Advice for my new spring.

Hey All!

I picked out on finding a spring on my property. Doing some tree clearing, the harvester fell into it. I've dug it back and removed the cedar stump from the front of it. It is a mystery how the water even gets through the clay. I'm getting pretty low flow, .07-.1 gpm but it'll do for my low consumption.

Now I'm at a point where I need to make some decisions on how far to dig back. The water is coming from two main spots. One is about the size of my pointer finger and it appears to bubble up (blue line in the photos). The other I can stick my arm back into and it seems there is a cavity and a bit of a pool (red line in photos). I can't exactly tell where that one is coming from. The yellow line is a very slow seep as well but the bulk comes from above. Green in the photo is top soil and the tan is clay. It is a stark layer change.

Do I dig out and release the cavity behind the red line? Do I dig out the smaller one in hopes of better flow? Do I start the spring dam further back or out to the yellow, small seep?

I know these low flow seeps can be ruined and I'd rather that not happen.

I don't have experience with springs, but it seems like if it will meet your needs, maybe just leave the flow where it is at. I think people usually build some kind of containment around it?

If you work on the health of your land around the spring, by allowing water to slow down and seep into the ground, I wonder if you might find you get better flow over time without the need to dig anymore?

I have seen what is done on Homestead Rescue.

That method is to dig down and if the hole fills with water, put in a vertical culvert.  Now you have a well instead of a spring.

Dig it back at least 1-2 feet and see if the red and blue are converging toward one source flow (most likely) - if they diverge and get farther apart, I'd stop there and work on creating a catchment / spring box out as far as the yellow seep to ideally collect from all three. Create a barrier wall and line the inside with some added clay near the bottom at least. Decide what you're going to use for storage volume, and whether you want an additional settling tank in between to clear sediment.

If digging if the best thing to do, my question would be dig back, down, or both?

I went out today to try and trace where it is coming from. The water is a pushing up enough for a steady trickle. The cavity back in there is about 4"x4". The walls off the cavity are clay fromm what I can tell but I can get a rod to poke down about 4' with my pinky finger (ran out of rod. Didn't hit bottom). It is only soft on the front part of the cavity floor.

Jeol Topuette wrote:If digging if the best thing to do, my question would be dig back, down, or both?  

Back first, then down a bit. The idea of a spring box is a small container around the source to prevent contamination and direct the flow into your utilization pipeline. Not sure what you have in mind, but something like 10-20 square foot box a couple feet deep, out of stone or CMU and perhaps metal lid, and you can bed it into the clay as appropriate i.e. maybe without a 'back' wall where the flow originates. If you're in a cold winter area, may need to account for freeze/thaw or make sure you can keep the water moving.

Am I understanding correctly that the hole we're looking at goes back into the hill 4 feet, and that it  feels like mostly solid / hard material on the sides/floor/ceiling, other than at the mouth?

If so, I'd be leaning towards what Ben said in his first post, of just building a collection wall low enough to capture all three emission points. The added benefit here is that you won't be at risk of backstowing any of the emission points and changing/altering their flow, and you'll have plenty of space to cap the whole area and get it covered and protected. If you already have clay in front that does a good job of sealing what sounds like the water bearing layer (the hard material you mentioned) then you can just sink a flexible wall form into that and puddle additional clay along the bottom to make sure it seals really tight, as Ben mentioned.

We've used bamboo rhizome barrier for this in the past, which is helpful because it can handle odd shapes and long runs if you need to collect water from a large seep or a series of emission points. If all the emission points are close enough together the side wall of a 55 gallon food grade drum works great for you collection wall too.

Here's a video of one of our past installs that shows what I'm talking about here:

Carolina Water Tanks makes a great sediment control spring box suitable for low flow contexts such as yours.

I hope it goes well for you and the spring - water coming out of the ground is truly one of the most awesome gifts.

I agree with Matt. Seems like it would be best to leave the current flow alone and concentrate on capturing that. Even at the 0.7 gallons per minute flow, this is still over a thousand gallons per day! A lot can be done with that. The only digging I would do is a small pool, well below any seeps, and some type of funneling or pipe into that pool.  If you've got enough elevation, a pipe leading from that pool to an in-ground tank of some sort and you could have hundreds  of gallons per day of usable water to pump to where you need it. Just my layman's two cents.

Jeol, it depends entirely on what you intend to do with the water. Is it your only source of water on the property. Do you also have a well? or city water? Do you live far enough south that your water won't freeze?
I get your desire to do more with this gift. From the orientation of all the mini streams/  oozings, it appears that they are all coming from one point.[ they seem to be very closely connected. If you patiently take a handful here, a handful there, you will eventually get to the "main" artery., which could be a very nice little stream, but you must first decide what you would like to do:
A wet garden, a small pond, or perhaps "tame" the spring to give you all the garden/ personal water you want. Could it be a guzzler?
You don't tell us where your spring is relative to your house. If it might threaten the house's basement, [assuming you have one,] you might want to make a pond, then divert it away from the house? If it is big enough, maybe grow some water cress and fish... There are so many  things I would dream of doing... but I live in a sandbox.
Good luck on your project!

You probably want to avoid open water.  I would put a pit below and put a pond liner in it, fill it with sand so the water could flow in thru the sand.  Bury an outlet pipe in the sand.  Raise the sand up to sort of rebuild the mount.  Add another liner of other cover over the top.

I suggest the first thing to do is research on top of asking here.
- Local knowledge may be helpful.
- sometimes playing with springs themselves has created more problems.
- I suggest you think about what you want to use this ' spring ' water for, becaaue that may
 determine your next steps.
Rather than have us add perhaps more confusion, determine what you want to do with the water and we can help at that point.

I'm also working on improving my water catchment system for my house. At the moment i'm hooked up to a river (that is going down the mountain), but in summer the flow is pretty low. (I live in the south of Spain) So at the moment i'm gathering a lot of silt in my tubes. More down below (~90m) from my catchment i have a big tank that settles all the silt, but i would prefer to not catch it in the first place.

I'm seeing 2 videos here about catchment systems that are holding the water and are filled with gravel. A tube is placed at a certain height (to avoid catching the silt im guessing) the gather the water. But to me, this catchment filled with gravel would, over time, completely fill with silt right? I feel that i'm missing something about this design. Can somebody explain this?

Mark, I have just been reading about cisterns in venice created to capture water and hold it within gravel or sand cisterns.
I work in the field of collecting water, I can say there may be somethings you need to consider for the future.
With more people looking for water, and some taking what they can get you need to look at a range of systems.
- Government regulations may work against you
- water thieves may have the same influence.

Capturing silt seems a difficult way to get water, can I ask a few questions.
- what land size do you have?
- Do you have any roofs?
- How much water do you use?
- Can you store water anywhere?

Hi John,

Not sure if your questions are for me or for the thread owner, but i'll answer for me anyway.

I bought this house 1,5 years ago and everything is already in place regarding water. My collection point is very shallow, especially in the dry summer when i need the water. My plan is not to capture the silt and extract water from it. I'm capturing a lot a silt now because of the shallow collection point, and i want to have less silt in my water. Now my filters are full of silt very quickly, especially when i'm irrigating. So firstly i'm thinking about reducing the amount of silt in my collection point, although I think there is not much to do there...

I was watching the videos in the thread and i saw the 3 components of the water system: collection, silttrap, storage. I was just wandering what the function of the gravel is in the collection part of the system, and whether this would not fill up with silt and other debris over time.

My silt trap at the moment is my storage tank, but this is not very pratical. Also my irrigation line is connected before the tank (to have pressure at the upper part of my land), but it is very dirty. My storage tank also gets very dirty now.

I'm thinking of making a silt trap in between the collection and storage, because there is none now.

Mark, sorry I was directing the comments to you.
Some questions again;
- How much water do you irrigate?
- Is there any difference in level between the spring and the garden area?
- Could you store enough water at a time for irrigation between rain events?
- What volume would you like to store?
- Is Irrigation  by gravity?
- Would there be a advantage to install a pump?

Matt McSpadden wrote:I don't have experience with springs, but it seems like if it will meet your needs, maybe just leave the flow where it is at. I think people usually build some kind of containment around it?

I agree.  The OP hasn't elaborated on their intended uses for the water, but has already determined that the current minimal flow rate will satisfy those uses.  A seep spring can be fickle, so I'd interfere with it as little as possible.

Don't dig back to explore into either of the existing seep holes.  Just dig down in front of them to build a catchment wall where all that mud currently exists.  This will collect and conveniently dispense the water.  That could be built of brick, stone, concrete, etc.  It could dispense via a pipe or just a spigot or by just being a pool into which a bucket could be dipped.  That is all optional and at the OP's discretion.  Plan for an overflow path from the catchment wall.

If the head pressure on the spring is low, which seems likely, it would be better to dig down to create the catchment wall rather than to build it up, as the spring may not have enough pressure to fill a vessel taller than its current outflow level.  A shallow drainage ditch dug uphill from the spring and sheltering it would serve to divert surface runoff that could otherwise fill the catchment pool with silt.

Hello Jeol,
You said you originally measured .07 to .1 gallons per minute. This is quite a bit of water per hour. I have a small spring of beautiful water, which at first I was worried wouldn't produce enough water for drinking water, but realized even what seems like a trickle is plenty, especially if watering and such with rain water collection. I think you'll do great with your spring!
Cheers, Barry