# In line with normal water line water storage



## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

We haven't done anything for water storage yet, so that's on the list for this year. Instead of storing water in jugs or large tanks and then trying to maintain the safety of that water, I want to put large tanks inline with my regular water supply.

It would look something like this. 
I have well water. I want to add a 3 or 4 300 gallon tanks after the pressure tank and after the water softener. This would be a pressurized system. The water in the tanks would be used regularly as part of our day to day use, so no need to use bleach or anything in the water. If we are out of electricity for a short period of time (a day or two) we would just run off the generator, if it became longer than that we would shut the valve off that goes into the tanks, and also out of the tank and open the bypass valve that would be going to a 12 volt pump with it's own pressure tank. That would be the new feed into the regular lines into the house, the tanks would be the input to the 12 volt pump.

Hope that makes sense.

Anybody try that? Would it works? Seems to me it should.


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## Henry (Mar 1, 2006)

Acouple of thoughts. This assumes your well water is as near to perfect as possible. What i mean is if you have never had it tested then I would get it done before spending the money. Thats for biological but your mineral concentration is important to. The water is going to sit in those tanks for quite a while with normal household use. If all looks good then I would at least make a bypass for each tank that will let you drain that tank on its own with out shutting down the system. That way you can do a fast flush if you need it.
We have a deep well [350ft 0 static height-when we drilled it was a surprise that the water we hit down deep came all the way to the surface]thats so clean that theres no residue on the pots after boiling or if they are left standing for hours. Our system has 3 200gal pressure tanks in line. Each is plumbed for drainage and can be shut out of the well loop. The tanks stay clean and give us a temp water supply between power use and if I need to work on the system. The difference between us is our system is off grid so the pressure tanks are [upstairs] and we only bring their pressure to 20lbs. Thats if we do not have to use the hand pump backup, if we do we just fill the tanks. We decided to use pressure tanks for safety reasons. 
So short answer is it can be done but I do not know whats the max amount of tanks you can use without the water getting stale. Good luck.


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

Can you use a cistern instead and use gravity to feed the house?


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Darren said:


> Can you use a cistern instead and use gravity to feed the house?


Not in Minnesota you can't 

Unless of course the cistern and all lines were either heated or buried below the frostline.

Kevin, my main concern would be the tanks. What kind of tanks do you plan to use? Are you sure they will be able to withstand pressurization?


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## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

The well water is good, its been tested, but it is hard, that's why I'd put the tanks after all the filters (I have two, one for sediment and one for odor) and softener. I have no idea how much water we go through today, but with a family of 4 and no thought about how long to take a shower or running the dishwasher twice a day because it's "almost" full, I'm thinking we go through a lot. So, on a day to day basis I don't believe that the water in the tanks will be there very long, certainly not long enough to go stale.

Al, I'm not exactly sure yet, I was hoping to go with plastic because of cost, but most of these aren't for a pressurized system. I need to research that some more.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

I wouldn't have that many tanks under pressure.
Too much potential for leaks.

I'd use them as storage for the 12 volt system, not under pressure


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## ghmerrill (Feb 22, 2011)

Flip flop it.... It will require a bit more equipment, but run your water from your well to your tanks (you will need a float switch) then a pump from the tanks to the pressure tank. Have the tanks high enough that you get gravity feed if the power goes out.

We are setting up this type of system, but with one tank, a 3000 gallon, 8' tall tank. The height of the tank, plus the slight rise of it's location above the house should let us shower when the power is off. Next up is a propane on demand water heater so we have hot water too.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Kevin will you have a converter for the 12v pump so you can run it off your 120v? If so you could fill your barrels with the pump, then switch over to the 12 volt. Just refill the barrels once a day.


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

tinknal said:


> Not in Minnesota you can't
> 
> Unless of course the cistern and all lines were either heated or buried below the frostline.
> 
> Kevin, my main concern would be the tanks. What kind of tanks do you plan to use? Are you sure they will be able to withstand pressurization?


Every cistern I've seen was buried. How much would it cost to install a concrete septic tank and use it for a cistern? Stored water can be freshened and disinfected if necessary. It doesn't need to be rotated. Water from a cistern can be accessed several ways including installing a casing like a well and using a hand bail. If you want to get fancier, you can do that to.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Have you considered a hand pump well and letting your "storage system" be the aquifer?


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

Darren said:


> Every cistern I've seen was buried. How much would it cost to install a concrete septic tank and use it for a cistern? Stored water can be freshened and disinfected if necessary. It doesn't need to be rotated. Water from a cistern can be accessed several ways including installing a casing like a well and using a hand bail. If you want to get fancier, you can do that to.


Don't use a concrete "septic tank", get a concrete cistern. If your local concrete place doesn't have one in stock ask them about making you one.


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

I would pump from the well into a large poly tank then use a smaller pressure pump to go from the tank to the house system (with a standard pressure tank). You well pump will last longer if it isn't pressurizing the house system and the smaller pressure pumps are lots cheaper than the well pumps.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Darren said:


> Every cistern I've seen was buried. How much would it cost to install a concrete septic tank and use it for a cistern? Stored water can be freshened and disinfected if necessary. It doesn't need to be rotated. Water from a cistern can be accessed several ways including installing a casing like a well and using a hand bail. If you want to get fancier, you can do that to.


Darren, you also mentioned gravity feed. I happen to know Kevin IRL and am familiar with his home. The place is flat as a pancake. A gravity feed cistern buried underground just wouldn't work. The water table is also fairly high there so the bottom of a cistern would probable be sitting below the water level. Not sure if that would be a good thing. (not saying that it wouldn't be ok, I just don't know)


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

tinknal said:


> Darren, you also mentioned gravity feed. I happen to know Kevin IRL and am familiar with his home. The place is flat as a pancake. A gravity feed cistern buried underground just wouldn't work. The water table is also fairly high there so the bottom of a cistern would probable be sitting below the water level. Not sure if that would be a good thing. (not saying that it wouldn't be ok, I just don't know)


You can figure out whether the water table would be a problem by taking the weight of the concrete tank and figuring the hydrostatic pressure on the tank at that depth. If the tank was full it would not float. You need to figure how much water could be removed and still prevent the tank from floating up.

Accessing the water in the cistern wouldn't be that difficult. Plus it would simply the water system. Having multiple pressurized tanks above ground requiring inside heat strikes me as a potential nightmare for maintenance.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Frankly Darrin, I'd be more concerned with getting a cistern past the Nazi county he lives in....LOL.

I assume he would put the storage tanks in his basement so keeping it warm wouldn't be an issue.


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## Darren (May 10, 2002)

tinknal said:


> Frankly Darrin, I'd be more concerned with getting a cistern past the Nazi county he lives in....LOL.
> 
> I assume he would put the storage tanks in his basement so keeping it warm wouldn't be an issue.


Sorry to read that. There is no building inspector in most rural areas in WV. I say most because I'm not familiar with all of the counties. I the ones I know have no inspector. Many do well just to have 24 hour LEO coverage, Even the sanitarian in this county is part-time.


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## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

The ideal situation would be to use a 12 volt pump and solar panels that would fill up tanks, then use another 12 volt pump and pressure tank in the house to supply the house, but that's a lot of money. If and when my well pump goes bad I would look into that. Given that, I think the better alternative would be to do what ghmerril suggested and flip flop it. Use regular tanks, not pressurized with a float switch from my current well, then setup a 12 volt pump to supply the house. That would get me closer to a solar pumping solution and save on the current pump once the tanks are full.

Al, the reason for a 12 volt pump would be so that I could run it off batteries and keep the battery charged with solar panels. Not sure if you knew or not Al but we had 4 tornados go through here this past summer, no real damage to us, but you may have seen the mess over at Luther's place. We were in the basement that night and it sounded like freight trains going through here, we lost a chicken coop and our horse shed ended up in the county ditch, broke the 4x4 posts off at the ground (they were 4 feet in the ground) and ripped through the fence. We were out of power for about 12 hours, nothing that a person can't deal with, but with a well it makes flushing a toilet a bit of a problem. That got me to thinking more about power outages and ice storms and all those local short term things that can happen. 

The cistern idea would probably work too, but again, with excavating and the cost of the tank, not to mention county approval (unless I can get it done in a long weekend), it would be a costly option. The water table here is very high, you can't put a wood fence post in the ground without dealing with a hole full of water.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Sorry to hear of the storm damage Kevin, I lost a bunch of trees in that straight line wind storm we had last summer. I won't have to cut a live tree for firewood for 10 years LOL.

I'm going to do something similar, just low tech. Been storing bottles of water in the freezer and out of the freezer. I'm going to put some barrels in the basement too. I figure that we really don't need that much potable water, maybe 50 gallons, and the stuff in the barrels will be for livestock, flushing, washing, etc. Really won't matter if that goes stale.


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## jlrbhjmnc (May 2, 2010)

An off-grid home with septic tanks for cisterns:

http://cedar-ridge-farm.blogspot.com/2011/08/tanks-for-water.html

The link is Part One and he has a Part Two on the tanks.


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

"Flat as a pancake", "high water table", do you have a basement? If so, how do you keep it dry?

Have you thought of doing a shallow well near the house with a hand pump? It would work for most things unless it was extremely contaminated. You would want to boil and filter for drinking if you didn't have enough set aside for that already.


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## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

Yes, we have a basement, no, it's not dry. It's an old field stone basement so the water pours in whenever it rains. There's drain tile around on the inside to a sump pump and that runs all the time whenever the ground isn't frozen. We do not use our basement for anything other than the mechanicals, dehumidifiers run constantly. With a properly built cement block or poured cement wall you could keep it dry, but not with the stone.

My well is currently about 80 feet deep, how deep can you hand pump water?


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

You might want to find a 12vdc backup sump pump for that basement to protect the mechanicals. 

You can pump from as much as 200ft with a hand pump, but the pumps that will go that far are rather pricey. The cheapest ones only will pump from around 20-25ft.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

I've wondered about a hand pump too but I really can't afford a drilled well and from everything I've heard sand points don't work in clay soil. Kevin has more or less the same soil I do, at least 20 feet down.


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## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

Funny you should mention the sump pump backup. That's on my list too, luckily the mechanicals are about 1 foot off the floor, that save me this past summer during the tornado weather. The low part of the basement had about 8" of water in it before the power came back on.

A person really needs these minor problems to really think about what they need for a real SHTF situation.


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## Cyngbaeld (May 20, 2004)

I had a basement once that got a couple of feet of water in it every time the pump was out for any reason. At least I didn't have anything in it that could ruin. Nice thing was that the water was clear and I used it to water the lawn and garden.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

tinknal said:


> .... I've heard sand points don't work in clay soil.....


That's why they're called sand points. 

A deep well hand pump can lift water up to 175 to 200 feet....which, of course, would require a drilled well.


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Cabin Fever said:


> That's why they're called sand points.
> 
> A deep well hand pump can lift water up to 175 to 200 feet....which, of course, would require a drilled well.


It really is a guess about the soil at 20 feet. I've never seen an excavation that deep near by. Any way of finding out how deep the clay goes? I know the state does a lot of test drilling. Where would I find this data?


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2012)

Tink,

The state (health department?) keeps a record of wells that are drilled. The person who drilled the well next door to me turned in the report that he went through 45 feet of sand and 135 feet of clay before they hit sand again. The neighbor is getting water from an acquifer 180+ feet deep. I just hammered a sand point 20 feet down, had the water tested, and have great water. If they ever drop a nuke on the Grand Forks Air Force base I will be getting my drinking water from the neighbor because the fallout will contaminate the ground water.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

tinknal said:


> It really is a guess about the soil at 20 feet. I've never seen an excavation that deep near by. Any way of finding out how deep the clay goes? I know the state does a lot of test drilling. Where would I find this data?


The MN Health Dept. makes available most well drilling logs on the internet at this site:
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/cwi/ (click the globe icon to start) Then, enter your address or township, range and section to see what information they have for your area.

Sorry, but Mille Lacs County does not have a geologic atlas.
(see: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/waters/groundwater_section/mapping/status.html)


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## tinknal (May 21, 2004)

Cabin Fever said:


> The MN Health Dept. makes available most well drilling logs on the internet at this site:
> http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/eh/cwi/ (click the globe icon to start) Then, enter your address or township, range and section to see what information they have for your area.
> 
> Sorry, but Mille Lacs County does not have a geologic atlas.
> (see: http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/waters/groundwater_section/mapping/status.html)


Yeah, I think I've been to that site. I live in Kanabec county but that isn't there either.


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## Kevingr (Mar 10, 2006)

That's an interesting site. My county is on there. Here's a well within 1/4 mile south of me.
CLAY YELLOW SOFT 0 27 feet 
CLAY GRAY SOFT 27 54 feet 
SAND GRAY SOFT 54 66 feet 

And across the road:
CLAY TAN MEDIUM 0 30 feet 
CLAY BROWN MEDIUM 30 90 feet
SAND BROWN SOFT 90 105 feet


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