Off-grid Water

Our home burned in the Paradise Campfire last November. We lost our pets, all of our possessions and most of our community all in one day. We decided to invest what we could back into the community and we bought 60 acres of burned land to start a homestead and regenerative ranch. My wife and I have both been career production farmers and ranchers and more recently we both work for non-profits focused on organic and regenerative agriculture. Doing it all ourselves though is very different as you veteran homesteaders well know. If you're interested, you can follow our progress on our YouTube channel. Our current phase of development is focused on clearing the burned trees as well as getting water and electricity set up. In this episode we get our well set up down to our RV. In the next few weeks we'll be workign on developing a few springs on the property for power generation and irrigation water. Soon we'll transition into getting animals and working in our large garden site.

Check it out...

Hats off to you for determining to stay and help rebuild the community! I can't imagine that level of devastation. Best wishes for everyone out there facing that task. Really big hugs from Virginia!

Glad you are resettling in the area fire pushed you out of. We have lived with a gravity fed water system in 2 places for a total of over 35 years. My fingers are crossed for your new system to work well for you, but I thin you are going to find that its not as satisfactory in supply as you would like. We learned the basics of water systems from - https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=Michael+Hacklemann&ref=nb_sb_noss .

The book referred to pipe sizing in regards to distance (resistance to flow) and volume (gallons/minute) desired from which size pipe. I suspect your 1" pipe will limit your volume, not for trailer use, but water for farm uses as well. The elevation between your storage tank and trailer will determine the pressure your receive. Figure LESS than 1# of pressure for every 2 feet of elevation. Again, adequate for trailer use, but may not work for some permanent household needs (clothes washing machine).

So wonderful that your well survived! Depending on the depth of the water. its flow rate (GPM) and elevation of tank above water level. a solar set up might happily work for you. We currently have a low volume well - 2-3 GPM  that works fine for us. The water depth is 100' and 3 55W PV panels operate a DC pump that slowly pushes water into our storage tanks located well above our house. 2 or 3 GPM doesn't sound like much compared to a pressure system that delivers much more GPM. However if you figure that 2 gallons a minute = 120 gallons EACH hour for say even 6 (daylight) hours that = 720 gallons each day (into storage tanks). If you have been hauling water (been there, done that!), you are learning to be nicely conservative with water use ;-) Never a bad lesson.

I do have a concern for your pipes being exposed - freezing come winter. And as much as you truly want running water NOW, having to go back and re-do your current set up is going to be time and energy (mainly yours) consuming.

Wishing you luck and happy results.