Nor any drop to drink

One thing that you have to be really careful of around here is water. We've already had one episode prior to moving in where a failed plumbing fitting caused us to lose half our potable water storage, something that was very sobering as we juggled the remaining water storage between the tanks on the sheds and those on the house.

Part of the water management is the use of pumps. We don't have the geography to use gravity to provide pressure, so there is a pressure pump on the house that provides us water at mains pressure.

I've been thinking that since it uses electricity it is a vulnerability during outages - no way to get the water out of the tanks short of lugging the fire pump across and dumping the suction hose into the top of the tank. Not a pleasant thought as the most likely times it will be out are during storms and fires.

Luckily we've had some experience using solar powered pumps before and I figured it wouldn't be that hard to hook one up to act as a backup. So we need some:

Solar panels (a 16 and a 24 watt panel mounted on an angled frame).

A controller - this is a really cheap one that still does the job pretty well.

A battery - this is a deep cycle gel cell - so no maintenance, no mess, and very good performance.

A pump helps as well. This is a ShurFlo unit that is designed for campers and caravans to provide mains pressure, although only can provide enough flow for a single tap at a time.

How big is it? Tiny really:

That is the pump house of the electric pump in the background and the little box in front is the pump cover for the solar pump. And there is a lot of spare space in that box (as I'd built it to cover the transfer pump between the shed and house tanks).

Oh, that reminds me, why would you put in an electric transfer pump between two sets of tanks that are essentially at the same height? Gravity can do the work, and I've reconnected everything so we can turn on any tank or any combination of tanks to balance water or connect to the pump.

We'd tried the solar pump out for a few days and decided that it was more than enough for our needs, so why pay for electricity when we can use the sun? As it turns out it was a sound move as recently we had an 8 hour power outage due to massive storm damage in the area. We sailed through it feeling just a little bit smug :)

2 comments

Comment from: Jude [Visitor]
Jude

Well done, you will be pleased that I have qualified (have been advised) for the Solar grant before it was cancelled and are just waiting for the gov’t to let me know when it’s a go’er then the company will come up and install the lot free……
just waiting!!!!!!

05/07/09 @ 18:27
Comment from: [Member]
KC

Well done you! That’s excellent news - looking forward to seeing that go in.

05/07/09 @ 19:36


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