Well problem, what would you do?

[kabri]

I would love your opinions on our water situation!

We just finished having a 4th well drilled on our 90 acre property trying to find fresh water. First 3 wells had very high chloride (salt) levels, in the range of 6500 ppm. EPA max is 250 ppm. 4th well is artesian, has aprox 1500 ppm salt, and is at least 2000' ft away from our building site as the crow flies. There's aprox 200' elevation gain to building site and the shortest distance would be through untracked forest complete with old logging slash. If we trenched along the existing road, that would add at least 1000' onto the distance. No electricity to the property. Solar exposure at the well is poor. It is excellent at the building site. We plan to remain off grid as power is a very long way away from the property.

So, would you take the straight path and blaze a trail for the trencher, or follow the existing road? Would you pump first then filter the water at the point of use location? Or build a water treatment building near the well, then pump clean water up? We don't have an RO system built yet so we don't know what the power requirements will be for it. Even with 30GPM coming out of the well, I'm assuming we will still have to pump to get up the 200' head. We will eventually be catching and storing a lot of rainwater, so I would anticipate this well to be used only in the dry summer months July-Sept.

Sigh.... this has really put a damper on making progress on building our house!

[Old Vet]

Either way will work but pump the water into a water filtration point near the house and then to the house from a sand filter. That way you will need one strong pump and a liter one at the house. It is easier to push water to the house and let the sand filter do its work before you pump it into the house. PM me for a sand filter that will work for you. I do not sell them but will make it easy for you to do the work yourself.

[agmantoo]

kabri,

I have a decent working awareness of well systems but lack experience with RO systems. I do know that RO systems have to maintain high pressure to function. Being off grid have you addressed how you will maintain the high pressure? I read that the lift from the well will be an additional 200 feet or so. Will the home be at the top of the elevation or do you have more height above the home site?

[oneokie]

You say the well is artesian. How far up the hill will the natural flow pressure push the water? (how much head will the well overcome?)

[texican]

First off, hope you got a bargain on the land... land without usable water usually demands a steep discount.

Personally, I'd trench alongside the road... the road isn't going anywhere. Might be longer, but cutting a trench through the woods engenders trouble down the line, in ten years or so when tree roots start doing what they do.

You can get solar pumps that'll do what you need... you're just going to pay a huge (~10x) premium for being off grid. I'd treat the water there, unless your winters are extreme... and then you might want that operation in a heated area of the house. Solar only pumps when the sun is out, so you'll probably be looking at pumping for the four or five hours a day... so have an elevated cistern, that way you'll have at least a little water pressure in your house. You can add a booster pump later. IF you don't have enough power, you still have gravity. IF you have an underground cistern, your totally reliant on a booster or hand pump to get water out.

Hope ya'll's artesian water taste better than the several wells I've drank from... of course, if you get thirsty enough, it'll be the sweetest nectar on earth.

[arabian knight]

Originally Posted by texican

Hope ya'll's artesian water taste better than the several wells I've drank from... of course, if you get thirsty enough, it'll be the sweetest nectar on earth.

The artesian wells around here have plenty of iron in them, but that is ok, still tastes good when nice and cold..

[kabri]

Originally Posted by agmantoo

kabri,

I have a decent working awareness of well systems but lack experience with RO systems. I do know that RO systems have to maintain high pressure to function. Being off grid have you addressed how you will maintain the high pressure? I read that the lift from the well will be an additional 200 feet or so. Will the home be at the top of the elevation or do you have more height above the home site?

Yes, the home will be at the top, about 200 ft elevation above the well. Well drillers estimated 30 GPM coming out of the well, but I don't know if that will be enough pressure to push up the hill or not. Good point/reminder was that RO works better (better recovery) with higher temperatures. We may end up being dependent on a generator to power the RO. However, our biggest water demands are in summer (gardens and livestock) We get a LOT of rain starting in October and not ending until June. So filling a large underground cistern should not be hard in winter. Yes we will have to pump from there into the house.

[kabri]

Texican, the water actually tasted fine to me. Have not received the official lab report yet, we're going off the field salt test the well drillers did. They said they could taste chlorides. I could not. The first well was so salty, tasted stronger than the ocean. This well water is also clear whereas the first well had very high turbidity. Guess we have to be thankful for small blessings!

My biggest concern with going along the road is that it gets trenched far enough away that future widening/road improvements don't go anywhere near it. They are gravel one lane roads with few turnouts to pass.

The winters can get cold enough that the well drillers recommended insulating the well head because of so much water at the surface. So I'm thinking treating up by the house might be a better option.

[rwur961615]

Put a pressure gauge on at the well. You will lose .43 psi for every foot of elevation. So your well would need to put out 86 psi just to get the water to the house and then it would have zero pressure when when it got there. Hope this helps. Rick

[agmantoo]

That is a great suggestion from rwur961615. If you can/will permit the artesian well to waste some of the water that it delivers and then pipe that waste away from the well head why would you need to protect the well head from freezing? Could you run the water line up the center of the road between where the vehicle tracks exist? Placing the water line in a bed of sand should prevent pipe damage. There should never be a need to disturb that area and it will always be open and you will always know where the line is located.

[Txrider]

Originally Posted by kabri

I would love your opinions on our water situation!

We just finished having a 4th well drilled on our 90 acre property trying to find fresh water. First 3 wells had very high chloride (salt) levels, in the range of 6500 ppm. EPA max is 250 ppm. 4th well is artesian, has aprox 1500 ppm salt, and is at least 2000' ft away from our building site as the crow flies.

Are there other water tables either deeper or shallower the well driller could drill to?

There's aprox 200' elevation gain to building site and the shortest distance would be through untracked forest complete with old logging slash. If we trenched along the existing road, that would add at least 1000' onto the distance. No electricity to the property. Solar exposure at the well is poor. It is excellent at the building site. We plan to remain off grid as power is a very long way away from the property.

You'll need a lot of solar or a generator I would think. You'll need a pump at the well, and another pump at the house would easily keep your pressure where you need it.

So, would you take the straight path and blaze a trail for the trencher, or follow the existing road?

The road might be easier, it your choice. Make sure you are outside of any road easement.

Would you pump first then filter the water at the point of use location? Or build a water treatment building near the well, then pump clean water up?

I would likely pump it to the house, filtering systems require maintenance that would be a lot more convenient close to your house.

We don't have an RO system built yet so we don't know what the power requirements will be for it. Even with 30GPM coming out of the well, I'm assuming we will still have to pump to get up the 200' head. We will eventually be catching and storing a lot of rainwater, so I would anticipate this well to be used only in the dry summer months July-Sept.

I would assume you would be using water as is for all but drinking/cooking and other uses for small amounts of cleaner water.

A simple RO for drinking/cooking water would likely not require any power if you had a boost pump/tank for the water by the house that could maintian 40-60PSI in the house. Unless you want a boost pump driven RO for more water production, which basically would mean a small electric pump in the RO unit that would run a lot, could be problematic to run on solar.

Sigh.... this has really put a damper on making progress on building our house!

I'll bet it has. First thing I would make sure of is to ask your well driller, and maybe get a second opinion from another one, on whether there was a shallower or deeper water table to try to reach.

[fishhead]

I read about a water ram type pump. It's used to pump water when you have no electricity but you do have water flow. Maybe it would be possible to put one on the artesian well and use the energy from it to pump some of the water up the hill. Even 1/2 gallon/minute will give you 720 gallons/day.

http://www.clemson.edu/irrig/equip/ram.htm

I don't know what the maximum lift would be for that pump.

[agmantoo]

here are the charts for the lift. The lift capacity of a ram pump would take water to the home
http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/lib2/hydrpump.htm

[kabri]

Txrider, we chose our well driller this time because they were willing to take their time and not blast past possible smaller amounts of water, and they checked to see if it was fresh. They did this multiple times on the 2 other holes they drilled for us, all tested full of chlorides. We got lots of calls from them during the process. This land has always been in commercial forestry, no development nearby. There is 1 well with clean water that we tried to get as close as possible to but our property does not extend far enough. Not too far away is the Olympic National Forrest, then the national park.

From the research I've done, fruit trees (our main concern outside of the people/animal water needs) cannot take high chloride levels. I could not find any threshhold for them though. The water straight from the first well with 6500ppm chlorides did NOT kill the vegetation in the ditch that we ran it into. Since this well is aprox 1500ppm, that may be ok for sheep/poultry/horses to drink? Very difficult to find any info on the web, other than the EPA limit of 250ppm for human drinking water. I'm hesitant to risk our young fruit and nut trees with the water "as is". Corrosion would be another concern with fixtures inside the house if we only treated for drinking. I can tell you, the corrosion was extreme on the 1st well. We ran an impact sprinkler on the build site for our barn from that first well. Then had no fresh water to rinse and it destroyed that sprinkler and corroded the hose fittings.

Fishhead, that is a very interesting avenue to explore, thanks! And thanks to all who replied! We get the official water report tomorrow, keeping our hopes up!

[fishhead]

I wonder if there's a way to rig up a solar distiller to remove the chlorides?

[kabri]

agmantoo, thanks! we're going to need to study this concept some more!!!!

[Harry Chickpea]

fishhead is on the right track, but the Clemson design is severely inferior and only good for demo and low rise purposes. I made one. You would want to purchase a professionally made ram instead.

Your artesian is STILL way above level in chlorides though.

[kabri]

Got our lab report back!
Chlorides 764ppm
Iron .722
Manganese .063
Sodium 281
Hardness 603 - (I don't understand the scale used for this though, it's not ppm)
Conductivity 2660
Turbidity 8.7 NTU
TDS 1564

PSI at the valve on the well head is only 10PSI, thanks Rick for answering 1 question for us!

Got several companies working right now on designing an RO system. One thing I wonder about is would a greensand filter or water softener prior the the RO be a good idea to reduce the amount of minerals from the water?

[orangehen]

Have you thought about, or contacted a dowser? I think I'd do that first.....

[kabri]

Yep, did that with 2 dowsers but they can't tell water QUALITY