In my garden the previous owners put in a hnd pump that linked to an under ground stream, you get nice cold water out of it.
Anyway - thinking of putting an electric pump on it to say use the water in the garden, for car cleaning and possibly at a later stage, subject to a filtration device, use it for non drinking water in the house. Especially if the local water company decides to make everyone have a water meter.
Anyway - I am not sure how far the bore goes, buut can anyone point me in the direction of some water pumps that may do what I want - but specifically, I would like them to be solar powered if possibly - is it?
- It's dificult to know what to recommend without knowing how deep the borehole is. The 'cheapie' sump pumps that you can get from Screwfix tend to have a limited head (= the vertical distance they can lift water). Proper pumps designed for well use can pump water much 'higher' - but are correspondingly more expensive. Can you use a length of string with a weight on the end to 'plumb' the well and see how far down it is ? I found my replacement pump through yellow pages - pumps & wells, I think... - flow rate is also important, and I don't expect small solar pumps to shift a great volume of water.
- assuming that you've got any depth at all in your well (as in more than 10 ft) you are going to need a proper well-pump - which will cost from £150 upwards. All the ones I've seen are mains-powered - and are rated at 500watts + - which you're not going to get from a solar panel
- unless it's a very large and expensive one. If you're going to do this seriously you'll need to pump the well water up into a storage tank - which will add to the height your pump needs to lift...
However - all is not lost. Perhaps the first stage would be to get a professional analysis of your well water (£60 - £80). Depending on what that shows, you could either
= give up on the project altogether (if the water quality is too low to do anything with (economically))
= use the water 'as is' for non-critical applications around the parish - garden watering, car washing etc
= go the whole hog and install suitable filtering / pump / tank system to make it fit for human consumption.
We don't use any mains water at all. The previous owner of our bungalow installed a hand-dug well using 5ft diameter concrete sewer pipe sections - it goes down about 25ft, produces water that, after filtration, is a lot nicer that the processed stuff that the water company supply, and costs virtually nothing !
Filtration is via a particulate filter and UV lamp filter - filter installation costs about £250, filter replacement costs £30 annually. The pump and filter lamp cost a small amount in electricity. 'Used' water is processed through our septic tank system.
Result - zero water rates and no hosepipe bans.....
Good luck ! Adrian
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Easily done, I have a licence for 1000 litres a day.
To the OP Solar powered pumps are really not worth while at only a few GPM minute delivery you would need a large water store above ground, also the purchase cost for a _large_ PV panel and pump would be hard to justify against mains metered water.
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