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Thread: Well Water / Off Grid / Utility Grid Disruption Planning

  1. #1

    Well Water / Off Grid / Utility Grid Disruption Planning

    My biggest concerns for the next 20 years are widespread droughts and utility grid disruptions. Our utility grid sucks and SCADA systems are easily hackable by bad actors. I'd like to put resources into ensuring an uninterrupted water supply. So I'm thinking about a move to a rural area that gives me more flexibility than being in a city, reliant on a city utility, with at best twenty thousand gallons in a swimming pool as my backup.

    I don't know much about water wells but have done a little research and here's stuff I couldn't find because the internet isn't devoted to lunatic preppers who are worried about water shortages.

    1. Does anyone living rurally combine water methods, maybe having a well but also getting water trucked in, and also collecting rain water? Any other water methods I haven't considered?

    2. Does the well have X amount of water, or X amount of time? Suppose I get a well dug, could I prolong the life of it by having water trucked in during good times, to save the well for hard times, like if trucked water gets very expensive or if the trucks stop rolling? Or is the well going to last X years regardless of how much you use it, because other people are tapped into the same spring, or just over time the spring dies up naturally?

    3. If you're a "prepper" and are connected to city water, can you get a well dug anyway, as a secondary water source? Or do most cities make it illegal because they hate competition?

    4. Can you have a backup secondary well dug at the same time as the primary well? I read wells don't last forever, and the middle of a disaster is not the time I want to try to find a pro to dig me a new well. But I don't know if digging the second well might simply tap the same underground "spring" so really provide no benefit at all.

    5. Can you pre-buy tools to dig your own well, should the first fail and you can't get a pro out? I saw some website of a guy with a homemade well drill made from PVC pipe but I don't know how useful that would be. And if the tools are $100k+ then I don't think I can afford them.

    6. Can wells only be dug in the non-winter months? Suppose you're in the Dakotas and the weather is freezing half of the year. Does that make it a lot harder or even impossible maybe to get the well dug during half the year? If so, what's the work around plan if you need a new well dug during that time?

    7. Any considerations for recycling "gray" water? Which I think means, non-poop toilet waste water? Maybe not setting things up to do this 24/7, but installing a little extra plumbing to allow the capability, should a massive black swan disruption occur and pre-installing a few hundred dollars of plumbing before you need it, beats scooping it out of the toilet by hand in a terrible crisis.

    8. How about a man-made pond that holds 10k to 50k gallons to serve as a backup water system? And raise some fish or something edible in there, too?

    I'm envisioning a rural house with 5 to 20 acres, two wells dug, each to different depths and far apart, some kind of rainfall collection system, some kind of snow melting system, and a very large water reservoir, I don't know, maybe 50k gallons, if that's not too insane? Like the size of two inground pools. And I might have water trucked in every few weeks or month to refill my reservoir without tapping the wells.

    Also a series of water purification devices, possibly a couple swimming pool sand filters, finished with a swimming pool DE filter, so that the water can be cleaned really well. Maybe a reverse osmosis system at the house itself, too. And plumbing that connects everything together, so the rainwater can combine with the well water and trucked-in water. Some kind of pressurized tank so I can use water in the house with good pressure.

    Strategically design the plumbing so that repairs are easy to make. Lots of valves to block an area that's leaking to make it easier to replace a section of pipe. Good clearance on the plumbing. I spent a summer in college installing plumbing for inground pools so have a small bit of experience there. I guess I'd have to install the plumbing below the frost line to avoid the pipes freezing which might be deep in a place like Montana, and that might make "easily repairable" be impossible, unless there's some special tricks?

    If your primary concern was water shortages, and had a reasonable budget, but weren't Zuckerberg or Bezos rich, what kind of setup might you do for a family of 6 split across two small houses on a rural plot of land, specific location undetermined at this time?

    I guess I have to think about septic systems next, but probably a totally different thread, unless there's any specific considerations related to potable water and sepctic systems, such as if your septic overflows or breaks, maybe it can seep into and contaminate your drinkable water if you didn't plan the locations of these properly?
    Last edited by Sanch; 03-24-2021 at 01:28 AM.

  2. #2
    https://www.backwoodshome.com/ I used to read this magazine all the time. There were articles about water sometimes.

    Some of your questions can only be answered when your location is determined. Where I live, the soil is very sandy. We can't just build a pond without trucking in better dirt to line it. The sandy soil won't hold the water. Because of the sandy soil, the septic system was less costly.

    My brother, in the same area had a well dug, but it filled in over time and he had less and less water. My parents had several springs developed to run into a collection tank but still had to have a pump to get the water to the house. We now have city water.

    Local zoning codes will determine a lot of what you can and cannot do.

    Look for land with water already on it. Streams, springs, ponds etc. My insurance company would lower my rates if I had a pond, but a swimming pool doesn't count. Also, pool water will be treated, so I don't know if it would be drinkable or not.

    Edit to add: Get lots of land. 5 acres isn't very much. Also, the power grid will possibly be down too if the commercial water supply is gone.
    Last edited by BN; 03-24-2021 at 06:33 AM.

  3. #3
    Site Supporter ccmdfd's Avatar
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    Not an expert by any means.

    Have always lived off of city water until 1.5 years ago when we moved to a house out in the boonies with some land.

    Previous owner, who also was the original builder, drilled 5 or 6 wells on the property. We also have a pond out front and a creek out back, both of which are full of nasty black water (could be used in SHTF I guess with appropriate treatment).

    It's a bit of a complicated setup in our case. Our current water well is in our backyard, not too far from the house. It has an in ground pump, it then sends the water all the way across the yard to the other side to a pump house which has a bladder system for pressure regulation. It then is piped all the way back across the yard to the house.

    No idea if the wells are all connected or not.

    If/when the main well quits, it's not an easy task of switching to one of the others. We will need someone with a backhoe or trenching device to lay a new pipe from the new well to the pump house and connect it into the bladder system. And we are talking about 100+ yards if we use one of the current wells.

    As luck would have it, we have a leak in our system and hopefully the plumber will work on it today. I plan on asking him how much cost and effort would be needed to make our system truly have a backup (i.e. water runs out at 3:15pm and I've got the new well running and water flowing by 3:30pm)

    Also, well pumps are energy hogs. They require 220V. We have a 7KW generator which should power our pump as well as some of the routine household stuff, but not HVAC. Need to put that in your prep list.

    cc

  4. #4
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    Dear Redundant Department of Redundancy Department.

    Not an expert. Had well installed on rural property. Used for long time. Currently live in suburbia on city water, but some folks in my area also have private wells.

    It is certainly possible to integrate multiple systems. If you live in a city or town or county, you will need to follow the local rules regarding what is allowed, and how it gets permitted. When I had a well drilled in the country, we had to go over 400 feet deep through solid granite, to get about 2 gpm of water. Because the well was so deep, it acted as its own cachement system, with a static water level of about 15 feet from the surface. When the power was out, we could easily use a portable generator to run the well pump and the pressurized tank that took in water from the well (IIRC, it was 15 or so gallons), pressurized it and fed it to the house.

    If you have lots of room (several acres), you should be able to drill several wells (if allowed) and may be able to hit several different veins of water. Depends on the local geology. If you're on a lot of limestone, I think you;re more likely to be tapping the same water source. If you're on granite, you're more likely to improve your total flow rate with multiple wells, but, at what cost? I had neighbors that had to drill >1,000 feet to get less water flow than me. That gets expensive fast. Water availability in your well will also depend on the local water table. Be sure your well water supply comes from a depth that is well below the local water table or availability will change as the water table changes. Or something. Not my expertise.

    In my current slice of suburbia, drilling a well is likely to yield natural gas. I have friends that have private wells, but use them only for irrigation. The water is not drinkable without proper treatment. Geology matters.

    As far as digging your own well... That's usually just nuts. If your ground water level is high enough to hand dig a well, it's also high enough to be affected by pollutants leaching through the ground. Do you fertilize your grass? Acid rain a problem for your location? YMMV, but, a hand dug groundwater well would be way down my list of acceptable long term water supply options.

    If you can drill a well through granite, you can drill it through ice as well. I could see using gray water for irrigation, but I believe the cost of recycling it for potability is greater than the cost of paying the city for a fresh gallon. Opinion, not fact. I don't want to drink pond water. Period. Ponds might be useful for firefighting water, maybe for swimming or fishing, but, not for drinking except as a last resort. Again, opinion.

    If I wanted to be "prepped", my choices would depend on local regulations, cost of drilling and quality of well water. It's pretty simple to add a cachement system. Bury or enclose a 3,000 gallon or bigger reservoir, fill it from whatever source you prefer, city, well, rainwater collection, or all of the above. Keep it properly treated, filtered and pump it to your house. Run a line to an accessible spot where a tanker truck could deliver water to your cache if needed. Lots of those truck won't roll on dirt roads. Some won't roll on gravel. Have a backup power plan sufficient to run your pumps (well pump and pump from cache to house).
    "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776

  5. #5
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    Away, away, away, down.......
    i think your looking at this all wrong. You should really be reading the classics and studying history and the arts. This is imperative, because without that background you won’t have the poet part of poet warlord.

    Once TSHTF using your learned knowledge of the nature of man you raise a small army and elevate yourself to Poet Warlord. Then you simply conquer and hold an area with a permanent natural water.
    im strong, i can run faster than train

  6. #6
    I was in the same boat 10 years ago. Ended up installing a solar powered battery backup for my well and house:

    https://unboundsolar.com/shop/solar-...battery-backup

    Back then, it was a lot harder to find these types of systems, solar installers were only interested in tieing you to the local power companies grid. You have many more options now, check out some of the systems Generac sells now. As it is installed now, I get grid power when the grid is available, and battery power when it's down. Batteries are recharged during the day via 6 solar panels. Kept us going for a week when the grid was down, but you have to be careful about what you use. We use it to power our well, two fridges and two chest freezers.

    Our neighbor across the street got a small dual fuel generator, and a 250 gal. propane tank installed for the same reason. Seems to work just fine, so that's another option.

    Bison pumps has deep well hand pumps, if I had the cash I would get another well drilled, and have one of these installed as well:

    https://www.bisonpumps.com/deep-well-hand-pump/

    I sent the following to a friend who is looking to buy rural property with a well:

    "Some notes on electricity and living with a well. A typical residential well works like this:

    A submersible pump pumps water from the well to a pressure tank, 30 gallon tanks are most common. The pressure tank maintains consistent pressure in your water plumbing system. From the pressure tank, you get water for use in your house. If the power goes out, your well pump goes out until power is restored. Your pressure tank will still provide water until it's empty.
    Then you are SOL until power comes back. Consider that water is second to oxygen for sustaining life.

    One option is to install a holding tank. Mine is 2500 gal. The well pumps water into the tank, then a booster pump pumps to the pressure tank. If power goes out, then you can at least drop a bucket into the tank and have access to your well water in an emergency. Not ideal, but better than nothing. Holding tanks can also be easier for your well, as it won't be taxed every time your 30 gal. pressure tank empties. Lots of folks here had one instilled during the drought, as their wells reduced their output. Mine was 6K installed. Maybe there is already one at that property?

    Another option is bottled water, like Arrowhead. If the quality of your well water sucks, this might be a good option regardless. Keep a supply of 5 gal. full bottles on hand at all times. You can also buy some 5 gal bottles and fill them with well water for flushing toilets, washing, etc.

    A generator can run your well when the power is off. Have an electrician install a panel with an outlet you can plug it into, and dedicated circuits (well, fridge, freezer, some lights), safer and easier. You should get a generator regardless, My neighbor across the street has a dual fuel that run off a propane tank. Works great, keeps his water accessible and keeps the food in his freezers and fridge from spoiling. His generator cost around 1K.

    You could also consult a solar installer to see what it would take to run your well off a solar panel or two. Panels are cheap ($300.00) and theoretically you could do this without batteries, but I don't know anything about that option.

    Fortunately for you, with PSP outages common, electricians and solar installers are alot more knowledgeable regarding keeping power on when the grid is down. When I went down this road 10 years ago, it was all uphill. I ended up spending 20K on a whole house battery backup with solar panels. Kept us going for a week. Great investment.

    Even without PSP outages, our power company has been neglecting it's grid infrastructure for years. A monopolistic public for profit company is not the best custodian for critical electric grid infrastructure, but that's what we have at the moment."

  7. #7
    This is enormously dependent on where you are planning to move to. I’m on my second house with a well, and for the region I live in, I wouldn’t trade it. I use a generator when the power goes out to run the well pump. Wells can occasionally fail, and drought conditions can affect output, but I’ve found them to be relatively robust over time. Having said that, my in-laws had an issue with their well when the water pump had to be repaired and couldn’t be put back down when a rock or something shifted. Since the town had put in water lines a few years prior, they were mandated to hook up to city water and were not allowed to drill another well. I would have taken the issue to court, but that’s just me. You should read some of the Mountain Guerrilla blog. The author, John Mosby, has written about his water catchment systems on his farm if memory serves.

  8. #8
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    Lots of great answers and info in the thread.

    Been on a well the last 8 years. It's ok, been a pain sometimes.

    I think a well with a backup source will take care of 99%.

    You can have all you envisioned but that is a fuck ton of work and maybe you got some other things to do. I got 5 acres and it is enough, actively managing 20 acres as a working homeowner would take you all of your free time. The garden and orchard is an acre and got a acre of "lawn" and 3 acres of steep woods. I've spent the last 8 years cutting and burning 125 hand piles and pulling 15 cords of firewood out to get somewhat fire safe and have about that amount more work to go. I should really just get a Hispanic thinning crew in to finish it off.

    Stop planning and start doing.

  9. #9
    Site Supporter Odin Bravo One's Avatar
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    In the back of beyond
    We live on well water, and have a huge aquifer that runs under our place, so drilling multiple wells is useless. If we have a technical problem with a pump or filtration system, we can manage with what the multiple springs on our property provide. We also maintain a small stash (~30 gallons) of drinking water in the basement emergency storage room. We also keep two weeks of non-perishable food stuffs, and fuel for my stoves and JetBoil.

    One thing to consider with a well, without power, you’re without running water. We have a whole house backup generator that runs off of our 500 lb propane tank buried in the yard, and it is a pretty seamless transition from the grid to generac and back again. We also make use of a variety of solar powered appliances. Eventually, I foresee a battery bank & panel array on the roof to provide additional redundancy and resiliency to our electrical system.

    This is all due to rural living and the fact that when we lose power, it is either 16 degrees, or 96 degrees and 98% humidity........ we have three refrigerators and a stand up freezer. We can’t afford to lose power in the summer due to thunderstorms or hurricanes/tropical storms, as we tend to lose a lot of food. We are also on the SMALLEST grid our power company has, and it does not contain anything important. No hospitals, or police or fire stations. No politicians homes. And those with the financial resources to weigh in on a power outage already have backup generators, so even the rich Dude from Eastman down the road won’t influence when our power is restored. After back to back tropical storms/hurricanes in 2018, we were without grid power for nearly three weeks. Running the refrigerators off the portable generator got real old, real quick.

    Just the same, we keep a small stash of gasoline on hand for the portable generator, just in case. Since we have numerous tools and equipment that require gasoline to function, it’s not uncommon for us to keep upward of 25 gallons on hand, depending on the season. After all, if your gas station doesn’t have power, you don’t have gasoline........ fuel stabilizer is very useful if you aren’t going thru and replacing your gas every few weeks.

    We are fortunate to live in an area where we have a world class trout stream a hop, skip, and a jump away, as well as a large reservoir not much further down the road. We also have a large lake, and a small cabin on a remote back slew which also has power redundancy. I’m not a huge fan of fish for every meal, but it’s not unrealistic to expect I can walk out onto the back patio and shoot another option for dinner at any given moment. Once we get a few other things tidied up, and more pressing projects handled, a chicken house and some chickens will be added to our sustainable food rotation. Our garden is modest (to be generous), but that is because we don’t have the time necessary to tend to a larger chunk of agricultural land. If shit hits the fan, I doubt my wife will be working 70 hours a week, and her hobby of gardening will become more necessary. In which case, I’ll jump on the tractor and cut her as large of a garden as she wants. Fortunately, by keeping our gardens small right now, it leaves us with hundreds of extra seeds each year, which we stash away for ICS. (In Case Shit.......)

    We are also fortunate to have a large enough primary residence to accommodate a reasonable number of F&F that may exit the metro areas in favor of our more remote location. This is helpful for our overall security situation during a crisis, though my neighbors are fairly reliable under such circumstances, and we help each other out. A bandaid at least until the friends and family start trickling in to reinforce the perimeter. Brick home, reinforced concrete throughout, a partially subterranean basement, wide shooting lanes, and terrible avenues of approach make for a fairly easy to secure/defend location.
    You can get much more of what you want with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.

  10. #10
    Site Supporter hufnagel's Avatar
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    has anyone looked into IBC totes, for storage of pumped fresh water*, for irrigation, and/or for gray water needs (toilets)?

    * I would think, being able to pump a bulk quantity of water up out of a well and into an above ground tank would be more energy efficient than small bursts of pumping, especially if alternate generation is in use. but, I could be wrong.
    Rules to live by: 1. Eat meat, 2. Shoot guns, 3. Fire, 4. Gasoline, 5. Make juniors
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