Talking to some more people around the area about the time I moved to this area back in 2010 Roosevelt county lost water for something like 6 to 8 days. I never heard about it so it was probably during that 8 month trip to Afghanistan I went on almost as soon as I got here.
I lived in the desert, and hauled my water in . In the back of my truck I had a tank for water I could collect either from sources of city water or live streams . then when I got home I pressurized that tank and hooked t up to any where in the house hold plumbing and sent the water to a set of tanks up in the workshop loft . this gravity fed the house and the pressure was just fine . Drinking water was of course filtered . currently I live in the flat lands with city water, I have a number of tanks and cisterns with float valves to control their levels being they are not pressure vessels ..these waters feed the chickens and gardening so the flow is regular. 3 tanks are pressure vessels and feed the laundry. I have check valves in place so that they can't be back fed into the city system . Moral, when the system goes down , I'm not. The same preparation Ive made with my power , being a "battery system"( primary lighting source), that can be charged off the grid, and through my solar and or through the generator or wind mill. If I were in your position, I would have several means to store water , elevated if possible for gravity and or pressure delivery. If you've got the space for a well house you have room for a shop with a upper loft supported well enough for a cistern or two. Also make it a generator shed and remember to provide access to pull the well casing or pumps as required .
Yes I think I am going to build a well house out of old concrete blocks from a building that is falling apart. Unfortunately the well is a few hundred feet away from the house.
Got the first water bill today, $48 for 0 consumption. So $578 for nothing every year. F that. I don't even know what the water its self actually costs.
Well... since December the water has gone out 4 more times that I am aware of. And I found out why. Turns out the county and city water is all PVC, installed around 30 years ago, you would think that means that they have at least another 30 years. Nope, not when you dig the hole down to the bedrock, just drop the pipe on the bedrock and cover it with stones. Everone says they hired a contractor to do the job. Probably the lowest bidder.
Do you have 3phase power on the property? I may be wrong but past 5hp VFDs cant handle single to 3 phase inversion. Also, most 3 phase motors are internally delta wound meaning, even if they are meant to be single voltage from the manufacturer they have just internally wired the 12 leads and only give you three at the peckerhead. I have run into this a few times with older machines. Unfortunatly, you would have to pull the commatator to find out. Then, you have to sort through the leads and ohm them out to find the correct pairing to identify the wire numbers. Wye motors are wired the same way. They internally wire the 12 leads and give 9 at the pecker head. Motor manufacturers have been doing this for years and years. Foreign motors are the funny ones to me. They always want to mess around with the numbering and sometimes turn numbers to colors.
Heres another trick. If you find out that I am right and it does have 12 leads you can separate the windings. On delta motors the windings can be separated and using two separated motor starters you can have two a 2 speed control without the use of a variable frequency drive. Thats how they did things pre transistors. I ran into this setup on an old Bridgeport mill once. It had a 5 position high volt drum switch that did everything. Off, for-slow, for-fast, rev-slow, rev-fast.
That motor and well pump are shot. It hadn't been ran in at about 20 years. Plus they are laying on the pump and motor are laying on the ground. I'm going to put submersible pumps, likely single phase down there.
Last month the bill said we used 3000 gallons. Still $50. Not too horrible for 3 adults and 1 baby. If I buy the 1.5hp deep well 20gpm series pump it will bring at least 20gpm to the surface from 110ft. It would have to run for 150 minutes to pump 3000 gallons. It will only take about 3kwh to bring it to the surface and another 3 to pressurize it. So about 6kwr or around 60 cents woth of power.
Need to get going on my well again. It's only been half the summer. Here are my 3 choices for well pumps. The well is pretty far from the house so I'm only going to use 240v power to run it. Solar DC battery powered pumps don't move enough. I will likely install one as a backup. That leaves 3 wire single phase and 3 phase pumps. I can put the 3 phase pumps on a variable frequency drive and run them any speed I off 240v single phase power. So if I need a little water I can back the speed down and get just what I need. The drive can be set so there is no starting in rush current. Just have to find an inverter duty pump. I could run the biggest pump and drive that I can afford. The single phase pumps run full speed and that's all you get and not much you can do about starting inrush. I would probably run the smallest 240v single phase pump I could find to try and tame startup surge.
When I turn on the shower it wastes almost 3 gallons of water each time. Probably more in the winter. I have a hot water circulation pump I am going to install in the bathroom under the bathroom sink. My wife likes to take showers she probably takes 5 a week minimum. Me not so much. So that's at least 1,500 gallons per year. The water recirculation pump was about $90 so it will probably never pay for its self. It won't be until water becomes scarce that I will be glad I have it and I have seen it not rain for 9 months here.
I have 2 daily showers & long if I have the heat .. If I had a female with me , then maybe we would run out of hot H2O only, Dropping the solar collectors to solar panels to feed a circuit thats controlled ,, 5 years of time to learn shit & truth S
This is the plan, what I have and what I intend to do with it. Off grid power the well. I have my 24v 255ah warehouse tug battery, 15 amp Morningstar tristar mppt charge controller, some framed mono panels and a 500 gallon tank. Get 2 solar deep well pumps. Run 1 pump straight off solar panel power in parallel with the charge controllers. Run the other pump off battery power. I predict the pump that runs off 24v power will do 1/2 to 2/3 gpm and the one that runs straight off 48ish volt panel power will do closer to 1gpm. I calculated the warehouse tug battery can power a 200w pump for 24hr straight. Probably run up to 700 watts of panel, 2 mppt 15 amp morning star inverters. That will allow me to pump up to 1,800 gallons in 24 hours. But according to my water bill I only average 100 gallons per day. For the pressurization system it will use 12v RV diaphragm pumps, surflo and Delavan. A 100w panel, small charge controller and plug in battery tender should, a group 31 AGM marine battery should take care of the house. I found that those diaphragm pumps will pump a half gallon at 50psi for every 1gpm they are rated for. I want enough capacity for 2 people be able to have both showers going at the same time.
I did some 5 gallon jug, pressure gauge, and stop watch testing. Utility pressure at 0 flow is 65 to 68 psi. I found the outside spigot can do 10gpm at the end of a 30' long 3/4'' diameter heavy duty garden hose. This dropped the pressure on the other side of the house to 40psi. With my little fire fighter nozzle utility water does 7.5gpm with pressure at 55psi on the other side of the house. That's going to be hard to beat. I do have pumps that can do this. I have a 1/3hp sub pump that's rated for 20 gpm at 21ft of head it will do more like 45ft of head at stall. That's plumbed into a 1/2hp utility irrigation pump rated for 10gpm at 55psi. Together they do 10gpm at 70psi. The utility pump is a bitch to prime that's why I put a higher volume sub pump feeding the utility pump.
I would be using two 15 amp controllers in parallel or a single 30 amp. The battery powered pump should only kick on once or twice a week.
still light for a forklift style ,, YOU NEED to create action with in the plates . 30 amps is squAT , 60 is 1/2 way , Heavy plates take amps to shake up the juice S
It happened again. No water. I think this time another utility working on their subterranean assets hit a water main and busted it. My guess is it was the cable/Internet company they have been digging up a lot of stuff with in 2 miles of my house lately.
