Even more Water, Water, Water

Update on the house water situation.....oh boy - here goes.  So we (Kyle, I use the royal "we"), pulled off the lid on the cistern and WOW! Some of the greenest moss you have ever seen, flora growing nearly halfway down into the cistern itself, hey, no wonder our house filter is getting off lightly, we have our own wetland filtration system going on. But after cleaning out all that vegetation, sulfur smell is gone, fingers crossed, so far so good!

And as for the amount of water, have no fear, this spring is regenerating at such a rate that we could give Denali 496 baths a day and still not run out. The cistern overflows at a constant rate forming a stream all the way down the hill till it returns to the natural stream. So now we are devising a plan for our groundwater catchment and installing secondary containment systems to store all this water.

We are scoping out a site downhill of the cistern by about 400 feet to place a 5,000 gallon potable water storage tank, a poly tank that we will then cover with  a GFRC coating or wire mess to encourage ivy to grow up, we will see. We will use gravity feed to fill that tank from the overflow from the current cistern hoping it will take just a few weeks to fill all the way. Eventually when the new house is built we will have a small 500 gallon tank on the roof that will be filled from this poly tank via a solar pump that will run during the day and then gravity feed with bring the water in the house tank to the faucet.

Once all this is installed, next step is rainwataer catchment, we calculated that we can get 39,639 gallons a year from the roof area of the shop alone!! That in itself is enough water to sustain Kyle and I for a year....its amazing. Come on guys, start capturing all that water that rolls off your roof, its great for washing the cars in the summer and watering the plants!! Think how jealous your neighbors would be to see that green lawn and those shiny cars.