# Solar water well kit or by the piece?



## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

We're having a water well dug today and if all goes well, they should hit water at about 20' or so. Going down to at least 100', maybe a bit more if they hit another layer of sand water. This is a domestic well that will service one household and a garden, maybe a few animals in the future, maybe not.

We'd like to use a solar water pump. We live in the SE corner of New Mexico and have plenty of sun and southern exposure.

What I would like to know if if buying a solar well pump kit is the best thing for someone that doesn't know anything yet about solar - except what one can read online.

Not sure if we will use a pressure tank or just a holding tank. We will be living in an rv so would need to be able to fill the water holding tank. Other than that, water usage will be scattered around the property for the gardens and stuff.

Any thoughts from those of you that are using one would be helpful. Any idea and comments from those of you with experience in solar would help, too.

Tia.


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## wy_white_wolf (Oct 14, 2004)

You really need to calculate how much water you're going to need. 

I'd suggest going solar direct into a cistern but really dought you'd get enough water to support a very big garden.

A battery bank big enough to supply the garden would also be cost preventive.

WWW


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

Until we get moved over there we really can't guess our water usage. I assume we will use less living in the rv than we do here in this house, but we don't have a garden or any livestock here either. By the time we are ready for the garden and livestock we should have some idea how much water we are using, and what we will need.

We're also considering a deep well hand pump with a pressure tank for right now, and doing the solar further down the road as we can buy the pieces.


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## DEKE01 (Jul 17, 2013)

Solar wells do not need batteries. A large cistern is the "battery" in that you fill a cistern with at least 3 days of max usage, preferably much more. The stored water is what gets you thru nights and bad weather. If the cistern is on a hill above the house, all the better because that solves the problem of getting flow into the house if power is down, though, depending on elevation change, it may not give you enough pressure for routine use. 

I'm buying a kit for livestock and garden use in a couple of months. The kit is because I've never built a PV system and would rather not have to deal with making sure I get all the right pieces in a fully compatible manner. I'm sure an experienced person could save a few bucks buying everything piecemeal. 

I saw one kit that would produce 1000 gal/day on a 50' lift. I don't remember the numbers, but the more the lift, the faster the water production fell off. Like a 100 ft lift was well less than 500 gal/day. In my mind, for a house and garden, 1000 gal/day is not a lot of room for error unless you have something like a 20 - 30 day cistern. A family of four can easily burn thru 1000 gal in a day and if you have guests who aren't as water conscious, who knows how much they may waste. 

Here's a link to estimate household water use. 

http://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/conservation/thepowerof10/

The garden is the part that is hard to estimate. Until you know how large and what type crops, you just need to make a generous SWAG and hope for the best.


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

I don't have a solar well pump, but I can tell you how much water I use in the orchard/garden...

Our climate is very dry during the summer/early fall. It is very common to have no significant precipitation from June through mid-late October. I usually start watering the garden/orchard in June or early July depending on temps.

Each bush/tree/vine/bramble in the orchard gets 4-5 gallons per week (100+ plants). The garden is a series of raised beds, covering an area ~50' x 50' (lots of paths right now so less than half of that is planted bed space). I use ~25-40 gallons per day on various parts of the garden.

To reduce the need for watering, I use hugelkultur beds (buried wood) under the topsoil. Our hillside soil is very low in organic matter and I expect our watering needs to drop each year as the organic matter content increases.

So, IMO, providing water for an orchard/garden/household seems very feasible from a well with decent flow (0.5 gal/min or more) from a solar driven pump coupled with a storage tank.

I believe the average household in the US uses 200-300 gal/day on average for a family. Lots of variability potential on either end of that number.


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## TnAndy (Sep 15, 2005)

Northern Arizona Wind/Sun has a good, free primer on solar water pumping, as well as a lot of experience in the equipment.

http://www.solar-electric.com/solar-water-pumping-guide.html


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## featherbottoms (May 28, 2005)

Thanks ya'll. We decided to build the system piecemeal. We got the solar pump today and plan to read up on the panels tonight and hope to order at least one tomorrow or Saturday.


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