before the well runs dry. This would become a 3rd source of water for us, behind rainwater. But, we'll always haul ...

Everything started with reduced water use ... we started out using very little, and 5 years later, have ended up the same way. Whereas, when we were in a city, we used 1000's of gallons per month.

This subject has been very much on my mind this year, so thank you for posting!  I only have 0.42 acres so my world is smaller than most.

I'm on "rural water" which is basically city water, but a different account I guess.  It is sourced from the mountain, captured in two large reservoirs up on top and ditched and piped down many miles to the water treatment plant.  Lots of chlorine etc must be added since one gets a nasty slug/smell and red eyes from fumes on occasion if the shower is used very early in the morning.  Otherwise, a fine pink iron glaze occurs in white sinks and showers.  But it's mostly on demand and although the monthly cost has increased $15 for some reason since last year, it works for most things and costs less than electricity right now to run a pump.

I have a 7 foot dug well that came with the property which apparently was 'the place to go' for dog crap according to one of my renters a few years ago. I cleaned out what I could and then shrunk the casing from 3' diameter to a 10" pipe that I bottom-capped, perforated and surrounded with various sizes of gravel.  It needs to be pumped dry at the first of the year and sometimes has water in it when needed for a few weeks each summer.  Power is right next to it, so I'll keep it for now.

I also have a 250 foot well behind the house that once fed the house.  Static water is at the surface, about 6 inches above ground, for most of the year, unless I pump it down (pretty fast rebound) and has the common algae at top, but I just don't know if I will spend the $500 for the solar pump that I found on Amazon or put a manual pump on it.  I have done 3 years of 'hemming and hawing' over it and now is the time.  (JENENSERIES Pump 270W DC 24V Solar Water Pumps, Max head 262ft,7.9GPM Flow，3 inch Solar deep well submersible Pumps with MPPT controller float switch kits for home or farm - JENENSERIES Pump 270W DC 24V Solar Water Pumps, Max head 262ft,7.9GPM Flow，3 inch Solar deep well submersible Pumps with MPPT controller float switch kits for home or farm  4.5 out of 5 stars   $549.99   Size : 270W-Head-262ft) reference from Amazon.  I will be watching this thread for other ideas as I have zero solar experience except for my 4Patriots power pack that is plug and play.

I bought 2 used IBC (is that right?) totes from the airport ($40/each) that had deicer in them.  They may take a while to clean out but snowmelt is abundant and I will haul the wash to the hazmat retaining ponds at the landfill I guess, after a water test.  They are on the trailer to assist with that later.

For drinking I have 2 new blue 50 gallon water barrels, many 6 gal totes and my 'were empty' canning jars full of filtered water - til I need them again, anyway.

I'm not satisfied and will be putting gutters on the rest of my outbuildings and obtaining some additional barrels for those, as I foresee our water bill skyrocketing since I've quadrupled my gardens and fruit and nut trees from last summer.  It's just under half an acre but food forest it will be.

I live near an old oxbow of a creek that has a grizzly history of skeletal remains of murdered people, lots of dead animals, and yet people still eat the fish down here.  Ick.  I guess I'm a weenie.  I don't trust landfill compost either.  We shall see.

By the way, I also love the bamboo idea.  Do those nodal walls on the inside assist in filtration?  That would be cool.  

Keep commenting everyone!  I need to learn!  Thank you!!

HaiLan Zhou wrote:Yes we have been thinking whilst building our Tiny Home about water currently we have a 15L filtered ceramic drinking water in the house and a tank out the back that we use a hand pump from the dam and creek when it is up. We love the idea of relying less on petrol/diesel and more on the simple physics.

In terms of watering the garden we have rainwater collection that runs from our roof along the fence that feeds into irrigation tubes throughout our garden beds. It works quite a treat as we can either collect into the tank or open up and let the watering of the garden happen automatically via gravity. I love the bamboo idea... if any of the pipes happen to crack I will definitely just replace with bamboo... how fantastic!

Bamboo such a cheap and fast resource that I do suggest getting some. But that being said, make sure you get the bigger to medium size bamboo. I was lucky enough to be able to get medium sized Bamboo. The small bamboo can absolutely work, but I’ll always gonna suggest bigger lol so it’s a real dual purpose for other things. Especially building furniture. Bamboo will last a long time, as you can tell with outside furniture, you do have to make sure that the bamboo is dried and heated.
Like you guys have i really really really want a water collection system from my roof. Don’t have gutters nor do I have the money for right now, so One day will be using the medium sized bamboo whenever I get to it. Which it this point will be a year from now.
Have seen a water collection system nearby here where the guy puts all of his water in a huge tank from his roof, it’s solely for his plants mainly bananas, so that gives him room to not have it be purified. He literally said it doesn’t matter if lizards fall and decompose.the leaves little branches and such is a good thing for his plants.

Stacy Witscher wrote:I have a well. I'm off grid. The well pumps only during the day up to two tanks totally 5500 gallons. The water is gravity fed to the houses. I have some rainwater collection but will be adding lots more as money becomes available. The property has large structures so the limiting factor is the cost of tanks. The property has two ponds and a seasonal stream. I'm looking at using these for animals. Unfortunately my well is deep, 300+ feet so a hand pump is out of the question. I do have a second well that doesn't produce well and have considered developing it with a stand alone solar drip pump, we will see.

The best thing you can do is be off grid lol. That’s really good that the water is gravity fed. And I get where prior construction can really inhibit the waterworks of the farm.
It is really good you have two ponds. I would love to put A few on the lot I’m at.
And I think that’s a very good idea if the Solar drip pump works. I’ve never heard of that but I will look into it now. It’s amazing how little water you can get out of a tube, and it actually amount up to a lot throughout the day. But you have a really good set up with Two ponds.