How We Get Free Water

That's five whole minutes to make one gallon of water, but right next to me underground is a 1,700 gallon cistern that's completely full of water and overflowing even right now in the driest time of the year. The water just shows up all on its own day and night for free. But there's this old secret that our grandparents knew about for making this kind of a system work, and I'll show you what I'm talking about. We found this treasure by accident when we were burying this tank to improve our current water system. My friend brought his 12,000 pound skid steer down that crazy steep hill to dig the hole and it sank into the hole, hopelessly stuck. And then the hole started filling up with water and we thought that we had wrecked our main water supply, but it turns out we stumbled onto a gold mine. So we're taking a page from our forefathers and using the oldest water source known to man and making some modern improvements so we have running water in our house just like everyone else. But if we make the wrong move here we could blow this whole thing. Okay, so here's the 1,700 gallon cistern. It's, well, I guess about 12 feet long because that bed is 12 feet. Five feet up to the inlet, then another foot up to the top or so. We'd started digging this hole by hand. Shovels, picks, you know, the whole thing. But our friend Lee brought his skid steer to knock it out fast for us. The problem was this trail is steep, like really steep. He was right on the edge of tipping the entire time he was working in there. He got almost as deep as we needed to be and then disaster struck. This 12,000 pound track machine hit a layer of wet clay and he was absolutely hopelessly stuck. We threw everything we had at it, dug around the tracks with shovels, tried hooking up a cable to pull him out, and nothing was working. The thing was absolutely buried. It was getting dark and, you know, doing this kind of rigging on a steep hillside in the is a really good way to get somebody hurt. So we just called it a night and went to bed. But the next morning it went from bad to worse. The bank had collapsed overnight right onto the machine and now the hole was filling up with water up to the floorboard of the tractor. And I'm standing there thinking, did we just destroy our main spring that was right around the corner? I mean, is our precious water draining out into this hole now? I was so focused on the problem that I hadn't yet realized what had actually happened. We had been given a gift. Okay, so here's the tackling we've set up. We've got a snatch block hooked up to that tree over there at the sharp angle, giving us some mechanical advantage. Then that is running down to the tractor where there's a snatch block. Got to record this for posterity, Lee. It took two four-wheel drive trucks chained together, but we finally pulled that thing out of there. Here we have a spring that was, unbeknownst to us, just digging a hole to bury a cistern and it starts filling up with water. What we have here is this layer of clay that's really solid clay and the water's just coming out of it. We tried to channel it all into one area here just to get a feel for how much water we're talking about. Look at that. I'm not exactly sure what that would equate to, but I know it's quite a bit more than the spring over there. We've been having to drain the water out of here. Just put up a makeshift little pipe to catch the water for a little bit and try and measure it. Came up with how much? About a third of a gallon a minute. Probably shy of what it actually is because we're losing water everywhere. Now with the unexpected challenges, we realized that we were going to need the big guns to get this job done right, so Lee brought in his huge excavator and that was pretty exciting to finally have the right machine for the job, but the unfortunate part was the cost of hauling it out here. A lowboy semi-truck all the way out to the wilderness to deliver this thing? That was not cheap, but it arrived and we were ready to knock this thing out. First order of business was to scoop out all the water and mud that had filled up the original hole. We had to move fast though because that spring water wasn't going to stop flowing just because we had a mess to clean up. Every minute we waited, more of it was piling up making things worse. We had disrupted the normal flow of things when we dug that first hole, so now we needed to get this cistern buried and that spring developed really fast before the whole area turned into a swamp. And now he's digging a deep hole for the new cistern downhill from the spring so gravity can do all the work. Looks like we had another cave-in right there. That's a bummer. So he's got to set the tank up there so we can fix this cave-in that happened while we were going to get the tank. The joys of working in silt. We worked and worked to get that cistern level and in the end it wasn't perfect but it was close. Now when you're backfilling around a cistern be sure and watch for sticks and rocks that might end up against the tank wall because over the years those can potentially wear through the plastic. This tank was really beefy and thick so I think it would have taken something pretty extreme to actually cause a problem but it's still a good I was kind of nervous watching him get that close with the bucket but Lee is amazing with that machine. It worked out just fine. This was a spring collection system that we've had for years. It's not really big enough but I think we may be able to make this work. Because this bank is so steep I didn't trust a simple clay dam by itself so we decided to try this collector and pack clay around it to give the springhead something solid to build from. So I screw this on. I want the holes horizontally. So now we're going to hammer it down and seal that off and level this thing up. It's starting collecting. Finally springhead. So we're packing clay inside and out. We need this to weather the storm. Oh my hands are cold. Look how red they are. We've got our spring developed now. We kind of chipped a little bit at the clay so that way everything would flow to this central location and then built up walls on the edges with the clay so that way the water wouldn't overflow there. We put our plumbing in and we've got it draining out now and eventually this will all clear up and be nice and delicious drinking water. Right now it's all muddy because we've been working it so much. And we will finish this up and close it in. And we've made a strategic decision even though it's a little more expensive. We're using our flexible high pressure line on all of the runs here of substance because if things move around the flex hose will give with it a little bit. We thought we had the springhead working but by the next morning part of the wall had sloughed down and the water was escaping the wrong side. So before we could finish the system we had to rebuild that section and force the flow back where it belonged. We've got the new spring coming in here and we have the old spring that's going to be coming in here and that's going to tap both of these into our spring box before it goes into the cistern so that the sediment can settle out. Once both springs were feeding the box the next step was protecting the whole system. We added gravel so the drains would keep flowing and covered it with heavy liner to keep dirt and surface contamination out and then we backfilled it carefully so we wouldn't damage the springhead that we just built. We're going to simulate putting this in a well and this is what Grenfoss says to do. So I have a three inch casing here and I'm just going to slide it in here. So it's going to do two things. It's going to force the cold water to come past the motor before it gets to the impeller so it's going to keep it cool but also this sleeve is going to protect it from any sediment. Our spring box is going to help to trap sediment but there's still going to be some that gets through and settles on the bottom of the tank. You want to do the honors here? Oh I'll let you. So this is how we're going to divert water into the cistern. It's going to fill up, go through these holes, fill up the cistern. Okay it should be on the way in a minute now. There she is. There we go. Okay here we are after about 24 hours. It's hard to get perspective but I would say we're close to a third of the way up. Is that right? About what I would expect. And that's the water that comes out of this faucet. Now a third of a gallon a minute doesn't sound like much and by late summer it slows down even more but a spring never sleeps. A third of a gallon a minute is 480 gallons per day every single day whether we use it or not and with 1,700 gallons of storage sitting underneath it a little trickle turns into more water than our family needs. We didn't even get below 70 percent in the cistern this year and it was an exceptionally dry year. That's what storage does for a small spring and it's the reason a system like this works. Here's what gets me though. We had no idea that that spring existed. It was right around the corner from the one that we'd been drinking out of and we never saw it. So if you've got a piece of ground with a slope on it, a low spot that stays wet, patch of green that never dries out in August, who knows? You might have a real chance that water is moving under your property that you've never laid eyes on. Finding it and then figuring out whether it's worth developing is a skill and we put everything we've learned about it into the Spring-Fed Water System Guide. It walks you through how to walk your land and spot a spring, how to measure the flow so you know what you're actually working with, how to build the springhead so you don't lose it, how to make your storage, and how to get water up to the house with gravity or with a pump. It's at thereadylife.com slash spring water guide and the link's down in the description and in the comments. Now the new spring was flowing but we still had a problem. Our old spring, the one that had been feeding this homestead for decades, was slowing way down and we finally discovered why. We decided to dig into our old spring. It's been tapering off really badly and we have noticed for many years that this whole area is just soaked all the time. That's where the spring is right there. We're going to keep digging, see if we can uncover the spring and who knows, maybe double our spring? Fingers crossed. We may not want to drink it after we find out what's underneath. You may wonder why we're still alive. Working our way down, watching for where we're going to hit water and where the water is actually coming from because the last thing you want to do is rush into a spring that's been here for decades and accidentally cut it off. I'm starting to see where water is coming out down over here. Here and then there's some water I think coming down around at the back too. And I just measured the water flow right now. I'm getting about a minute and 30 seconds or a gallon of water so I'm really happy with that. Oh look at that. Oh my, it's full of roots. Look at that. Hey daddy, you might want to come see this. That's why we don't get much water. I'm surprised we still were getting water. I'm shocked we were getting any water. Thieves, I tell you. Absolute thieves. We have this really thick layer of clay up here above. Then right about here it turns to sand and then coarse gravel. And then under that is a very thin layer of clay. I was just digging down into this clay a little bit and I broke through. So I'm going to pick it up right here so you can see. That's that layer of clay. That's all we have underneath the spring. And right underneath this layer of clay is just sand. That means we're going to have to be really careful with this layer of clay because if we punch through the layer of clay we'll lose this spring. Just to give you some context, that's how much water is coming off of this thing. It's been coming steadily for a while now so I don't think it's just draining. It's coming out of there fast and furiously. It surely seems like something that's going to be a valuable contribution to the overall water system. I'm so glad that we are refreshing this spring. It desperately needed it. Yeah. So when you don't have heavy equipment sometimes you have to use unorthodox measures and come along as secret weapon for that sort of thing. Okay we're pulling the ink up the hill with the ranger. All right we're dragging the old cistern out. Okay so we have a problem. We pulled our old tank out of this hole here. We've got a little bit of a spring right here. It's kind of flowing right there. Doesn't look like much. No it's just enough to be annoying. But it could pick up. Oh yeah I'm sure it will pick up in the spring. As we're pondering these options I really lean towards developing it because we've been praying for one gallon a minute and it's like how how are we going to get that unless we go where the way opens you know when there's a possibility of water explore it. If it seems like the best option is to plug it up at that point then we can plug it up but at least we'll get a better idea of how much water we're talking about and what the lay of the land is and everything. Okay so we have two different kinds of 55 gallon drums that I pulled out of a storage shed and I'm not sure which one is going to work better but I think I'm going to cut into both of them and see which one looks like a better fit. Okay and here is the finished product. We ended up doing a long double here because we've got a deep area going into the cave there that needs to be drained. Okay so we've got our bowl cut in, got our pipes in, but I was noticing I was still getting flow of water. I drained all this water out and I kept getting more water. All right so we concluded that we had the water coming from this upper layer and then below this layer of clay right here we had more water coming out. Look at all this water that's pouring in. I just fished out all the water from this lower pool. Once I dammed up the upper pool, the upper pool is filling up pretty quickly up there so I'm gonna have to do something with that pretty quick but I just wanted to make sure that that dam was strong enough. We had created a Y collection pipe and we're just going to rotate it up so that one of the prongs of the Y is up high and the other one's down low so the down low one is going to capture the lower pool and the higher up one is going to capture from that upper pool. And how are we going to get the pipe through that clay dam? So we're just going to punch a hole right here. All done, at least phase one is done. The dam is created, the pipe poking through there for that upper clay layer because remember once again we've got two layers of clay that are pretty close to each other. It comes down and taps into the main one. We thought about going doing two bulkhead fittings, one for each, but that was just going to add extra complexity and I think this will work out. As you can see it's flowing pretty well there. I'll get my foot out so you can see it's coming out pretty good. So what are you done so far? I'm not sure what to say mom. Just pretend like you're daddy. I'm trying to fish all these pieces of plastic out of here. I cut this seam bulkhead and then I put this washer in and now the water's filling up and it's almost to the hole here but before it gets to the hole I need to put a hose going out down the hill. So I've just been working on sealing it up with clay. When we were digging this trench all through here this part of the trench kept filling with water and we're like water water everywhere. We're like where's the water coming from? This is spring number four and once we count those as two separate springs and then it's spring number five. That's true. Everything's developed and we wanted to show it to you before we cover it up, bury it, put it away. This is the upper spring. This is actually the old spring that's been used on this homestead for like 30 years. Then this is the little spring we ran into digging this trench out. It's been developed and it's actually putting off some water. So you can see we dug the basin out into the clay, got down to the hard clay, hammered this bulkhead in. We're not putting an overflow on this one. It's such a small spring I can't anticipate it ever overpowering that drain. This is the main one inch line running down. Then we have another spring tapping into our one inch line here. This is a little one that popped up when we pulled the old cistern out. Nathan developed this one actually. And then this one inch line coming over to our spring box. And if you look down in here you can see that one inch line coming in there. And then up that way you can't really see it but that's the one inch line coming down from the first spring. The new spring. The big one that we developed. The very spread out one. That one is coming in there. So we have both of these lines coming together and coming into the spring box right there. Well this may be the last time this thing ever sees the light of day. You can see we've got the gravel all the way up to the top and it's gently sloping down. So this plastic is more for keeping the silt and the dirt out of the gravel so that it doesn't plug up our spring and our pipes. This is the tricky part that I'm not very good at cutting this thing to shape. It's more dress making skill and that I am not. So at this point we've got every drop of water we can find running downhill into this tank and we're feeling pretty good about life. And then this thing taught us one more lesson. We got this whole thing all set up and we're happily living on tons of water when all of a sudden we ran into a major issue. We were getting silt, clay, and eventually dirt into our cistern. Well our cistern, it's a 1700 gallon cistern and it has the manhole has an extension on it and what we discovered was that when it rained the water would rush down the hill and it would puddle up around our manhole and it would leak through this rubber gasket down here that connects the riser to the cistern. So our plan is we pulled that riser off and we siliconed it all around and put it back on so it will not leak anymore. Then we dug out all around the cistern manhole and we are going to put in a french drain so that way if the water puddles up around the manhole again it'll drain out and down the hill and now we have a great big cleanup job. What a muddy mess this is down here. There was a lot of silt that came in through that leak. We got a lot of rain. So what we are doing is we're wiping the walls down here and then we're about to stir up the dirt on the here and we're trying to be very careful with this pump to keep it out of the water because although it is 12 volts we don't want that getting in the water. We are going to suck this out, pump it out, pump just as much as we can out and I have my big cleaner here who's wiping with a rag and I disinfected those boots. Yeah and just in case you were wondering my boots were disinfected and Heidi's feet had been cleaned off before she came in here so we're trying to keep this nice and sanitary. That was for the benefit of any guests that might come and visit us in the future. Look at that. Oh nice and beautiful and spic and span. It's the next morning. I'm going to turn on the ozonator, the ozone machine, to sanitize the water in the tank before we turn the pump back on and get water running into the house. Yep it's piling up looking good, nice and clean in there. Oh that's a beautiful sight. As usual working in the night and here's what we have going on. We've got three or four inch perforated drain pipe. I've got that circling all the way around the manhole on the inside away from the dirt as far as I can get it and then we've got a Y there and then that is running on down the hill. Being a little paranoid I have this smaller hose going on the outside just in case the big one somehow gets plugged up because those aren't very big perforations in it. Hopefully we'll be in good shape, never have this happen again hopefully. So this is the overflow where the water comes out of the tank when the tank is full which often happens every night and that's because the spring just keeps on flowing whether we need more water or not. Three springs or five if you count the way that Lisa counts them all running downhill into one 1,700 gallon tank. Gravity does every bit of it. Nobody drilled for it, nothing pumps it in. The only electricity really in the whole system is the pump that pushes it up to the house from the cistern and that pump is powered by our off-grid solar power system not by the power company. The question that I've got is could you buy this? Kind of, I guess you could. You could drill a well but in our neck of the woods there's a serious chunk of change involved with that like tens of thousands of dollars plus a pump plus the power to run it and you're still hoping that the driller hits water. This just showed up for the price of a tank and some pipe and a whole lot of clay under our fingernails and one very stuck skid steer. And I'll shoot straight with you, this water tastes better than any well water I've ever had. And friends, after most of the setbacks on this project I would say we had more water than we had before. We didn't plan it that way but apparently God did. Now if you got a spring or you think that you might have a spring you can do this and you don't have to stumble through the way that we did the first time. A spring-fed water system guide walks you through the whole thing in order, finding the spring, measuring it, building the spring head, sizing the cistern, running the pipe, and getting water to the house with gravity or a pump. It's got the checklists and what you need so you can jot down your own numbers and know what you're working with before you ever pick up a shovel. So grab it at thereadylife.com spring water guide. And if you're on a well or on city water the question is still the same one, where does your water come from when the power is off for a week? Because your well pump doesn't run without electricity and neither do the city's pumps. We walk through exactly what to do about that in this video right here so go watch that one next.