How We Get Free Water

We buried a 1,700-gallon cistern to upgrade our off-grid water system, and in the process we found something we never expected: a spring we didn't even know we had. What started with a 12,000-lb skid steer sinking into a flooded hole turned into the best water source on our homestead — no well, no power bill, just gravity doing the work day and night.

In this video we walk through the whole process: digging the cistern hole (and nearly losing our excavator in it), building spring collection boxes by hand, and routing multiple springs into one tank so water storage keeps flowing even in a dry summer. You'll see the real numbers behind spring water flow rates, why a slow trickle beats a drilled well over time, and how we fixed a silt problem that almost ruined the whole system. If you're chasing water independence for your own place, on or off the grid, this is the whole build.

How a stuck 12,000-lb skid steer led us to a spring we never knew we had
Why a third of a gallon a minute is plenty of water when you store it right
How five springs feed one 1,700-gallon cistern using nothing but gravity