chrisser
New Member
We have a 600 gallon cistern that's not in use. It's about 150' from the house and maybe 25' down at the bottom of a hill.\, so maybe 35 feet below the house floor. I last accessed it with a 220v jet pump which worked OK but was kinda noisy.
Currently our water comes from a low-yield well at 250' with a submersible 220vac 1.5hp pump. The water quality is so-so and I just received a test kit to get it sent to a lab. As fate would have it, the well's gone dry so I've gotm some 55gallon plastic drums on my trailer and I'm feeding the house with a little 110v RV pump for now until we get some rain and the well recharges.
So I'm trying to build a better long-term solution. I'm going to relocate the cistern closer to the house and higher up. It will be about 60' away and maybe 10' below the floor (single story house). Hoping to ty the well into a small tank, then do whatever treatment is required from the test results in a batch mode and empty that into the cistern. So if the well dries up, we'll have 600 gallons of treated water pretty much on standby at all times.
So, my first question, if I go with a submersible pump in the cistern, will a 1/2 hp running on 110v suffice? I'd like to be able to run it off a portable generator and while I do have a 220v generator that will run the well pump, I also have a smaller 110v and I'm considering a small inverter that would just produce 110vac. I'm guessing when you measure from the bottom of the cistern to the top of a shower head, we're looking at maybe 25' of head and a distance of 60-125 feet through the plumbing.
Second question - I've seen some recommendations to run a vertical cistern submersible pump, and I've also seen a clever combination shroud/base made out of PVC to mount a horizontal submersible. Either way the pump's eventually going to go bad - probably when the cistern is full and probably in the dead of winter. Was hoping there was a way to make the pump easily replaceable through the access hatch without diving in and contaminating the water. If I used some elbows to loop the pipe up from the pump to a union at the top and then back down to the output pipe, effectively letting me disconnect the pump and fish it out, would that restrict the flow too much? Is there a better way to set up the pump to make it easier to retrieve? The output fittings are currently coming out the side of the cistern, although I suppose I could mount them elsewhere if it made more sense. The cistern hatch is at ground level now but I plan on getting one of the access tubes the manufacturer sells so I can put the whole cistern below the frost line, but that will make it even harder to reach down into thee.
Currently our water comes from a low-yield well at 250' with a submersible 220vac 1.5hp pump. The water quality is so-so and I just received a test kit to get it sent to a lab. As fate would have it, the well's gone dry so I've gotm some 55gallon plastic drums on my trailer and I'm feeding the house with a little 110v RV pump for now until we get some rain and the well recharges.
So I'm trying to build a better long-term solution. I'm going to relocate the cistern closer to the house and higher up. It will be about 60' away and maybe 10' below the floor (single story house). Hoping to ty the well into a small tank, then do whatever treatment is required from the test results in a batch mode and empty that into the cistern. So if the well dries up, we'll have 600 gallons of treated water pretty much on standby at all times.
So, my first question, if I go with a submersible pump in the cistern, will a 1/2 hp running on 110v suffice? I'd like to be able to run it off a portable generator and while I do have a 220v generator that will run the well pump, I also have a smaller 110v and I'm considering a small inverter that would just produce 110vac. I'm guessing when you measure from the bottom of the cistern to the top of a shower head, we're looking at maybe 25' of head and a distance of 60-125 feet through the plumbing.
Second question - I've seen some recommendations to run a vertical cistern submersible pump, and I've also seen a clever combination shroud/base made out of PVC to mount a horizontal submersible. Either way the pump's eventually going to go bad - probably when the cistern is full and probably in the dead of winter. Was hoping there was a way to make the pump easily replaceable through the access hatch without diving in and contaminating the water. If I used some elbows to loop the pipe up from the pump to a union at the top and then back down to the output pipe, effectively letting me disconnect the pump and fish it out, would that restrict the flow too much? Is there a better way to set up the pump to make it easier to retrieve? The output fittings are currently coming out the side of the cistern, although I suppose I could mount them elsewhere if it made more sense. The cistern hatch is at ground level now but I plan on getting one of the access tubes the manufacturer sells so I can put the whole cistern below the frost line, but that will make it even harder to reach down into thee.
