We're on to the third Meadows & Makers Challenge on Water Collection + Storage + Usage System
Follow our trail of water collection, first for drinking water -
Straw Bale Construction Well House
The winters are cold here so we did some straw bale construction around our well to protect it. We also run a heat lamp to keep it from freezing for it is a shallow well.
Wide Bore Well
We chose a wide bore well casing so we could draw water from it with buckets if need be. We do have an electric water pump but we like to know we can assess our water if the power goes out.
Crocks to Hold Drinking Water and Water Distiller
We like to have the distiller for our coffee, teas and other drinks than the water stored in the crocks we use for cooking.
Narrow Bore Well
We had first dug the narrow bore well and it went deep into a huge aquifer that gave us plenty of water to run the house but when we had it tested we found it had real high levels of dissolved salts. This is great as spa water in our hot tub but not so great for drinking.
Wood Fired Hot Tub Layered in Snow
This is lovely in the summer for a relaxing tub under the pines! It also acts as an extra store of water if the power is out. We can draw from here for flushing toilets etc.
Next thing we collect water for is for watering the garden and indoor plants plus water for the dog and cat.
Did you know that every inch of rain falling on a 1000 square-foot roof area you can gather over 600 gallons of rain water?
We have lots of roof lines on our house with metal roofing plus our garage and workshop. So we have 9 downspouts that we have rain barrels under to collect the water for the garden, indoor plants and cat and dog.
We have to wait until the frost disappears but in the meantime we collect snow to melt in buckets and a barrel we have in our porch.
We also have two 55 gallon barrels in our porch, plus some water jugs that we fill with the rain water before freeze up, then we top them up with snow for our indoor garden in the winter.
55 Gallon Barrel Storing Rainwater and Melted Snow for Winter
We feel pretty secure that we will have ample supply of water.
One thing we would like to do is to put a spout in the bottom part of a couple of our rain barrels so we can just turn the tap and let the water run down hill to the covered garden instead of hauling it in buckets.
We do keep a couple of water barrels in our covered garden which we fill from our shallow well. The water that comes from it is very cold and we have to let it warm up before using it or it will shock the plants.
So there you have it our water collection, storage and usage.
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