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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I guess even with snow and ice you're not going to go without water as long as you can thaw it. I love the photo with the icicle looking like it froze mid flow from the pipe.
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That is the one time when I really appreciate the snow for there is always plenty and we bring in buckets daily to let thaw. That was crazy when the water froze midstream - that happens when we get drastic weather changes - check out this icicle picture from last season
holy crap!!
Isn't that wild! That's what happens with a sudden change in weather and this time there was a cold wind involved blowing the water and freezing it mid air!
Oh wow that's amazing!
Right that's it .. im on a plane. You had me at wood fired spa.
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It's lovely in the summer to sit under the pines in the hot tub but you wouldn't want to be out there now - daytime temperatures are -10 below Celsius evenings -18!
I live in a tropical country and we did have water supply problems some years ago but that was because it was too hot in here. It never occured to me that people in the colder areas of the planet also experience challenges in water supply. I've always imagined snow to be like those in the songs. With the snowman and the winter wonderland. ❄☃️
I love how you are able to work around the challenge. Amazing!
We are experiencing a bit of a winter wonderland now for we got a big dump of snow and it froze onto the trees - see my post about it at: https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@porters/look-what-i-woke-up-to-a-winter-wonderland
wow that looks super cold and puppy looks adorable!! i 💜 german shepherds.
Ya we had a big drop in temperature making for an early winter (but we have a good woood heater to cozy up to! We love german shepards and have had a few of them. They are great for protection in the country too, although our dog is a big play dog! Here's a post I did of him playing at: https://steemit.com/dogsofsteemit/@porters/want-to-play
Very nice to see what you're doing there with the rainwater... that's a lot of downspouts! I wanted to ask about the wide bore well, how deep is it? It's a great idea to think about keeping the ability to get water with a bucket (old fashion like). We got an estimate for a well Nd thry said it may be as deep as 400 feet! I don't know if it would be very practical to use a bucket!!! That's long wag to pull. But we may get a hand pump.
Wow! that is a deep well! Our shallow well is 24 feet down but the water will come right up to close to the surface so it freezes easily. The first winter we had it we had to use an axe to chop through the ice to pull the water up before we got a water pump. Now we put a heat lamp in it to keep it from freezing. Our straw bale construction well house is great for storing veggies in in the fall or we could even hang stuff in the well in the summer to keep it cool for the water is very cold. We had to go through perma frost to get to the water source.
Tou had to go through permafrost??? Where are you guys, how far north?
400 feet was an estimate due to our neighbors wells being 300 feet deep.... and we are up on the hill. I think I should find a Dowser to help with finding a source so we don't have to drill so deep!
We live by the Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan Canada. Where we dug the well was like a peat bog which acts like an insulator holding the cold in the ground. It surprised us too when we saw the ice crystals in the ground in the middle of summer!
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