Water

I mentioned a few posts ago about water, a topic I have not touched upon yet. Not to many years ago you could get a well drilled in our area for real cheap. Last year I contacted one of the local well drillers who is also a friend and the going rate in our area is an estimated $10,000 dollars for the well, pump, hookup, license and all other kinds of related stuff. Needless to say, that is a lot of money and that is one thing this jack pine does not have. So, I had to make the decision to go without a well for the time being, knowing that soon (before building is done) I will have to invest in this needed service.

Now the question that might be asked is how do I handle water? Well, lets look at it this way. Water is the elixir of life and so it is very important. You need it for cooking, cleaning, washing and drinking. With that established though, here is another point, it does not necessarily have to come out of the ground at exactly the place it is used. Now certainly there is convenience by having it do so, but as stated, it wont be happening here at this building site for a little while yet. Now, I have a temporary trailer (temporary as in a few years, not a lifetime) and so water needs to be available for all those fore mentioned things. How does one deal with water when its not readily available on site?

1. Go without which is not really an option.
2. Pound a well which is cheaper than a drilled well but labor intensive and possibly not as good nor usually legal anymore (though the legal part don't bother me-my land, my water).
3. Carry in jugs of water which is labor intensive and time consuming and not as easy to use for showering, cleaning, etc.
4. Build a cistern/storage tank that can be filled from a master tank and then plumbed into water supply system in the trailer.

I went with number 4, though a little more labor intensive, it is done in such a way that it only requires to be filled about once a week. What I did was locate two 30 gallon upright water tanks that my cousin had. These I bleached and then pressure washed out since they had been in storage for many years. In the bathroom is a space next to the sink for a washer/dryer area. There was perfect room for these two tanks to be set side by side. There were threaded holes in the lower sides of these tanks, so here I was able to use fittings to tee the two together with vinyl hose with a shut off valve. From there I drilled a hole in the sink cabinet and ran the tubing from the shut off valve under the sink to a shurflow on-demand RV water pump that I picked up locally and secured to the floor. From that unit, a tube proceeds out through the wall into the small closet area where the hot water heater sets. It tees off from their and feeds the hot water heater and the cold water supply line for the rest of the trailer.

The water heater is fairly new, a used one my cousin had that was only a few years old. We put that in with all new pex tubing to all the fixtures in the house and let me tell you, pex is wonderful to work with. With the proper crimping tool and fittings, it goes in fast and easy and looks good too, though you never see it hidden in the closet and under the counter tops.

In the top of the tanks is another threaded hole where I placed screened vent elbows so the tanks will work without the vacuum keeping them from emptying when the pump calls for water. When it comes time to fill them, I remove one of them and feed in the end of a hose which runs outside to my truck where I have a 55 gallon water drum that I can fill up anywhere I choose (usually my parents house a few miles away). I use a transfer pump that another of my cousins had to pump the water from the drum to the tanks in the house and there you go-water.

I use this water primarily for bathing, washing, cleaning etc. For drinking and cooking for now I have a separate water jug that sits in the kitchen. So far this process has worked well. I imagine that come winter, it probably wont be the easiest, but I am certain I will have plans in place to make the delivery and transfer of water easy and fairly hassle free.