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.

The potable water utilized in my home comes from a local municipal system. While it is incredibly convenient, I am realizing that I need to be less wasteful because I don't think twice when using it.

I have started putting out objects to catch water that I can either dip or pour into a five gallon bucket to meet my watering needs out in the garden. By paying attention to where and how I am watering, I am noticing things sooner and able to correct issues before they get out of hand. Where once I would turn on a sprinkler at a distance, I now am laying eyes on my plants.

I know, this is very low level, but its a start.

We have water from our local water district. I have a cistern. I have a large pond. I am in the process of hooking up a total of 1000 gal of above ground tanks that I hope to have functional by next summer.  I managed to pull a muscle in my back a little over a year ago, so, while it’s getting better, all projects are going slower than I would like.

5000 gal tanks are great for helping the water self clean.
Mainly through aeration alone.

Every roof has its own tank, various capacities, depending on the size of the collecting area.  Animal troughs connect to a tank, and have a float system (like a toilet tank) so water out produces water in to maintain the level.  All but one of the tanks are connected , so water can be transferred by gravity.  Only the header tank for the house needs an electric pump to top it up.  We are water conscious all the time.

We are off grid and have no electrical infrastructure.
For main water we have an 18 ft deep hand pounded
Sand point well with a hand pump on top.
Water is still carried to the house via shoulder yoke and two 5 gallon pails, a 15 gallon tank above the wood cook stove somewhat heats the water and gravity feeds the water to a conventional faucet and sink.
So, no electricity but we do have running water 😁.
Oh I forgot to mention our other source of running water, a small year round Creek, which is great for cooling off on hot days.
Also some rainwater collection off of the roof for laundry and other such uses.
The garden is irrigated with a  gas operated pump and sprinkles, from a cistern type well that was dug down into the water table which is only about 4 ft down near the garden.
Water conservation isn't really a problem in Minnesota at least the moister areas as the water tables are quite close to the surface and there are many many swamps, lakes and streams.
Like the license plates say, LAND OF 10,000 LAKES.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"A wooden carrying pole in Haikou, Hainan Province, China.
A carrying pole, also called a shoulder pole[1] or a milkmaid's yoke, is a yoke of wood or bamboo, used by people to carry a load. This piece of equipment is used in one of two basic ways:
A single person balances the yoke over one shoulder, with an evenly distributed load being suspended from each end.
Two people support the yoke by resting it on a shoulder, with the load suspended from the centre of the yoke. "
Are you Amish?

We have a well with electric pump, a pressure tank and reverse osmosis filter system.

I'm lucky to live in a wet climate on a hill, so house water is gravity fed from a stream above the house (should be a spring, but that needs digging out again). At the bottom of the land is a small river which has never run dry. Normally there is enough rain even in summer to keep the plants growing, although we do have a dry spell most springs. My main growing area is half way up the hill, and I was happy I took the bother of collecting rainwater from my little shed, since we did need to water things in this spring.



Just enough collected to water my seeds, but we did need to get some from the river for some transplanting....I think I may find another large barrel for next year!

We have a well and a vernal pond. Future plans are sealed gutters and water collection, mostly for the garden.

The well has a pump. The pond dries up every summer, like now. We have no basement as the granite ledge is < 4' under the ground surface. Used to be (before we put in piping under the driveway) that the basement flooded every spring. And the vernal pond overflowed into ponds on each side of the driveway.

It doesn't now, there's a sump pump and infrastructure to remove excess water as it happens to the vernal pond. The ponds on each side of the driveway still get water and if we get a lot of rain in a short time, they fill up, but usually empty quickly.

Those are good ideas. Bamboo totally possible. Lots of videos on YouTube of folks in Asia doing and rigging them. You can even make tanks out of clay and bake them. Learn how to make them waterproof.

For your situation I'd suggest focus more on larger passive systems. If you have the space. When a rains come maybe have two or three big ponds and fiil them up. The you can always use the bamboo to rig up piping in between or to and from. You can make a hand pump out of bamboo and get creative with it. You could even rig up a mini power plant with bamboo and copper wire if you have a strong steady flow between those ponds. You can route the streams through filter barrels (large) or pipe them though filters.

I feel like you are looking for a good backup plan for an emergency situation. That's why I figure the passive large systems will help you the most. Rain barrels and great too. Funnel the water into big catchment tanks or ponds. With ponds you can grow stuff around it and feed you and the animals. With tanks and ponds you can run a simple geothermal systems too.

A vernal pond, also known as a vernal pool or ephemeral pool, is a temporary body of water that typically fills with water in the spring (or sometimes autumn/winter) and dries up later in the year. Th

Now that we have a small rental house with a small yard, we have an outdoor spigget, so I'm getting a hose soon, better than walking in and out with water from the sink haha which was apartment life for us.  I don't want to lose the connection of watering with my jug, it makes me be cozy and close with my plants, so I won't get a sprinkler, I'm just getting a push handle for the end of the hose to let out water, gently because that is best.  I also want to get a big bucket or two to set out when it rains.  I mean that won't go very far, but its little baby steps, I can't get any type of fancy system for rainwater collection at this point, the landlords are nice but not _that nice haha.  Maybe someday, slowly getting them used to new ideas for gardening etc.

Hooray to all of us - all our efforts however modest they might seem, even just being aware, deserve a thumbs up!!!

Here:
The new pond water is evaporating very quickly. Surrounding plantings are tiny
Shade material has been disturbed; thirsty critters I expect. Even the parasol in a solid base has been moved.

There is a well which has been dry all the while that I have known it.
The previous incumbents actually covered it up with a man-hole cover, gravel and grass. I found it by fortunate accident.
Spoke to a well person who told me that one should never ever add water to a well.
It will cause the well water to change its course. Who knew?
The run off used to go to a soak-away.

As it’s completely dry and beautifully stone clad, don’t know how else to describe it, I am diverting big roof rain water into it via a 1000l tank. The tank will sit high enough to allow for easy watering can access.
The well/cistern is quite deep. Optimism is encouraging me to install a pulley with bucket, like at my grandparents’ place, long ago.
The bucket can also be used to store food that needs to be kept cool.

A large bin collects water from the washing machine.
Pots under taps collect hand washing water.
Washing up is done in large bowls.
All the collected water is lovingly carried outside, with occasional grunts and swearing when spills occur.
Some people pay good money to exercise with kettlebells

Dowsing hasn’t revealed any sources of water.
Surprising as the place is an old building, c.1750, and surely building was done close to water??ponds??
But then again, water moves in mysterious ways.

The other 1000l tanks are all but empty.
Lots of mulch and fingers crossed: there is a wind, dark clouds, I’m going to dance to encourge the rain.

Thank you for the advice in these watery posts and snakey protocols, much appreciated.
Aahhh big wind, flying objects.

Blessings
M-H

My "water bill" fluctuates between $3 and $5 per month ... depending on how often I fill my 5 gallon glass water jug with filtered city water, or go to the spring to fill up for free.

I have a 4000 gallon collection tank in my greenhouse that collects water off the 400 sq ft. roof, and that's my water budget for garden and all my potted plants which I sell.    I keep a water-hose in the big tank and a 300 gallon tote outside with the other end of the hose in a siphon state.   When the water in the big tank drops below about 2000 gallons, I have to move the tote to the ground.   When below 1000, then I have to siphon water into 5 gallon buckets that are in a hole because my big tank is partially submerged ... siphon always has to go downhill.

I have a 275 gallon tote that collects water off about 100 sq ft on my cabin.   I put a chunk of a chlorine tab in that tote from time to time, and that water I use to wash mud off me, sometimes to water plants if I have excess there, pre-wash my dishes ...stuff like that.

For dish-washing, cooking, showering;  I collect water from a gas station that lets me get a few gallons a week from their outside faucet for free.   Sometimes I use collected spring water for those functions, but the spring is further and I don't go that way as often.

My baby is a Charleston grey watermelon...been easy to grow with no water hose this year.

Marie- Helene, your property sounds amazing.
I would agree it normally would have had a water source of some sort in the early days.
Wells would normally go down to the water table and beyound.
Would there be any documentation about what was common in the early days in your area.
That may help you understand the situation.
In Australia large cisterns were built near homes into which roof water was directed.
Over time that may have happened with your well because of ignorance perhaps.
It is interesting that others have suggested its bad to put water into a well .

From a google search
"In the 1750s, homes in the southeast French countryside primarily relied on wells and access to nearby rivers or springs for their water supply. "

Well it's snowing now in the Gatineau mountains, the barrels are all upturned and waiting for next spring and I have a well.
My system is very low tech: about 25 black plastic barrels that came from the Canadian forces that used to contain olives, under the eaves of 1000 sq ft, and a relay system of barrels about 40' apart from those points, all over, additiinal scrounged blue and white barrels and pumped to those locations, no gravity feed. I don't do much watering but all for growing food
My system is still low tech because I don't really have engineering skills, but I do make up for this in enthusiasm.

John C Daley wrote:From a google search
"In the 1750s, homes in the southeast French countryside primarily relied on wells and access to nearby rivers or springs for their water supply. "

That is done in my county even today.

Folks here are not allow to irrigate using water from the river so to get around this law, they drill wells.

Anne, are there limits as to how close to rivers and streams wells can be installed ?

I am sure there are limits and grandfathered folks.

My husband is the one who told me that so I cant answer that question.

I ask Mr Google who basically said, It depends ...

Ra Kenworth wrote:... My system is still low tech because I don't really have engineering skills, but I do make up for this in enthusiasm.

There is *nothing* wrong with low tech, Ra - less to break and even better if parts are upcycled.

I have a bucket under a drip up near an outbuilding and most of the winter, it's enough to give me rinse water if I need some. Can't get lower tech than that!

Our water here is bad.... and we have both a drilled well and hand-dug well. Despite what you would think, we use the hand-dug well.

We just got a quote to make the water drinkable and the quote was for $45,000, the most expensive water filtration system the company would have ever installed. Three reverse osmosis systems followed by filters.

It is high in iron, manganese, sodium, nitrates, and chlorides. So in other words, sea water with a lot of iron. Like 37% soluble iron!

Obviously we cannot drink it and don't, but we struggle using it for washing dishes and clothes as it stains everything yellow at such high concentrations. We shower using it, but have to use special shampoos to rid our hair of turning orange.

We are not sure what to do, thankfully it is brackish water and at 1550 ppm sodium so under the 2000 ppm standard in being sea water, and unless we drain the Atlantic, we will never run out of water, but its terrible water. Plenty of it, but terrible, but the whole point of the island has this water issue and not just us.

We have a water mine dug horizontally into the mountain above the house. It's 30 metres deep (horizontally) and gravity feeds into two separate systems. One feeds into a tank just behind the house to supply our personal needs. Then there are two tanks further along the terrace. The first supplies water to my son's place next door, also gravity fed, And the overflow from that fills another tank which supplies irrigation water for the garden. Any overflow from the mine feeds into the little gulley and into the stream like it always has done.



It's very much a case of take what you need and let the rest flow by.

One day I'll do a whole thread about it and how it works...

Steve Zoma wrote: We are not sure what to do, thankfully it is brackish water and at 1550 ppm sodium so under the 2000 ppm standard in being sea water, and unless we drain the Atlantic, we will never run out of water, but its terrible water. Plenty of it, but terrible, but the whole point of the island has this water issue and not just us.

It sounds like you're close enough to sea water that even your rain likely has a salt content?

Are you allowed to capture rainwater? One of my high school friends had a Grandmother living near Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia in a 100 yr old farm house with no indoor plumbing. They had a good "bucket" well for drinking and cooking down the hill, but they had numerous large bins catching water off their roof for everything else. Of course they didn't have a shower, but did sponge baths mostly (or jumped in the ocean,) but there are plenty of cultures where that's the norm.

When my friend started living there full time (it's now a 150 year old farm house), she had a well dug and got indoor plumbing, but now the idea of living off rain water in a modern house has come around again. I can't imagine the filters for rain water would be more expensive than what you've already been quoted.

Primary source is a well, other sources are gutters to rain barrels, and a spring fed 2 acre lake. Well needs 240v AC to operate, has un filtered/ no softener piped to outdoor hydrants & water softener & filters for general indoor use. The lake & rain barrels are for gardening, wildlife & such.