No water service, other options?

[goodoleboy]

What did you all to bring in water to your property for watering plants, mixing with chemicals before you got a water tap? How long did you use that option before you got a tap or well.

Also, on drilling a water well How much did it cost you? I know every situation is different but im just trying to gather an average.

I am limited to a full size pickup truck to haul water in.

 

[hwp]

We get our water from two sources, by God and by phone. We collect water off most of our roofs but quite often God doesn't provide as much water as we need so we have to order a truck load of water. Our cistern holds about 20K litres. A truck load is about 13K litres, so when the water level in our cistern gets down to about a half a metre, we order another truckload. We order water about once a month - more often in the summer and less often in the winter. A truckload of water currently costs us CDN$68. The water that is delivered comes from the Municipal system so it should be OK. But since some of the water also comes from off the roofs, we have a series of filters and a UV light to clean the water. We frequently take water samples to the Public Health agency to be tested. The untreated samples are often contaminated but the treated samples have always tested good. We looked into the feasibility of drilling a well and decided against it for several reasons - the well would have to be over 100 feet deep, the expected flow rate into the well was quite low and the quality of the water was not good. We have found a number of ways to limit the amount of water we use including not watering the lawns and limited watering of flowers gardens, etc. With a careful selection of plants, this works out quite well. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Dachshund]

We had a house moved onto our place Thanksgiving of 2003. We signed up for, and were promised, rural water by May 2004. Needless to say, they were a little late - we finally got it Valentines Day 2005. In the mean time, we hauled it in via plastic 55 gallon drums and pumped it to another drum in the house. We converted a "nipple bucket" (removed the nipple, brazed on a valve and a garden hose spray head) so we could take "Navy Showers". The first thing we built was an outhouse, so we were set that way. Usually got 1 drum a week.

 

[Highbeam]

In my pickup, between the wheel wells, is a hair over 48 inches. Two 55 gallon plastic drums will sit there nicely on their sides without rolling and if the drums are full or empty I don't get sloshing. I added a hose bib type valve to each barrel's bung to allow filling and draining via a garden hose, and for an air release I used a screw type tire valve with the valve core removed. The barrels are much too heavy to lift when full so I fill them in the truck and empty them from the truck. Whenever water goes in or out, air must replace the lost water through the tire valve. I use the water to gravity feed a pressure washer for bulldozer cleaning.

Barrels are cheap, the valves cost me more than the barrels. A 12 volt, RV style, on demand, water pump can be had for 70$ new and plumbed to spray the water at pressure and flow very similar to a municipal connection. The pump can be powered by making up a socket to fit into your seven pin trailer connection on the bumper of the truck. A standard shower head, pressure washer, kitchen sink, runs about 2.5 gpm and that is less than what a typical RV pump puts out. If you can get 100 gallons out of the two barrels then you are looking at 40 minutes of squirt time.

Water weighs bout 8 lbs per gallon so your truck needs more than 800 lbs of cargo capacity. I find my 1/2 ton truck has absolutely no trouble driving around with the additional weight back there.

 

[ByronBob]

I drilled a well last year for about $22-23 a foot.

I see where a few neighbors in my area have the 1000 gallon plastic tanks setting on the ground for holding water.