xtreme_right
Veteran Member
I’ve read that stored water will taste “off” due to lack of oxygen on it. You’re supposed to pour back and forth between two containers to mix oxygen back in.
And I’m envious of your water setup.
…… Rain barrel for drinking water
- Thread starter xtreme_right
- Start date
I’ve read that stored water will taste “off” due to lack of oxygen on it. You’re supposed to pour back and forth between two containers to mix oxygen back in.
And I’m envious of your water setup.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Instead of pouring back and forth, you can simply boil the water before use, and run it through the Berkey. The boiling process adds oxygen and another safety measure. We are probably being over cautious, but we don't want to take any chances of a waterborne illness or poisoning.
We still have community water, but our set up is in place to use if ever needed. We've had that need only once in the past, and it does work to our satisfaction as long as we don't have a severe drought. In that case, neighbor has a pond that we have permission to use. It's spring fed and has plenty of water even in a drought. I don't like the thought of having to carry buckets of water from down the road, though. Getting too old for that.
If I need the water, I won't be worrying too much about it.
Boiling water REMOVES oxygen from it.
I make ales, which involves boiling for an hour. At the end of the boil period and after the wort is chilled, it must be aerated to replace the oxygen that boiled out.
I make ales, which involves boiling for an hour. At the end of the boil period and after the wort is chilled, it must be aerated to replace the oxygen that boiled out.
Last edited:
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Then I must have misunderstood. We have two 55 gal storage barrels and 4 smaller containers that would be hard to pour the water back and forth from. Still all our water is boiled for one minute and cooled, before going through the Berkey.
I do have a question. How often should the water stored in these containers be changed? Keeping the water in them too long may be what's giving it the off taste, not so much lack of oxygen. It has a strong chemical kind of taste. Plastic leeching into the water? We carried one of the smaller containers with us on a camping trip once. The water was so bad tasting that we had to find another source for potable water.
Knighttemplar
Veteran Member
You might want to look into baptist well drilling. They use it in developing countries to provide water with little to no mechanical tools.
You did.
Really???? It’s ridiculous to think of “pouring water back and forth” between 2 55-gallon drums. You aerate water AS YOU USE IT.
If the water is kept in a cool, dark place, never.
SouthernBreeze
Has No Life - Lives on TB
You did.
Really???? It’s ridiculous to think of “pouring water back and forth” between 2 55-gallon drums. You aerate water AS YOU USE IT.
If the water is kept in a cool, dark place, never.
Thanks, Dennis. You answered the questions I had. While I was sitting here writing out my responses, I never had the thought of aerating the water as we use it come to my mind. Brain fart, I guess. The water storage containers are kept in Cary's work shop, but it gets pretty hot in there during the summer.
xtreme_right
Veteran Member
This article about drilling your own well seems too simplistic. What do you think?
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival ⋆ BeSurvival
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival
/
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average US family uses 400 gallons of water per day. Most of that goes to watering lawns and gardens. During a disaster, the grass can die, but the garden will need water.
Today I want to share with you a great method for driving your own water well that was developed by the U.S. Army. If you can drive a nail into a board, you have the skills to augment your water supply. Drilling companies charge thousands of dollars to tap ground water sources that you can often reach yourself with a few common tools and about two weekends of work.
Also, if you’re worried about losing power to your well pump in a grid-down emergency, it is pretty simple and comparatively inexpensive to rig a solar panel to a water pump to transfer water into a holding tank and then feed that into your home plumbing. Best results are achieved if the holding tank is elevated, thereby providing a gravity feed to your pipes. Such a setup really is an emergency preparation we should all be working toward.
At the turn of the century the U.S. Army developed a fast, effective method to provide troops with water that did not involve a lot of expensive, cumbersome equipment. Soldiers simply drove a pipe into the ground with a sledgehammer until they reached the aquifer. Subsequently, it has proven to be ideal for supplying water to homesteads, second homes, and remote villages in developing nations.
If driving a pipe 75 feet or so into the earth sounds like a job for Superman, I’ve given you the wrong impression. Too hard of a blow can damage pipe threads. It’s better to soften the ground as much as possible before you begin. I recommend digging a hole at the site you’ve selected and allowing water to settle in it for a week. The softer the ground, the easier the work. A shallow hole (5 to 10 feet) is best because deep ones too often need reinforcement to prevent them from collapsing.
You should also check with your neighbors. Neighbors, particularly old-timers, can often give you some idea of what lies beneath the subsoil. A weight on the end of a string dropped down a neighbor’s well can give you a rough estimate of how far down you will have to go (measure to the point where the string becomes wet). If that doesn’t work for you, pick a spot outside the drip line of a large hickory, walnut, butternut, white oak, or hornbeam tree that is not being irrigated.
Since these types of trees have tap roots (maples, among others, do not), the fact that they are doing well without irrigation indicates that their tap roots are anchored in an aquifer. I live in a community where the street trees are immense despite the fact that they receive negligible rainfall and quite often aren’t being irrigated. Common sense told me that the water table could not be more than 80 feet below the surface.
As with everything there are laws and taxes telling you how you can dig on your own property. It’s best to play the game and keep under the radar, so check with county health officials concerning regulations and permit requirements. County officials do have access to well logs and other geological data and can be of great help to you. They can advise you as to subsurface composition (silt, sand, and decomposed granite are suitable for driven wells; hard clay or rock may prove difficult or impossible to penetrate), the approximate depth at which you can expect to find water, and the quality of the aquifer beneath your site. Choose a location as far as possible from septic tanks, sewer lines, chemical storage tanks, animal pens, and other potential contaminants.
To Get Started
You’ll need a 2-inch drivepoint with screen (a hollow, conically shaped metal point adjoined to a fine mesh screen), several spools of teflon tape, 2-inch galvanized couplings to attatch pipe lengths together, 5-foot-long threaded lengths of 2-inch galvanized Schedule 40 pipe, 2-inch galvanized caps for the pipe, concrete mix, a weight, a foot valve, and 85 feet of 1/2 inch inside diameter, thick-walled, flexible, UV resistant, flexible polyethylene tubing.
Dig a 5 foot deep pit, fill it with water, and allow the water to percolate into the ground so as to softens the subsoil. Make sure the drivepoint is perpendicular to the ground—check it frequently with a level. If it is not straight, pull it out and start again. A slanted well wastes pipe and may be difficult to pump.
Use a heavy wooden mallet or maul to drive the capped galvanized pipe into the ground. When the cap becomes cracked or dented, discard it and screw on a new one. Establish a steady rhythm and the work will go easier. When the cap is about even with the bottom of the pit, unscrew it and screw on a coupling and a new length of pipe. Use teflon tape on the pipe threads, and make certain all connections are tightened securely with a pipe wrench. You may occasionally need to work from a step ladder in order to reach the cap with the maul. When going through clay or shale, you may find it easier to use a sledgehammer, but be careful not to overdo it.
If the drivepoint hits a large rock, pull the point out and start again in a new location. It won’t drive through it and you could destroy your point if you try to break through. I know how horrible it can be to get 50ft down and have to start over, but such is the way of a driven well. You have to know when to quit. To pull out the drivepoint, place two hydraulic automobile jacks on opposite sides of the pipe. Attatch a pipe clamp to the pipe for the jacks to lift against. Once the drivepoint lifts a few inches, it should be easy to remove.
When you believe you have reached water, tie a weight onto a length of string and lower it into the pipe (remember the tip above?). If it comes out wet, repeat the test several times over the next two days, and if the results are the same, you’ve found water. Drive the pipe down some more to compensate for seasonal fluctuations and periods of drought.
The last step is adding a sanitary seal to prevent surface runoff from contaminating the aquifer. Lengthen the pipe to a height approximately 3 feet above the surface of the ground and fill the pit with the original soil. To protect your water supply and anchor your well, pour a small concrete slab into forms made of used 2-by-4’s or 2-by-6’s centered around the pipe at the surface. Install insulation around the pipes to protect your well from damage if the temperature where you live drops below freezing in winter.
Pitcher pumps are ideal for shallow wells. At depths greater than 25 feet, however, they stop working due to the limitations of atmospheric pressure. Inertia pumps (one-way footvalves attatched to flexible irrigation tubing) are the simplest (they contain only one moving part) and least expensive (under $20) manual deep well pump. Instead of a hand powered pump, a solar powered unit could be installed and the solar cells could be placed on top of the pump house.
Studies from developing nations show that 90% hand powered water pumps break down within 3 years. This is mainly due to worn out or broken parts. In the case of hand powered pumps, what you pay for may very well be what you get. So if you plan on installing a hand powered water pump, do not buy the cheapest product on the market.
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival ⋆ BeSurvival
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival
/
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average US family uses 400 gallons of water per day. Most of that goes to watering lawns and gardens. During a disaster, the grass can die, but the garden will need water.
Today I want to share with you a great method for driving your own water well that was developed by the U.S. Army. If you can drive a nail into a board, you have the skills to augment your water supply. Drilling companies charge thousands of dollars to tap ground water sources that you can often reach yourself with a few common tools and about two weekends of work.
Also, if you’re worried about losing power to your well pump in a grid-down emergency, it is pretty simple and comparatively inexpensive to rig a solar panel to a water pump to transfer water into a holding tank and then feed that into your home plumbing. Best results are achieved if the holding tank is elevated, thereby providing a gravity feed to your pipes. Such a setup really is an emergency preparation we should all be working toward.
At the turn of the century the U.S. Army developed a fast, effective method to provide troops with water that did not involve a lot of expensive, cumbersome equipment. Soldiers simply drove a pipe into the ground with a sledgehammer until they reached the aquifer. Subsequently, it has proven to be ideal for supplying water to homesteads, second homes, and remote villages in developing nations.
If driving a pipe 75 feet or so into the earth sounds like a job for Superman, I’ve given you the wrong impression. Too hard of a blow can damage pipe threads. It’s better to soften the ground as much as possible before you begin. I recommend digging a hole at the site you’ve selected and allowing water to settle in it for a week. The softer the ground, the easier the work. A shallow hole (5 to 10 feet) is best because deep ones too often need reinforcement to prevent them from collapsing.
You should also check with your neighbors. Neighbors, particularly old-timers, can often give you some idea of what lies beneath the subsoil. A weight on the end of a string dropped down a neighbor’s well can give you a rough estimate of how far down you will have to go (measure to the point where the string becomes wet). If that doesn’t work for you, pick a spot outside the drip line of a large hickory, walnut, butternut, white oak, or hornbeam tree that is not being irrigated.
Since these types of trees have tap roots (maples, among others, do not), the fact that they are doing well without irrigation indicates that their tap roots are anchored in an aquifer. I live in a community where the street trees are immense despite the fact that they receive negligible rainfall and quite often aren’t being irrigated. Common sense told me that the water table could not be more than 80 feet below the surface.
As with everything there are laws and taxes telling you how you can dig on your own property. It’s best to play the game and keep under the radar, so check with county health officials concerning regulations and permit requirements. County officials do have access to well logs and other geological data and can be of great help to you. They can advise you as to subsurface composition (silt, sand, and decomposed granite are suitable for driven wells; hard clay or rock may prove difficult or impossible to penetrate), the approximate depth at which you can expect to find water, and the quality of the aquifer beneath your site. Choose a location as far as possible from septic tanks, sewer lines, chemical storage tanks, animal pens, and other potential contaminants.
To Get Started
You’ll need a 2-inch drivepoint with screen (a hollow, conically shaped metal point adjoined to a fine mesh screen), several spools of teflon tape, 2-inch galvanized couplings to attatch pipe lengths together, 5-foot-long threaded lengths of 2-inch galvanized Schedule 40 pipe, 2-inch galvanized caps for the pipe, concrete mix, a weight, a foot valve, and 85 feet of 1/2 inch inside diameter, thick-walled, flexible, UV resistant, flexible polyethylene tubing.
Dig a 5 foot deep pit, fill it with water, and allow the water to percolate into the ground so as to softens the subsoil. Make sure the drivepoint is perpendicular to the ground—check it frequently with a level. If it is not straight, pull it out and start again. A slanted well wastes pipe and may be difficult to pump.
Use a heavy wooden mallet or maul to drive the capped galvanized pipe into the ground. When the cap becomes cracked or dented, discard it and screw on a new one. Establish a steady rhythm and the work will go easier. When the cap is about even with the bottom of the pit, unscrew it and screw on a coupling and a new length of pipe. Use teflon tape on the pipe threads, and make certain all connections are tightened securely with a pipe wrench. You may occasionally need to work from a step ladder in order to reach the cap with the maul. When going through clay or shale, you may find it easier to use a sledgehammer, but be careful not to overdo it.
If the drivepoint hits a large rock, pull the point out and start again in a new location. It won’t drive through it and you could destroy your point if you try to break through. I know how horrible it can be to get 50ft down and have to start over, but such is the way of a driven well. You have to know when to quit. To pull out the drivepoint, place two hydraulic automobile jacks on opposite sides of the pipe. Attatch a pipe clamp to the pipe for the jacks to lift against. Once the drivepoint lifts a few inches, it should be easy to remove.
When you believe you have reached water, tie a weight onto a length of string and lower it into the pipe (remember the tip above?). If it comes out wet, repeat the test several times over the next two days, and if the results are the same, you’ve found water. Drive the pipe down some more to compensate for seasonal fluctuations and periods of drought.
The last step is adding a sanitary seal to prevent surface runoff from contaminating the aquifer. Lengthen the pipe to a height approximately 3 feet above the surface of the ground and fill the pit with the original soil. To protect your water supply and anchor your well, pour a small concrete slab into forms made of used 2-by-4’s or 2-by-6’s centered around the pipe at the surface. Install insulation around the pipes to protect your well from damage if the temperature where you live drops below freezing in winter.
Pitcher pumps are ideal for shallow wells. At depths greater than 25 feet, however, they stop working due to the limitations of atmospheric pressure. Inertia pumps (one-way footvalves attatched to flexible irrigation tubing) are the simplest (they contain only one moving part) and least expensive (under $20) manual deep well pump. Instead of a hand powered pump, a solar powered unit could be installed and the solar cells could be placed on top of the pump house.
Studies from developing nations show that 90% hand powered water pumps break down within 3 years. This is mainly due to worn out or broken parts. In the case of hand powered pumps, what you pay for may very well be what you get. So if you plan on installing a hand powered water pump, do not buy the cheapest product on the market.
Yeah, I’ll jump right on that in the back yard of the house I RENT, in the middle of a city residential area.
This is why I can’t stand homestead snobs.
xtreme_right
Veteran Member
Obviously you won’t be drilling a well at a rental. That’s why you have water stored. We own the property so I’m looking at what my options are with our limited budget.
Doc1
Has No Life - Lives on TB
I disagree. Personally, I think using water from a weathered asphalt shingle roof is safe. While I'd be reluctant to harvest water from a new asphalt roof, after it has weathered for a few seasons, I think virtually all of the toxins likely to harm a human would have outgassed and otherwise dispersed. In any case, you'll die of dehydration in a few days without water.
After the asphalt shingle roof water is filtered, I think the possibility of harm would be very slight indeed.
There's another factor to consider. Folks on this thread have talked about the safety of collecting water from metal roofs, but there's been no discussion about the coatings used on metal roofs. Metal roofs can have anything from galvanized coatings to various types of paint. I've seen no discussions regarding metal roof coatings and what - if any - dangers they might present. We collect emergency water from our metal roof, though I honestly have no idea what type of (white) paint covers the metal panels.
Our roof is at least twenty years old so - exactly like old asphalt roofs - I suspect that any danger is very minimal. In any case, the water is settled and filtered through our Berkey before use. The fact of the matter is that water from different sources - including tap water - may contain various levels of toxins.
On a somewhat related note, when I was diving I worked with an older Cajun diver named "Bee" who was in his early fifties. This was with a small "mudhole" company, which did nothing but shallow air diving work. I think the deepest job we had with that company was 75', but the vast majority of it was only a few feet down in the marshes, repairing leaking (crude oil) flow lines. The guys would always come up covered with a sheen of crude oil and the taste of crude would linger in your mouth. No, no one was actually drinking the water, but somehow you'd wind up with a little in your "hat" (helmet) or bandmask. Oviously there was hair and skin contact with the crude, as well. I didn't stay with that company very long, but Bee had been with them for many, many years.
Around ten years later, myself and another guy I'd worked with at that company happened to be passing Bee's neighborhood in the extreme southeastern part of Louisiana and decided to drop in and say hi. It was a surprise visit. We didn't even have his phone number, but we'd both gotten along famously with Bee and were sure he'd be glad to see us.
Bee was indeed happy to see us both, but we found him more or less permanently living on his favorite recliner in his living room, ridden with cancer. We tried to be cheerful, but we both knew we'd never see Bee again.
There was no doubt in either of our minds that all those years of working in that toxic water had finally caught up with Bee.
Best
Doc
hiwall
Has No Life - Lives on TB
There are many errors in this tutorial. Enough so I question if the person who wrote ever did one or ever seen one done. Driving a 2" well pipe is a hard chore and in most locations it is impossible to do by hand. And they make special drive coupling and drive caps that should be used or you risk ruining the pipe and the real possibility of losing what you have in the ground. Also pulling a well pipe can be impossible or just very difficult.This article about drilling your own well seems too simplistic. What do you think?
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival ⋆ BeSurvival
DIY Water Well For Your Homestead Or Urban Survival
/
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average US family uses 400 gallons of water per day. Most of that goes to watering lawns and gardens. During a disaster, the grass can die, but the garden will need water.
Today I want to share with you a great method for driving your own water well that was developed by the U.S. Army. If you can drive a nail into a board, you have the skills to augment your water supply. Drilling companies charge thousands of dollars to tap ground water sources that you can often reach yourself with a few common tools and about two weekends of work.
Also, if you’re worried about losing power to your well pump in a grid-down emergency, it is pretty simple and comparatively inexpensive to rig a solar panel to a water pump to transfer water into a holding tank and then feed that into your home plumbing. Best results are achieved if the holding tank is elevated, thereby providing a gravity feed to your pipes. Such a setup really is an emergency preparation we should all be working toward.
At the turn of the century the U.S. Army developed a fast, effective method to provide troops with water that did not involve a lot of expensive, cumbersome equipment. Soldiers simply drove a pipe into the ground with a sledgehammer until they reached the aquifer. Subsequently, it has proven to be ideal for supplying water to homesteads, second homes, and remote villages in developing nations.
If driving a pipe 75 feet or so into the earth sounds like a job for Superman, I’ve given you the wrong impression. Too hard of a blow can damage pipe threads. It’s better to soften the ground as much as possible before you begin. I recommend digging a hole at the site you’ve selected and allowing water to settle in it for a week. The softer the ground, the easier the work. A shallow hole (5 to 10 feet) is best because deep ones too often need reinforcement to prevent them from collapsing.
You should also check with your neighbors. Neighbors, particularly old-timers, can often give you some idea of what lies beneath the subsoil. A weight on the end of a string dropped down a neighbor’s well can give you a rough estimate of how far down you will have to go (measure to the point where the string becomes wet). If that doesn’t work for you, pick a spot outside the drip line of a large hickory, walnut, butternut, white oak, or hornbeam tree that is not being irrigated.
Since these types of trees have tap roots (maples, among others, do not), the fact that they are doing well without irrigation indicates that their tap roots are anchored in an aquifer. I live in a community where the street trees are immense despite the fact that they receive negligible rainfall and quite often aren’t being irrigated. Common sense told me that the water table could not be more than 80 feet below the surface.
As with everything there are laws and taxes telling you how you can dig on your own property. It’s best to play the game and keep under the radar, so check with county health officials concerning regulations and permit requirements. County officials do have access to well logs and other geological data and can be of great help to you. They can advise you as to subsurface composition (silt, sand, and decomposed granite are suitable for driven wells; hard clay or rock may prove difficult or impossible to penetrate), the approximate depth at which you can expect to find water, and the quality of the aquifer beneath your site. Choose a location as far as possible from septic tanks, sewer lines, chemical storage tanks, animal pens, and other potential contaminants.
To Get Started
You’ll need a 2-inch drivepoint with screen (a hollow, conically shaped metal point adjoined to a fine mesh screen), several spools of teflon tape, 2-inch galvanized couplings to attatch pipe lengths together, 5-foot-long threaded lengths of 2-inch galvanized Schedule 40 pipe, 2-inch galvanized caps for the pipe, concrete mix, a weight, a foot valve, and 85 feet of 1/2 inch inside diameter, thick-walled, flexible, UV resistant, flexible polyethylene tubing.
Dig a 5 foot deep pit, fill it with water, and allow the water to percolate into the ground so as to softens the subsoil. Make sure the drivepoint is perpendicular to the ground—check it frequently with a level. If it is not straight, pull it out and start again. A slanted well wastes pipe and may be difficult to pump.
Use a heavy wooden mallet or maul to drive the capped galvanized pipe into the ground. When the cap becomes cracked or dented, discard it and screw on a new one. Establish a steady rhythm and the work will go easier. When the cap is about even with the bottom of the pit, unscrew it and screw on a coupling and a new length of pipe. Use teflon tape on the pipe threads, and make certain all connections are tightened securely with a pipe wrench. You may occasionally need to work from a step ladder in order to reach the cap with the maul. When going through clay or shale, you may find it easier to use a sledgehammer, but be careful not to overdo it.
If the drivepoint hits a large rock, pull the point out and start again in a new location. It won’t drive through it and you could destroy your point if you try to break through. I know how horrible it can be to get 50ft down and have to start over, but such is the way of a driven well. You have to know when to quit. To pull out the drivepoint, place two hydraulic automobile jacks on opposite sides of the pipe. Attatch a pipe clamp to the pipe for the jacks to lift against. Once the drivepoint lifts a few inches, it should be easy to remove.
When you believe you have reached water, tie a weight onto a length of string and lower it into the pipe (remember the tip above?). If it comes out wet, repeat the test several times over the next two days, and if the results are the same, you’ve found water. Drive the pipe down some more to compensate for seasonal fluctuations and periods of drought.
The last step is adding a sanitary seal to prevent surface runoff from contaminating the aquifer. Lengthen the pipe to a height approximately 3 feet above the surface of the ground and fill the pit with the original soil. To protect your water supply and anchor your well, pour a small concrete slab into forms made of used 2-by-4’s or 2-by-6’s centered around the pipe at the surface. Install insulation around the pipes to protect your well from damage if the temperature where you live drops below freezing in winter.
Pitcher pumps are ideal for shallow wells. At depths greater than 25 feet, however, they stop working due to the limitations of atmospheric pressure. Inertia pumps (one-way footvalves attatched to flexible irrigation tubing) are the simplest (they contain only one moving part) and least expensive (under $20) manual deep well pump. Instead of a hand powered pump, a solar powered unit could be installed and the solar cells could be placed on top of the pump house.
Studies from developing nations show that 90% hand powered water pumps break down within 3 years. This is mainly due to worn out or broken parts. In the case of hand powered pumps, what you pay for may very well be what you get. So if you plan on installing a hand powered water pump, do not buy the cheapest product on the market.
The article is correct about any well more that 25 ft being a deep well. But fails to mention that a 2" deep well requires packer jet be placed near the bottom of the well (but above the well point screen). It is possible that some company now makes a standard two-pipe jet that fits a 2" well but I have seen one. Because you cannot draw water more than 25', you must instead use a jet to push the water up.
I have driven many shallow wells but never a deep one. Also driving one is usually done with a pounder that looks exactly like a large steel fence post pounder. The well pounder must be large enough to slip over the big drive cap. Also well pounders have lead poured in them to provide a slight cushion and add weight. And I would never use teflon tape for this job and instead use old fashioned thread seal compound.
When driving the well you can feel when you hit the water (it drives much easier). You usually want 5 to 10 feet of standing water in the pipe. To check the how viable the well is just take clean potable water and try to fill the well pipe. It should be impossible to fill the pipe because the water should drain away down the well faster than you can get it dumped in.
WanderLore
Veteran Member
Couple decades been using water from the roof. Got a bunch maybe 10 or 12 large trash cans I get from Walmart with a lid for $10.00, put the bleach in it. Gutters have screens. Use a good filter. Rainwater is so soft and makes the best coffee and ice tea. Filtered and cleaned of course. Use it for plants and animals too.
Worse case scenario we had once, we tied a tarp up by 4's and let the rain drain into buckets. Kids and I. Long time ago. Worked pretty good too.
Worse case scenario we had once, we tied a tarp up by 4's and let the rain drain into buckets. Kids and I. Long time ago. Worked pretty good too.
CaryC
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Anyone can purchase a drive well point on ......amazon, etc... There are two options actually one is done with a weighted driver, like a metal fence post driver, and the other is a well point cap, designed to take a beating.
The 11 minute video below is the weighted driver.
You can also get the 1 1/4 inch or 2 inch driver.
Those are really made for shallow depths, <20-25 feet.
There are two other ways:
Use an auger, which are also for sale online. Bigger hole and is like a big screw. You can do walk around's like horses did, to drive the auger, tractor's, and some other methods.
And you can dig one. Old timer dug my dad's in 3 days, 33 feet, 5 foot of water. With a long handle shovel.
If you're getting prepped to do something like this for when Shumer. You really need to have your ducks in row now. Not just the material, and method, but also where, and how deep.
For example I know where there are about 5 wet weather springs, two of which I can utilize with some depth for drier seasons. Lakes and creeks nearby, but not on my property. And I also know that nearly every well around runs in the 30-40 foot range. There is also an old hidden well just off the property that can be cleaned out and used. It's on property that is going to be used as a BOL and we can share the work and reward.
Never think digging a well of any kind will be easy work.
If you're in a burb, or rental you're going to have to make other arrangements. But also for those, they will probably have community water, while those in the sticks won't.
Squib
Veteran Member
Below is an excerpt of a study on rainwater harvesting from an article in Sciencedaily.com
Rainwater harvest study finds roofing material affects water quality
Using rainwater from your roof to water plants seems simple enough, right? But a new study finds that the type of roofing material used can make a big difference in water quality.
www.sciencedaily.com
“The study also showed that rainwater from asphalt fiberglass shingle roofs and increasingly popular "green" roofs contain high levels of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Although other potential pollutants can be significantly lower on green roofs (turbidity and aluminum), the high DOCs are significant where these roofs would be used for potable rainwater collection.
Water with DOC is not necessarily dangerous on its own, but Kirisits said when it's mixed with chlorine -- a common product used to disinfect water -- the two substances react to form byproducts that potentially cause cancer and other negative human health effects.”
The study shows that of the five roofing materials tested, metal and concrete tile roofs produced the highest quality rainwater...but, as you can see above, asphalt might not be so good.
However, as you stated Doc1, After a number of years, an older asphalt roof may likely be safe as many people have and still use it to this day for rain water.
ShadowMan
Designated Grumpy Old Fart
What about building a sand/charcoal filter in a 55 gallon barrel before it goes into your storage tanks?
We replaced our worn out roof with an all metal roof and will be tapping into this source of water and storing the water for gardens and emergency back up water. Up here in the mountains it's really hit or miss on drilling a well in ROCK!!
We replaced our worn out roof with an all metal roof and will be tapping into this source of water and storing the water for gardens and emergency back up water. Up here in the mountains it's really hit or miss on drilling a well in ROCK!!
Walrus Whisperer
Hope in chains...
Don't forget about possibly dowsing for the well placement. I would think one could prelocate where rocks might be at too.