Luca Clarke

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for your informative reply.

You're correct, if the house was connected to the spring directly then it wouldn't supply enough water for say a shower, or the washing machine. It might if I did a bit of work on the spring but at the moment it's just completely open (no box) with the pipe submerged about 1" in water (we do metric here but I'll try with imperial as this site seems mostly American). The well acts as the reservoir, storing water for domestic use. It isn't mortared, so its just rocks set in soil, so I think it just naturally overflows into the surrounding area (not ideal but thats how they set it up).

At some point I'd like to get rid of the well and have a food grade bucket (either buried or elevated) slightly further up the hill, which would be cleaner and also introduce a bit more pressure into the pipe running into the house (water pressure in the house isn't great) but that's a job for next year.

At the minute I actually have it set up the way you've proposed, and there is a trickle of water coming out. I'd guess maybe a litre per minute, maybe less, but I haven't measured. When I made the post the other day I thought that wouldn't be enough but I have been monitoring the well and it has been full the last few times I checked, I will continue to keep an eye on it.

In that case, I will avoid a ball valve for sure as the last thing I want is a frozen pipe in the middle of winter.

I guess my concern is the water flow is so little that it might freeze, is that a possibility? Obviously the water comes out of the spring at a certain temperature year round, and will be constantly moving until it reaches the well, I'll try and get a video to show the flow rate.

I'm from the UK and this is only our third winter in Sweden and our first in a house we own (which is a lot more off grid than the last few places we lived), I'm still getting to grips with the long cold winters we have here as in the UK temperatures just don't get that low for this to be a concern (and also spring water systems are very rare!)

I'll post a video tomorrow, hopefully you can let me know what you think

Thanks again!

Hey all,

Posted recently about my problems with the gravity spring at the house we moved into recently. https://permies.com/t/193100/gravity-spring-water-house#1599631

It turned out to be two separate problems - air in the pipes of the house, and air in the pvc pipe running from the spring to the well. Fixed the air in the pipes in the house but I'm still trying to work out the connection between the spring and the well.

The spring is about 150m up from the well, and the pipe runs downhill the whole way to the well. My problem is that the strength of the gravity is so great that when I prime the pipe at the spring (e.g. pump water down it until it is full of water), the gravity alone sucks so much water down that the spring is depleted before it has a chance to fill up. This is a problem because a) I don't need that much water flow and b) when the spring depletes, the pipe sucks air. The pipe is 1 1/4" black PVC pipe. Normally the pipe is submerged at the well but this happens even when it isn't submerged in the well.

There is a metal T-junction about 3/4 of the way down the run, connecting the pvc pipe. Would it be an acceptable solution to fit a ball valve and control the flow using the valve? So it would be maximum pressure all the way to the valve, then I could control how much water to actually release into the well. I can't see any problem with this in the warmer months, but we live in central Sweden so expect cold winters way below freezing, I'm trying to work out if that would be an issue? The pipe would be at quite a high pressure (until the valve) but the water should be constantly moving.

Aside from that, is this a common problem e.g. force of gravity too strong for the water supply? Is there another way to remedy it? I'm not sure how they had it set up when I moved here but it was more of a trickle than I'm able to reproduce, perhaps they introduced some amount of air into the pipe to limit the amount of water coming down?

Thanks

Hello everyone,

Thank you for all your messages. After typing this out I did a bit more research and a bit more thinking. I'm now of the opinion that this isn't a demand system at all. I think I accidentally created suction between the well and the spring when that isn't required. Most gravity fed spring systems don't require suction right? They work purely on gravity alone, carrying the water down to where it needs to go. We are completely downhill from both the spring and the well, so gravity alone should be fine. There hasn't been a drought, it's been a very wet summer and a normal autumn here in Sweden with plenty of water. We don't have to worry about anything upstream from the spring, its near the top of a peak which is completely uninhabited, in fact we are on the edge of a village and in that direction there aren't any houses (apart from the odd cabin) for miles around.

I think actually the spring slowly fills up the well from gravity alone, and it overflows naturally. I was, in effect, pumping water down into the well causing a) the spring to run dry and b) the well to overflow quite dramatically. It's a very simple well, it hasn't been mortared, it's just stones set into earth. So the water should naturally just either leak out through the gaps, or overflow when left to its own devices / being fed slowly. Most gravity springs work on the basis that the quantity of water from the spring alone is not enough to meet the demand of the house, right? So you have storage downhill, and this fills up with water because although the water flow is relatively slow, it is constant. Then the actual demand is met by the storage (whether a well, a plastic barrel etc). which also works on the principle of gravity. But the two systems are separate right? You could in theory go up to the well (or barrel) and fill this up manually, and the system should still work, right? I'm partly typing this out just to make sense of it.

This does makes sense in the context of the house because whilst the spring is quite far uphill from the house, the well itself is probably only 50m from the house, and the bottom of the well isn't much higher than say the roof of the house - which would explain why the water pressure in the house is not great.

I think I have two separate problems. There is air in the pipes in the house / the pipes that run to the house. And there is air / a siphon in the pipe that runs downhill from the spring to the well. The pipe does just run downhill but it isn't buried and there is nothing securing it to the ground so it is just sitting on the ground, so there are sections that could go up slightly just from that. I'm thinking that's the problem with that side. And in terms of the house, air probably got in because the well ran dry.

I bought some proper fittings for the water pump I have, and my next plan is to pump water from the well into the pipe that runs to the house, and try and completely clear any air in the system. Then I'll submerge the pipe back at the bottom of the well. If the water in the house then works fine I will know that was the problem and I can try and fix the supply from the spring next.

Does that all make sense?

So just to add some extra detail, one thing I tried to do to fix the situation was that I went up to the spring with a power drill pump. (Before going up, I made sure the bottom end of the pipe was submerged in water at the well end). Then I started pumping water manually down the pvc pipe, using the spring as the source. Eventually the pipe starting sucking of its own volition, and doing so quite violently. I would compare it to the force of a hoover, it was strong enough to suck small rocks in and leaves, and if I put my hand over, it would suck my fingers in like a hoover. In fact it was sucking so much water down that it was using up the spring before it had time to recover. I'd say for every minute of sucking water, I'd have to block up the pvc pipe and let it recover for 3 minutes. I blocked it up by literally putting a rubber glove near it and the suction would suck in the glove, much like a hoover. Then repeat the process. Eventually after a long time repeating this I got the well full, but then it started to overflow, which is not what I want. I think what would be fine is a slow trickle, and instead I was sucking probably a few gallons down a minute.

I had thought that in order to create a link between the spring and the well, this is what I needed to do but I think I have misunderstood the physics perhaps?

Hi all,

We moved into a semi off grid house this summer in central Sweden (electricity but composting toilet and spring water system). The house has water fed by a spring which is approx 150 meters (perhaps more, I haven't measured) uphill from us. There is a line of PVC pipe set into the spring that runs downhill (above ground) about 100m to a stone well about 1.5m deep. This well acts as water collection. There is another PVC pipe, with a net filter, submerged in the well (you can access this length of pipe with some rope). This then runs underground to the house and feeds a kitchen sink, a bathroom sink, a shower, a washing machine and an outside tap. Water pressure is okay but not great, you can shower but its not what you'd call satisfying

I want to clarify that the system worked fine when we moved in.

But we've been having some problems recently. About 1.5 weeks ago water stopped coming out of the taps. I went up to the well and it was empty. Still plenty of water at the spring (which I think itself could be improved upon but right now I just need consistent water). Okay so we are living out of gallon containers until I fix this, that's okay we've done that for a spell before. But I want to fix this for autumn / winter.

Part of the problem is that I don't really understand exactly how these systems works;

- Should water be flowing constantly from the spring into the well, and then overflowing somewhere?

- Or should it only be drawn down the pipe, from the spring, into the well, when there is demand created at the house?

There is no overflow at the well so I suspect the latter. When demand is created at the house, a pressure drop occurs, and water is drawn not only from the well, but also from the spring - am I understanding correctly? I have seen systems where water is constantly fed into a water collection system, and allowed to overflow, but I'm not sure we have that level of supply. There are lots of videos online that show a spring being set up but not many that detail connection to a domestic water system.

I want to understand exactly how this works so I can troubleshoot it (I have already tried and have had some success but also further issues, to explain all that would bog this down).

I'd really appreciate any help, I will go and take some photos / videos later this week to illustrate the set up but for now I will post a little diagram.

Thanks all!!