water with out paying for it

                well i have this idea to have a solar water well pump that pumps during the day up to a water tower so that i can have water at night also. a gravity feed water supply or i was thinking i could pump water into a tank on the ground or just below it and use a rv water pump and a small solar system with battery to get it out of the tank and into the house has anyone ever done somthing like this that can give me some pointers

thanks thecheapguy   

I stayed in a place that's indoor plumbing was a variation of this idea.  The entire house was solar and but didn't store energy well.  The cabin had been vacant for a few years and the batteries were not maintained.  There was a 55 gal water tank on the second story and a small pump that ran the spring fed water to the tank.  The water was then gravity fed through the house.  The water also ran through on of the wood stoves and was stored in a smaller hot water tank.  This was in Vermont and I was there over the winter solstice.  We had to monitor and maximize our energy use because there wasn't much sunlight.  So during sunny days we ran the pump and on cloudy days we hoped for sunny days. 

What do you do about Legionella?

thanks for the post misfit im thinking a small 12volt system for a small water pump and lights at least and maybe a little more and was thinking about just adding anther one later or a bigger system later when i can get all the componets to gether

thecheapguy

Slowly getting the water up high is a good way of thinking. We're on the side of a mountain so the water is above us but the rate of flow is slow. The flow of the spring is too low for most to consider developable but there is a trick. We have the trickling spring feed into a large reservoir which we then draw from. That way when we want water we can get a high volume. When that tank overflows, which is normally what is happening, it goes to our livestock waterers. All of this is passive and gravity fed. With the tank well up the mountain from us we get nice pressure.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa