With all the talk about how hard pumping water offgrid is, I have been feeling particularly lucky to live where I do,
it makes getting water easy.
As of 5/6/2012 this well has run on our offgrid system for 3 days, in poor solar conditions.
So far so good, but there has not been a lot of water demand either.
We have a standard Jetpump system with 2 inch stainless steel screen point.
Drinkable ( very good) water is only 28 feet down here, so pumping is very easy.
Water flow only depends on the size of pipe and pump your willing to put in.
When I repaired our water system years back I had to re-drive a point, well at least thats what I thought.
When my friend and I tried to drive (with an automated driver) a point in this white sugar sand it went about 8 feet and was stopped in its tracks, not by rocks, but the sand compacts instead of getting out of the road. I remembered then my grandpa used to go on about the troubles he had getting to water here. He said he had to auger down to the water before he could drive the point in.
So this is what I wound up doing (by hand).
The sad part is I had a 6 inch augered hole right to the water, yet because of finances we only put in a 2 inch point
My mother lives on the other side of our property now so we added a line to her instead of adding a new well.
So this little pump is easily supplying 2 homes.
Specs:
110v
~900w while on
28 feet to water from ground level
42 feet to bottom of point ( but not bottom of that water table)
~9 gpm max flow
Well pit ( grandfathered in no longer legal in Mn)
Many layers of insulation ( Minnesota ya know)
The open pit. the block walls were built in the 50's by my grandpa.
However this well spot has been here since well before the turn of the century. It was a open pit (wishing well) style well then
a point was put in and the majority of the hole filled with sand.
Yeah I know kinda messy piping, but I did what I had to work with back then
Close up, this pressure switch is just in case the one in the house fails and pressure gets to high.
Amazingly this pump can push well over 100psi.
Pic of the manifolds in the unfinished utility room