How to truck 1,000 gallons of potable water to a residence

[Pico Rico]

don't discount the possibility that "that is our story and we are sticking to it".

[DannyD.]

By way of comparison, I just got a quote from this water company for $225 to $250 for 3,800 gallons from a stainless steel truck: Bay Area Water Trucking, 408-683-0500

So, for example, to fill my pool would take at least ten truckloads, or about $2,500.

[CRNG]

On Fri, 4 Jul 2014 03:53:18 +0000 (UTC), "DannyD." wrote in

That's about $60/1k gallons. That seems like a lot.

[Stormin Mormon]

Of course, doing your own hauling figures free labor. I'd be careful doing water hauling for neighbors, too easy to establish a dependance relationship.

[TomR]

Well, if I am not mistaken, that seems to be the answer to your original question -- how to truck 1,000 gallons of potable water to a residence.

For 250 bucks you can get almost 4 times the original 1,000 gallons you were looking for -- and that's the delivered price. So, no meters to buy or rent, no tanks to buy, no trucks or trailers to rent, etc. If your neighbors asked you to figure this out, it looks like you just did that for them.

My vote would be, call Bay Area Water Trucking, write the check, and it's over.

That's a different question -- how to get 38,000 gallons delivered to fill your pool.

[Pico Rico]

wouldn't the answer to that question involve waiting for it to rain?

[trader_4]

In fairness to Danny, from the original post, it's obvious it's not a one time, 1000 gallon problem. CA is in a long term drought, his wells are running dry and so are his neighbors. The idea was to see if they could come up with some lower cost solution to span months.

[TomR]

Yes, but he was trying to figure out the best plan or solution for each

1,000 gallons of water that they need to get up to their location. At $250 for each 3,800 gallon transport, that's way less than any of the other options that he was looking at, and it involves virtually no labor or rentals or anything else on their part. At $250 per 3,800 gallon trip, that's even less than the cost for them to just rent a tank truck and then they would have to find a commercially licensed driver to drive the rental truck, do the pumping and metering, etc. I think that he originally thought that it would cost a lot more than $250 to even get just 1,000 gallons up to them. So, to me, $250 total for each 3,800 gallon delivery sounds like the easiest and cheapest option that any of us has come up with. It certainly beats my "buy 55-gallon drums and make 10 trips of 2 drums at a time in a pickup truck" idea; or my get a fire truck idea, etc.

I think he found his best option, and that's what his neighbors apparently asked him to do.

[trader_4]

He said that with a 1000 gallon tank, they could rent a truck and do it without a CDL. I don't see how it's less than the cost of a truck. I don't remember the numbers, but it seems the truck should be $250 for a day. You could then make many trips to many houses and I would think it would net out to a lot less than $250 per house. The water itself didn't cost much, as I recall.

I guess it also depends on how many folks he has in on this, and how large their tanks are. If he has enough folks and they have big tanks, eg 5,000 gallons, which it sounded like they do, then renting a truck could be cheap. You just keep the truck busy all day, fill a lot of tanks up. But the flip side of that is somebody still has to do the work. And IDK how long the water lasts before it has to be done again, etc. You definitely avoid a lot of problems by paying for the delivery.

I think that he originally thought

I didn't follow the whole thing. Did he try the local fire dept? A lot of times when there are emergencies like this, they will help out. I guess it depends on how many people there are, how long, etc. If it's not that many people, they might be willing to do something.

Or, he could go to the municipal govt. They might have eqpt or be willing to work to come up with a solution. Another factor he might want to consider is getting something in place soon. If enough wells go dry, that water truck might be fully booked, rates might go up, etc.

If they want to go that route, he should get together the neighbors and see how many are interested at that price point. Then Danny could go to the water truckers and negotiate a deal for all of them, ie a volume deal. Danny should bring all his spreadsheets and analytics to the water guy's office. After an hour or two, the water guy will probably be willing to give them the water for free just to be done with it. LOL

[Stormin Mormon]

Email the water hauler URL for endless pictures. That should do it, if spread sheet fails.

[bob haller]

the long term solution is everyone has a new much deeper well drilled

municipal government gets involved in runnig water lines, including fire hy drants to the area

This adds protection during wildfires, where often people water down their own homes to keep them from burning.

another halfway solution is for everyone to add much larger water storage t anks.. say a 10,000 gallon tank could be fed normally by a well, even a poo r well would provide some water.

the tank would get filled when necessary.

lets not forget the value of the drivers time to fill tanks and the truck r ental cost, or the cost of fuel and repairs. that will all add up surpringi sly fast, and a truck hauling water wouldnt get good gas mileage, since wat er weighs 8 pounds per gallon. 1000 gallons is 8000 punds plus the weight o f the tank and pump....

[Stormin Mormon]

Which reminds me, I wrote a caution. Once the neighbors find out that Danny is a water hauler, it will set up an expectation that he will keep them in water, any time they need.

As with my own water hauling experience, some times it's better to have a concealed tank, and work out of sight. A 50 gal tank inside a panel van (with a pump and hose to your own cistern) may be the way to go.

[DannyD.]

bob haller wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 17:30:56 -0700:

One of the neighbors told me that it's something like $10,000 for every 100 feet, which is about a $40,000 investment for each houshold, for an average 400-foot well (some are deeper but that's how deep my good one is, IIRC).

Do they run water lines well more than 2,000 feet up hill to the top? How do they get the pressure needed?

Luckily, I have a large pool of water, with chlorine and grandkids in it to fight fires.

It seems most have far more than 10,000 gallons. For example, this residence has 15,000 gallons, of which 10,000 is for fire only:

This one has 25,000 gallons, of which 15,000 is dedicated for fire only:

Yup. That's pretty much how it works out here.

Yup. Bulk water delivery costs are at least $225 to $380 for 3,800 gallons based on my calls a while ago to these two companies when I needed to fill my swimming pool:

Franks Water Service 408-353-1343 Bay Area Water Trucking 408-683-0500

Right now, I have a leak on the bottom of my steel tank, but I have no idea how to fix it properly:

Note: I think that semicircular rub mark is from deer drinking the water?

[DannyD.]

Stormin Mormon wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:56:49 -0400:

Actually, we decided (three of us anyway) that we'd do exactly what you suggested, which is to line up, for emergencies, a price sort of what the SPUG group does for us for propane:

What we'd do is negotiate a set price and delivery conditions, and then we'd let all the neighbors know.

At the very least, we'd rate the bulk truckers, as some of them are downright nasty. Most (if not all) take days just to return a call, and none seem to have a 9 to 5 office admin. So, you always get an answering machine. All who called back said they're swamped now.

Even the big San Jose Water Company told me they're almost out of water meters, which is what you need to legally hook up to a fire hydrant to get water at 1 cent a gallon.

[DannyD.]

trader_4 wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 15:44:21 -0700:

The current plan is that we've lined up a couple of pickup trucks from neighbors, and we have this (rather puny) 685-gallon spare tank:

That nominally 500-gallon tank weighs about 100 pounds, so, with

685 gallons in it, that's a bit over 2-1/2 tons of weight.

I have never owned a pickup.

Does a 2-1/2 ton pickup actually carry 2-1/2 tons? Seems logical, but I'm not sure how that spec works.

[DannyD.]

TomR wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 13:19:45 -0400:

That's roughly about 7 cents a gallon, where the water company charges

1 cent a gallon for the water were we to truck it ourselves.

The *cheapest* option appears to be to use the spare 500 gallon tank we have available to us (which holds 685 gallons when full), and borrow a pickup capable of handling 2-1/2 ton loads uphill from one of the neighbors with volunteer manpower.

The truck costs us a full tank of gas plus a case of beer plus probably a few amenities like washing it and leaving goodies in the front seat.

We may need to buy a good horsepower water pump, to pump the water from the truck to the top of a water tank, which could be as far as 100 feet away from where the truck has to park.

The only problem is that a single 5,000 gallon water tank will take (nominally) 10 trips, which is time consuming, so, we only want to do this in emergencies. Still, it behooves us to plan ahead because we're in the extreme fire hazard zone (nothing is higher) and, as you may know, we're in a drought and there is absolutely no rain forecasted until some time around November, if then.

I did google whether I could drink from the pool, and it turns out that, even with the cyanuric acid, you *can* drink the water (but I wouldn't want to unless I had to).

[DannyD.]

trader_4 wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 09:13:51 -0700:

Thanks for understanding the overall long-term strategic goal. We won't see rain until November, at the earliest, and maybe, if things proceed as they did last year, not even then.

At the moment, the fire department is scheduled to give us a talk to our next homeowners meeting about what we can do to protect ourselves from fire (we're in the extreme fire hazard zone in addition to high liquifaction zone, which seems an oxymoron, but isn't).

And, we have two water companies lined up, although one is a gruff junkyard dog style guy - plus he's more expensive anyway, so, we're OK on the delivery.

We've lined up a spare 685 gallon tank, and a spare pickup truck (although we have no idea if that pickup can handle 2-1/2 tons) and we know the neighbors will all pitch in, especially to help the widows and divorced women and the older men (over 70, as the rest of us are pretty rugged as we hike and rappel the hills all the time together.

Costs for water alone are about 1 cent a gallon from the San Jose Water Company, but that doesn't count the water meter rental.

Costs for the truck are free but that doesn't count what we'll do for the owner (probably give him $50 to $100 worth of amenities).

Labor is free. :)

[DannyD.]

Pico Rico wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 08:18:59 -0700:

Heh heh ... I don't know if you know about California, but, the forecast is for ZERO rain from now until about late November.

From November to about March, it can rain a decent amount, or, as it did last year, it could skip us altogether.

This (dated) article said 4 inches fell from Jan1 to late September 2013.

And the winter of 2013-2014 was equally dry.

So, if I waited for rain, my lap pool would still look like this:

Instead of this:

[DannyD.]

TomR wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 11:10:01 -0400:

I recently filled mine, but it took something like 3 weeks or so, even at 5 gallons a minute:

[DannyD.]

Stormin Mormon wrote, on Fri, 04 Jul 2014 07:30:17 -0400:

We help each other out, when we can.

In fact, a neighbor asked us to do an inspection of his water supply, and we cheerfully did that for him.

We pitch in and all hike together roped on the hills.

I went hiking with the neighbors just today, and we were able to cross the lake on foot for a shortcut cutting off about 5 miles, but normally the lake is a half mile wide or so of water. It's all just cracked mud now:

The mud is still slightly wet, but, cracking fast:

All the lakes are nearly dried up.