Author Topic: Haven't been around much lately (Read 5863 times)

Frank S · « **on:** November 21, 2018, 12:32:49 AM »

Since finally completing the move to the country a couple of years ago I haven't been around much.
About my only claim to RE now is my method of heating with my Earth-stone wood stove. My array is still packed away save for 1 panel which I Use to charge batteries with.
My electric bill averages around $57.00 per month 8 months out of the year and $90.00 for the other 4.
We have way more projects to do that we can ever get done it seams

SparWeb · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2018, 01:35:17 AM »

Hi Frank. It's been a while.
Am I thinking of someone else, or was it your plan to convert sea-containers?
That sounded ambitious, so no wonder you've been busy, if that was so.
Welcome back.

Frank S · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2018, 11:47:32 AM »

Hi SparWeb; Yes I had plans to convert shipping containers. One of the monkey wrenches in that fan became apparent once it became clear that none of my equipment or goods was ever going to arrive from Kuwait. Also my retirement investment that I had so carefully planned and built up over many years had completely evaporated by 2015. I've been on a TRS (tool re-acquisition syndrome) quest since 2013.
We have pretty much refurbished the house to comfortable living completely re plumbed the water system built a water tower and pump house with filtration Still make a 30 mile round trip once a week to haul water to top off our storage but can go 2 or 3 weeks without doing so if need be, through the opening or closing of a few valves the pump that supplies pressure to the house draws the water out to my transport tank up to the storage. in event of total system power outage we still have water in the house at a lower pressure.
Or can reverse flow at the 2" connection to fill a transport tank even without power, like for fire fighting if need be.
My homeowners insurance inspector said it is like having my own personal fire hydrant 50 ft from the house and 30 miles from the nearest city hydrant. Still planning on adding another 1200 gallons storage on top of the tower.
We ran 3 1" water lines in a 4" sch 40 PVC conduit 3 ft under ground 1 comes from the well to the tower 1 from the tower to the house and 1 from the tower to the under construction Green house . The well is not currently in use as I still want to install 2 300 lb sand & charcoal filters and another 100 gallon re-circulation filtration system before the well water goes up to the storage tanks Also still want to build an ozone generator and install a UV filter in the continuously recirculating filtration system. Eventually the whole system even the well 300 years away will be powered by my array and bank with grid as back up.
The Array will also have a critical circuit interface with with the house such as the fridge and freezer and limited lighting.
Right now we have LED bulbs through out the house I could turn on every light in the house and not draw more energy than 5 100 watt incandescent bulbs Just like I had done with my machine shop trailer.
I have a 15 watt fan behind the wood stove and hanging in the hallway I installed 4 140 mm "BESILENT" muffin fans , between those and the ceiling fans heat from the stove can be circulated through out the whole 1875 sq ft of the house.
Last year during some days where the temps only got up to the low teens for a couple of days the house was comfortable enough. burning 5-5 gallon buckets full of wood per day
Just now getting around to starting on the work shop I have 1 53 ft container for one side and will incorporate the 2 HHG vans into the other side Thinking the shop will be 70 ft by 60 ft when finished. but maybe just clay floor.
That gives you an up date to a point except that I fell into a 15 ft deep hole last DEC from my backhoe which may have been the cause of a heart attack causing me to have to get 2 stints Been so busy all this year I almost forgot about that.

Mary B · « **Reply #3 on:** November 21, 2018, 06:24:09 PM »

Nice to hear from you! Seems like plans never go as advertised... we do what we can with what we got!

SparWeb · « **Reply #4 on:** November 21, 2018, 08:34:04 PM »

Watch that last step, it's a doozie! Well you must have recovered well enough or it would've been top of mind. My wife fell off a tractor 10 years ago and was immobile for months with 4 screws in her leg holding it together. I thought that was bad, but she got it easy compared to you.

That's a nice setup; thanks for telling us about it all. I do like the water tower idea, and its usefulness against fires.

There was this day, about 6 years ago, as I was driving home from work, I could see in the distance a plume of smoke rising from the area close to my house. This is Alberta where the horizon is many miles away and I live 30 miles outside city limits. As I drove closer it seemed more and more like my house. As I rounded the last corner it was obviously my next-door neighbour who had set his whole yard and garage on fire. The flames came close to my house but an irrigation ditch between us kept the flames from jumping across to mine.
A fire-hose like yours would have been very reassuring that day, to make-damn-sure it didn't jump to my yard.

Frank S · « **Reply #5 on:** November 21, 2018, 09:44:54 PM »

I think what happened was I climbed out of the backhoe then stepped too close to the edge of the hole and the bank crumbled out from under me. it was just dirt and clay no rock I fell pretty much straight down my feet hanging on the bank flipping me face down when I landed on a pile of dirt chest first. It knocked the wind out of me and I laid there for a spell. After about 20 minutes I felt able enough to climb out my chest still hurt but thought was just the fall and having my wind knocked out. Instead of climbing back in the back hoe and driving to the house I walked the 200 yards once in the house my chest really started hurting again so I sat on the couch for a while. I told the wife what had happened and that I might have torn my old stint in my lad loose After a while I was feeling better so we loaded up in the truck and I drove the 15 miles to the hospital.
I walked in and told the ER folks what I thought might have happened things got real busy real fast my heart rate dropped to 16 almost as soon as they had given me some injection of something. they strapped a massager on me and 45 minutes later the ambulance had transported me 75 miles to the big city hospital 36 hours later I walked out with 2 new stints the old one that I had because of scar tissue build up around my LAD was not damaged.
I had to do almost nothing for a week because of the hole in my groin where they pusher the catheter up to my heart but other than that I've been doing everything if not more than I was doing before my episode.
Yes Our water tower is handy not as tall as I started to build it only 12 ft to the flat roof where another 12 to 1500 gallon tank will be installed there is 600 gallons in the level just under the roof so static pressure is not all that much but I can either pump it through the pump that supplies house pressure or attach a 2" gasoline pump at the fill connection

SparWeb · « **Reply #6 on:** November 21, 2018, 10:18:20 PM »

OK now I'm picturing ways to add a big tank to my internet/TV tower...

Frank S · « **Reply #7 on:** November 22, 2018, 12:05:05 AM »

Here is what my water tower looks like and how it was constructed

Frank S · « **Reply #8 on:** November 22, 2018, 12:27:18 AM »

I'm not finding the other pictures just now will have to locate them and post them later
Any way the tower is made out of 2 7/8" oil field pipe for the legs braced and cross braced with 2 3/8 oilfield tubing.
concrete curbing was used as the foundation by placing the 5ft to 8ft long sections upside down in the ground the legs were anchored to with 1/2" anchor bolts then a 3" concrete floor was poured in side over the curbing blocks also covering the feet on the legs Steel mesh was welded to the legs and bottom braces and the ladder
3 2" black poly pipes were embedded to serve as conduits for the water lines and electrical. a transition box was burred just outside of the tower to go from 2 conduits to 1 4" conduit
I did this for a couple of reasons 1 gophers cannot eat through the 4" sch 40 pipe very easy whereas they can through 1" black poly and PEX because they are attracted to the vibrations of the flow of water. having the pipes inside the larger conduit reduces the transmission of the water sound. Also there is enough room in the larger conduit to up grade to larger water pipes should I desire. or even add another line without having to dig another trench its buried 3 ft and in some places 4 ft deep half the trench was hand dug a week before my heart issue and the rest was dug by me 2 weeks after my stints were put in.

Frank S · « **Reply #9 on:** November 22, 2018, 12:55:51 AM »

A couple more

jenkinswt · « **Reply #10 on:** November 22, 2018, 11:09:52 PM »

Nice water tower Frank. I keep talking about doing something like this mainly to help with battery power with the well pump kicking in at night, etc. We have a well about 50' and I'd love to pump it up during sunny weather to use later. We used to have a 50 gallon water drum at our last house in the second story but the water pressure was really low. I'd like to get one up 20' or more above our first floor which would take a sturdy tower and it needs to be kept above freezing also. I like how you've got yours built and covered like a building. If I insulated something like that I can put a little heat into it from our wood boiler.

Sorry to hear about your fall! Sounds like you've more than recovered and getting some projects done.

Frank S · « **Reply #11 on:** November 23, 2018, 01:50:04 AM »

Yeah I' can almost safely say that I have recovered . However you never completely get over these things. unless they cut out the bad and replace but then you have to take those pharma concoctions for the rest of your life. I have to take a couple of pills once a day for at least a full year some docs have said 6 months, but will do the year to appease the cardio folks. Why my arteries were 95% blocked was and so far as I know is still a mystery to them since there was no plaque or hardening or fatty deposits No determinable proof that life style has contributed. They don't like that my heart rate never elevates above 60 no matter how strenuous they try to do a stress test but my BP always remains in the 130 over 55 range Which doesn't mean beans to me because I've never monitored it.
I do have 1 more minor artery with a 45% reduction, not enough to be concerned with he said.

In constructing a water tower the most important thing to remember is 8.345 lbs per gallon
the way I have braced my tower and the footing it stands on will easily support a much larger storage tank than I would ever want to place on top of it.
Our water tower we had when I was a kid was made out of redwood & Cyprus it was an 8 ft diameter 10 ft tall tank resting on top of a tower made of 6 15 ft long 6x6 timbers braced with rods and turnbuckles built in 1906 still holds water today or it did the last time I saw it about 4 years ago.
My well is also around 60 feet It is sanded in really bad so I need to either pump about a 1000 gallons of water down it at a high rate of flow by dropping a 2" poly pipe to the bottom and pumping the water down with a 2 or 3 inch gasoline powered pump or blow it with 300 CFM air pressure. I have both the pump and the air compressor so could do either of both. Which according to the well driller who says he has done it to this well many years ago when it got to the point of only producing 1GPM. He told me that I should be able to expect it to produce 20 GPM for about 10 years again. This will probably be this winter's project. then I plan on not having a pressure tank on it but constructing another tower at the well. The well is 450 feet from my current tower.the ground level is also about 15 feet lower than the ground level where my tower now sits.
I haven't decided which way I want to go with this.
Do I want to build a 35 ft tall tower and place a 100 gallon tank on top of it. install a pump at the well to fill the tank on solar & batteries or run it on the already available 220 line currently there. or leave the 80 gallon pressure tank in the pump house with a bottom hole pressure pump. There was a huge pile of burned out pumps on the property so the previous owners had to replace their pump several times over the years due to the sand.
I would like to limit the well to around 40 gallons per hour with an on time of not more than 10 minutes at a time By doing this and having a 100 gallon storage at the well I can run the water slowly through the 300 lb filters may even put 1 at the well for the water to pass through before it goes into the storage tank. but if I did that then the pump would have to be capable of the higher restriction of passing through the filter.
Doable since the added restriction would be similar to that of a 250 or 300 ft deep well whether it is to a pressure tank or to a tower above if to a tower then I could actually gravity feed to the house tower.
BY the way this is what I insulated the tower with.

jenkinswt · « **Reply #12 on:** November 23, 2018, 05:08:39 AM »

I might have to do something like that to our well at some point. A few months back I thought our pump was going bad, it was running non stop and not hardly kicking off. It was really killing the batteries. I finally pulled the pump and found it had been sitting in mud. I cut 5' of pipe off and stuck it back in hoping this would help. I gave it a day and no change so I ordered a new pump. The day before the new pump came the old one cleared itself of the mud and has been working perfectly since! Oh well I have a spare now I guess. I haven't calculated the gpm of our well but I do have to be careful when filling something large or it will run dry but refills quickly. My parents well is 25 or 30' but a bit larger diameter and they can't pump it dry but their water is harder.

Most of the time the pump and pressure tank works so good I forget all about wanting a water tower but if we get a long stretch and power is low I start looking options that don't involve bigger battery banks. At our last house I had a well about the same distance but it had been abandoned for many years and I know animals, etc. have gotten into it over the years. It was a real nice hand dug well very deep. I decided to hand dig a well next our house thinking I'd surely hit water at 20' like most wells in the area. I dug a 4' round hole and braced it as I went down. I went 22' but was hitting so much stone I was about to call it quits so I modified some tools and dug out a smaller hole from there that went down to I think 33 or 34' and hit steady water. I foolishly installed a 4" pvc pipe in that hole and put a submersible pump in. There was only .25 gpm of water with a 4" hole at that depth! Before we moved I was going to put a smaller pump in and let it trickle up to a holding tank or make a new well. .25 gpm is 360 gallons a day if it could be pumped all the time. I was pretty happy to find our current well when we moved here after doing all that work. I don't consider all that work wasted as I learned a lot from it but I doubt I'd ever do it again.

Frank S · « **Reply #13 on:** November 23, 2018, 09:22:00 AM »

There is a few in this part of the country who will use a regular submersible 1/2 hp to 3/4 HP 120 or 240v pump on their wells but choke them down to 1 or 2 GPM by adding a valve to the pressure side before their pressure tank and install a run/off timer between the pump and the pressure switch. that way they say their wells can pump for a minute or 2 then be off for a while to allow the well to refill.
Some say they get good results but to me it sounds like a recipe for a lot of burned out pumps.
Hopefully some of the older forum members have been following this thread and can add their knowledge.
OR maybe a fresh thread in the water forum should be started. as there doesn't seem to be a lot of traffic on these forums lately.

tanner0441 · « **Reply #14 on:** November 23, 2018, 01:00:53 PM »

Hi Frank good to see you on here again.

A tank 30ft in the air will give 1 Att of pressure, give or take a bit for ASL and barometric pressure. Mains pressure in the UK is 60 psi which is 4 Ats roughly.

We had this demonstrated at school (long time ago) we put a tank on the ground with a pipe in it, then ran the pipe up the side of the building and in through a window on the top floor. The pipe had been marked every foot, then we pulled a vacuum on it with a Tor pump. No amount of pumping would raise the column of water higher than 30ft.

Brian

Frank S · « **Reply #15 on:** November 23, 2018, 01:57:18 PM »

it is a long standing fact that vacuum sucks and pumps push. and the closer to the source a pump can be located above it the better it can pump. submerged elevates all suction requirements as the pump then it is force fed.
My well is 60 feet with water standing to 25 feet giving me a 35 ft column of water above the pump but being that the strata is sanded in either with sand or gypsum the perforations in the bottom 10 ft of casing will only allow a small trickle to pass
flushing the well with a large amount of pressurized water will help to re open those perforations and clear some of the sand. It may require flushing then pumping down and re-flushing a few times before I can expect to get the gravel outside of the casing as clean as possible. Much like back flushing a pool filter does to cleanse the sand but unlike a pool filter I cannot actually wash the gravel completely.
I could use 2 water pumps by lowering 2 poly pipes down the casing stopping 1 a few feet above the other
1 to force water down and the other to draw water out creating a circulation down there. By sealing around the top 1 pump will actually be force feeding the other. If I had a large enough water supply this would probably yield the best results.
No matter which way I go in cleaning out the well once I resume drawing water out of it all of that water is going to be passed through a filter system prior to going into any storage then filtered with several stages of differing filter media before it reaches my tower.
Given that currently we only store max of 600 gallons and are getting our water from the city tower I am only running a 3 stage filter system before it reaches the house.
But I really want to install a constant circulating UV and Ozone filter system.

DanG · « **Reply #16 on:** November 23, 2018, 02:07:03 PM »

Beware carbonate or other mineralization on UV quartz envelopes, the UV push is just enough to let minerals out of suspension and turn the UV transparent glass envelope opaque in a very short time... have a lamp only on while water flows switch will extend useful radiation but alkaline pH & minerals are the enemy of getting enough energy pushed through enough water to deactivate pathogens. The shallow limestone floored lakes around us in Minnesota pretty much precludes the use of UV, I bought a salvage unit then studied up on it <d'oh>.

Frank S · « **Reply #17 on:** November 23, 2018, 04:48:25 PM »

You see this is why we all need to ask questions and hear the experiences of others. Thanks DanG
Obviously trace minerals in water are required for good drinking water what I call dead water or water that has been steamed then the condensate steamed again or a double distilled process is not something that I am wanting. but I do want to remove much of the excess calcium and gypsum. We must have spent a couple grand in materials alone replacing old pipes and fixtures that were so clogged not even a trickle could pass through. the lime calcium gypsum deposit in a shower stall was 2" thick from floor to half way up the fiberglass walls.
I don't want to simply add salts to the already laden mineral rich water. I am not real big on extremely soft water and sure don't want it to be so high with suspended particulates that it is not crystal clear.

Mary B · « **Reply #18 on:** November 24, 2018, 04:44:56 PM »

Heating the water will precipitate out a lot of the calcium. Heat then cool it and let settle and pull clear water off the top of the layer of scum in the bottom. But for whole house use that would be a complicated process... Only other option for whole house is an ion exchange filter or Reverse Osmosis... by gypsum do you mean sulfate? I have high sulfate levels in my water(makes it smell like a wet dog) and for beer brewing I have to use an RO system...

tanner0441 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 24, 2018, 06:06:58 PM »

Hi

You can also sterilise with Ozone, A lot of public swimming pools use Ozone. it's bubbled through the water, so no worry of mineral deposition onto the quartz tube. Buoyant and suspended solids can be separated by putting a required amount of water into a tank and pressurizing the tank with compressed air blown through the water, bring the pressure up to over 100 Psi then release the pressure quickly. Nucleonics causes bubbles to form on the solids and they are carried to the surface. The water is drawn off from low down in the tank.

I've seen the results of that in a water treatment works in the UK.

Brian

jenkinswt · « **Reply #20 on:** November 24, 2018, 08:39:53 PM »

At our old place we would leave 5 gallons of water on the wood stove at night and in the morning it would have a layer of limestone at the top of the water. If you was real careful you could almost skim it off but usually it would flake and settle and you'd have little chunks floating around.

We use a RO system now and it works pretty good. I'm sure it removes good minerals from the water also but were in farmland area and I wouldn't want to drink unfiltered water. Tanner that treatment setup sounds pretty interesting.

Frank S · « **Reply #21 on:** November 24, 2018, 10:12:38 PM »

The pressure tank on our well has about 2 dozen old radio speakers stuck to the side of it. I'm sure those were probably placed there in hopes of cutting down on electrolysis and to possibly try to draw any magnetic sulfates out of suspension.
under the kitchen sink there was 1 of those little 3 gallon RO units with the 4 filters mounted on top it was rusted out and when I cut open the tank and removed the bladder it had 10 LBS of gunk in it . I've seen new ones demonstrated they work fine as long as the incoming water is at least city quality. But well water is what it is and depending on the area it may smell like skunk water or worse, Or is might be hard as nails full of sand, iron, pesticides if the well is not real deep, and many pathogens. Gone are the days when you could drill or have a well drilled and trust that it was going to be reasonably safe right out of the ground.

tanner0441 · « **Reply #22 on:** November 25, 2018, 03:19:17 PM »

Hi

I have a couple of Magnatec Filters from Central Heating systems, they consist of a plastic container with a column of neo magnets up the middle with a thin plastic sleeve over the magnets, the water goes in on one port past the magnets and out the other. There are taps on the input and output ports so the filter can be drained and cleaned without draining the system down. The ports are 22mm. One or two of those in your system would most likely sort any magnetic contaminants out.

Brian

Mary B · « **Reply #23 on:** November 25, 2018, 04:20:21 PM »

Frank I would get a water quality test done so you know exactly what you are dealing with. Then contact these guys with the results and see what kind of a system they can design. http://www.buckeyehydro.com/ They are well known in the brewing industry where water is THE major ingredient that can affect beers final flavor. Easy to work with too! I bought my 100(closer to 50 with my cold water, yes temp affects the filtering) gallon per day RO system from them... I use it for brewing water and for drinking/cooking water...

Frank S · « **Reply #24 on:** November 26, 2018, 11:15:29 AM »

Thanks for the link Mary B; While I was living in Kuwait I had the opportunity to make acquaintances with some nomadic Bedouin people who had established farms near some brackish natural pools of water The pools were the result of sea water seeping for miles across the desert from the gulf They had created a bio filter system similar to one that I started building a few years ago only theirs was much larger than the one I am building. Mine is based around a 55 gallon poly drum where as theirs was acres in size. I also talked frequently with Bruce S he turned me onto the guys from Blue Flame and they had a unique way for filtering their water for distilling. I have a real good friend in CT who's wife recently retired from some University research lab or some such place. They are planning on making a visit soon and she said she will bring her testing equipment that she used for testing medical water.
For right now using the city water in my storage tanks I'm not worried about the quality all that much. even though I do filter it through a 3 stage system before it goes to the house.
This is my current work in progress set up

Harold in CR · « **Reply #25 on:** November 27, 2018, 08:48:06 AM »

Hi Frank. Good to see you are still going at it.

On the well subject, I may be way off, but, instead of pushing that sand back out into the surrounding gravel, maybe a sand bucket down the well would allow the sand to be lifted out of the well and clear itself from the gravel ? 100 years ago, we would drive a screened point down into the stream and sometimes, after several years, we would shoot a .22 bullet down into the pipe and the concussion would help clear the screen, if it also didn't blow the screen out in the process.

It's amasing how much sand can be taken out of a well in a days time, all by setting up a tripod and a pulley system. This was common for anything over 22' shallow wells before the rotary rigs were invented.

Frank S · « **Reply #26 on:** November 27, 2018, 10:58:36 AM »

I can't say that I haven't thought of a bailing bucket, the thought of hauling one in and out of the well tens of hundreds of times is not a task that I relish even using a powered capstan. Even with that though the only real amount of sand that would be brought up would be that which is in the bore hole itself with a minor amount being drawn into the bore from the gravel. This is why aI am planning on constructing a kind of jet nozzle and use the power of high speed flowing water to suck the sand up out of the well.

Harold in CR · « **Reply #27 on:** November 27, 2018, 06:12:58 PM »

AHhhh, must have read your post wrong. I thought it said blast the sand back through the gravel.

Frank S · « **Reply #28 on:** November 27, 2018, 06:59:21 PM »

Sorry Harold I sometimes don't make my self perfectly clear Water or air either way, the high volume properly directed will suck the insides out of a bowling ball.
Back in my oilfield days we used to blast a 20" diameter hole 50 feet into the ground using nothing but an air driven rotary bit that had several nozzles, at a high volume and pressure. A deflector shield came loose once and there were rocks the size of soft balls going 100 feet into the air.

Harold in CR · « **Reply #29 on:** November 27, 2018, 08:35:45 PM »

No problem, Frank. You are talking something similar to a rotary drill rig using water to flush the cuttings up and out. I get that.

midwoud1 · « **Reply #30 on:** November 28, 2018, 08:49:35 AM »

Hi Frank .
Welcome back . I did something similar . Waterwell drilling with a homemade rotary rig.
TD 60 meters . Drillbit 4" . Mud mix 1,2 to avoid collaps at ice age sand formation.
At 30 meters natural gas ,that can burn. I checked it but for a better yield we need a separator.
I did not finish completion because the risc pumping up salt water
On a lower aquifier there is clear drinking water .
Rgds . Frans.

Frank S · « **Reply #31 on:** November 28, 2018, 11:18:47 AM »

Hi Frans; A friend of mine used to drill a lot of shallow surface water wells with a rig much like yours, for people who lived in his area who wanted water to use on their gardens and lawns. I remember him telling me about a natural gas pocket he drilled into at a very shallow depth Son't know what they did with it but I doubt it would have produced enough NG to be very useful for a long period of time.

Mary B · « **Reply #32 on:** February 15, 2020, 01:53:18 PM »

Pretty common to hit small gas pockets in my part of MN when drilling shallow wells. Leftovers from the glaciers that had clay caps form over them trapping the rotting vegetation the glaciers plowed under. One farmer I know is running a few gas house lights from such a pocket. It has lasted for 60 years so far but flow rate and pressure isn't much. Not enough to heat or cook on.

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Author Topic: Haven't been around much lately (Read 5863 times)