Water storage solutions in a drought

[Larry Caldwell]

The county commissioners just declared a drought emergency in my county. That will go to the governor. If the governor agrees, it gives the Water Master the authority to suspend water rights and shut down irrigation.

 

[JethroB]

On a flip note, in some areas landowners are charged a ‘rain tax’ to pay for storm water systems. Though they call it a utility fee, not a tax. It’s based on the square footage of impervious surface on a property. (Rooftops, paved driveways & sidewalks, etc.) There are a few creative minds in gov’t.

 

[ruffdog]

I collect water off of the shed roof close to the garden. This Spring is very unusally dry. We have not had one thunderstorm yet. I have never seen when grass stops growing in April....crazy.

 

[bunyip]

We have 3 tanks 90,000 litres, about 25,000 gall imp, collection off house and shed roof gives us 500 litres per mm of rain, we are very dry at the moment and have topped up with 20,000 twice at $350 each, we are getting little bursts of rain, yesterday we had 8.5mm and hoping for more this week.
10 horses use a lot and a bore is about $40k for good water.
We have a small dam but we are fairly flat so no run off to catch so it is pretty well useless.
More sheds going in this year we hope and more storage so can transfer water to other tanks, irrigation from bores is not permitted.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

0.26" of rain here for the whole month of April.

 

[Diggin It]

Weird how it all works out. I've had excess rainfall most months going on four years. Best crop I have is mud.

 

[ruffdog]

We are FINALLY getting some rain! We are predicted to get about 1 inch....woohoo! I was so dry I could fart dust.

 

[ericm979]

It's too late this year to capture rain water in most of California. Except for the high sierras it only rains in the winter. To make it worse the rainy season seems to have ended early this year.

Our setup has a 10,000 gallon tank way up the hill from the house and well. Even that doesn't last long between watering the garden, lawn and home use. In the last drought ~5 years ago our well started sucking air. In that drought we stopped watering the lawn and cut back on the garden and made it through. The lawn makes a good fire break for the house but if it gets too dry to maintain it I'll have to do something else.

We have a pumpsaver on the well which shuts it off when the pump overspeeds or has other errors (which are generally caused by low water). It records the events. I use a small device sold by the same company to read out it's memory and find out when it's had soft and hard errors so I can tell when the level is getting low, before it shuts off. It's an electric device which you can add at the well head.

This is the one we have: SymCom PumpSaver 231 INSIDER-P | Pump Protection

The fiber optic cable hanging off it is what you use to read the data, using this:

Littelfuse/Symcom - Littelfuse Informer Remote Diagnostic Tool For Single-Phase PumpSavers #MSRINFORMER

The Informer is a handheld diagnostic tool designed for use with single-phase PumpSaver® and PumpSaver®Plus models equipped with infrared LED transmitters.

www.rcworst.com

I checked today and we've had a bunch of dry well events recorded by the pumpsaver. Looks like I'll be cutting way back on watering the lawn and if it still gets the dry well events, stop entirely. I put a lot of work in the last two years getting the lawn back into good shape, so it hurts to let it go.

The last time we saw this it didn't happen until August or September. Hopefully the well does not go entirely dry. And also that we have an early and plentiful rainfall this winter.

 

[deezler]

Wait... some of you western state guys are running your wells dry just to look at green grass out the window? That strikes me as a bit.... ridiculous.

I get that you can make the "fire break" argument, but bare dirt works even better, right? Easy to say from my wet state.

Pretty dry March-May, but Over 4" of rain in June so far here (sorry).

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I've been shopping around for storage. The cheapest I have found is an above ground swimming pool. The 33' round ones hold 25,000 gallons, which would probably give me enough water to get a harvest out of a small garden. Water doesn't really get tight here until the end of August or first part of September.

 

[MoKelly]

We live close to the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.

Flooding is the issue in Spring.

To date, we are about at the normal level of precipitation. The beans are doing very well.

MoKelly

 

[ponytug]

Wait... some of you western state guys are running your wells dry just to look at green grass out the window? That strikes me as a bit.... ridiculous.

I get that you can make the "fire break" argument, but bare dirt works even better, right? Easy to say from my wet state.

Pretty dry March-May, but Over 4" of rain in June so far here (sorry).

It happens. I would say that there are many, many different ecosystems in California, some of them very wet. Even in the Santa Cruz mountains it can range from desert like to temperate rain forest in a few miles.

Here, we are in the savanna type ecosystem, where it is dry tax day to turkey day. Annual rainfall is in the ten to fifteen inch range. It is too dry for most trees, except for a few in the draws or ravines. One of my neighbors is on a marginal well and still has a lawn. I don't get it either.

Fire breaks help, somewhat, but they aren't a panacea. We have bare soil around the house and buildings. The fire risk here is too high to do otherwise. But in a wind driven fire nothing is really fireproof, other than perhaps a concrete earth home with metal hurricane shutters and something exceptional for the roof vents. By now, you have all seen the cars with liquified alloy rims and warped water heaters after the fires. Wind driven fire gets really hot.

We just have two 5,000 gallon poly tanks that we keep between 8-10,000 gallons in. I know that they would be toast in a big fire, but that would be a small item in the bit picture.

Stay safe out there.

All the best,

Peter

 

[plowhog]

We just have two 5,000 gallon poly tanks that we keep between 8-10,000 gallons in. I know that they would be toast in a big fire,

That's the difficulty I have with how to store spring runoff water for later in the season. If I install above ground tanks, that investment is at risk from fire or (maybe more likely) falling trees. Below grade water storage seems to get very expensive very fast.

 

[ponytug]

That's the difficulty I have with how to store spring runoff water for later in the season. If I install above ground tanks, that investment is at risk from fire or (maybe more likely) falling trees. Below grade water storage seems to get very expensive very fast.

I have thought about wrapping them in strips of compressed fiberglass rigid boards and then putting galvanized roofing around that. I would probably build a steel 2x4 frame with the same insulation as the roof. I have also thought about filling it full and then putting on gunnite. But that is way down my do list.

I know some folks back east who used concrete filled cement blocks with rebar to make a 10,000 gallon (+/-) spring tank, then plastered it with cement, and coated the cement with a lining material. They were very happy with it.

Personally I think that below ground storage tanks are an art, and nobody hereabouts that I have found seems to know how to do it. I think it is highly dependent on high quality concrete pouring. It also depends on what you have underground...rock gets expensive quickly.

All the best,

Peter

 

[TheMan419]

All I have to say is. I'm thankful we live where we do (Great Lakes watershed). Water is never an issue here and you can hit water here with a driven point just about anywhere. Might not be the best because of the limestone strata but it's wet and plentiful.

Amen! We have a filter and a softener to make it good water. But there is plenty of it.