Rationing Utilities

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

Farmers do use solar power for irrigation. There are batteries for night time pumping as well.

That was what I was thinking would be a benefit on a smaller or more individual pump need. For our water pump when we move up there I was thinking about using a small solar setup with a good sized battery bank for maybe an acre worth of landscape and the house.

[mistyriver]

Originally Posted by Mister Torgue

That was what I was thinking would be a benefit on a smaller or more individual pump need. For our water pump when we move up there I was thinking about using a small solar setup with a good sized battery bank for maybe an acre worth of landscape and the house.

Yeah, lots of farm have to resort to off grid means.
We lived off grid for years on the Priest River. Our entire setup was solar but even after we grid tied our well pump stayed on solar power.

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

Yeah, lots of farm have to resort to off grid means.
We lived off grid for years on the Priest River. Our entire setup was solar but even after we grid tied our well pump stayed on solar power.

That’s good to hear. Thanks for the info.

[nm9stheham]

Originally Posted by mistyriver

Yeah, lots of farm have to resort to off grid means.
We lived off grid for years on the Priest River. Our entire setup was solar but even after we grid tied our well pump stayed on solar power.

How deep was your well's static water level? And did you pump into a cistern?

[mistyriver]

100’ static and yes into a 3000 gallon cistern

[nm9stheham]

Tnx for the info. That is a good design, with the cistern. That modest well depth keep the pumping energy per gallon low, and the cistern makes it easy to pump in small increments. There presumably is a 2nd pump for pressurizing the water into the house.

But solar is not a slam dunk in all cases. 500' or deeper static depths are seen in the mountains (and sometimes more). A 100' static depth can be done with 1/3 HP (or maybe even 1/4 HP). 500' static depth is gonna push you up to using a 2 HP motor, for the same range of flow rates. So roughly 6-7 times the pumping energy per gallon for 500' vs 100'.

So don't start planning on solar until you know the well depths in your area. If it's gonna be deep, have an on-grid backup plan.

[banjomike]

Idaho's water tables are all so twisted, fractured and complicated any static depth is very unpredictable. One well can be 40 feet deep and provide good water, and less than a half-mile away, another well can be 400 feet deep with unreliable water.

One can be sweet and clear, and the neighbor can be rusty and murky. You just need know what you'll get until the first water comes out of the pipe.

[nm9stheham]

It's that way in all mountains regions that I know of. At our location in the Blue Ridge Mtns, we are on a mountain knob with a local aquifer not too deep. Drilled depths are 280-400' and static depths are about 100-150' above the drilled depths. Go <1 mile north on the same mountain and at 400' lower elevation.... the drill depths are 600-1000' to get any water at all.

You can generally get decently reliable bounds of the depth range from the local drilling records. But the flow is the big variable. We drilled a dry hole here, 75' from a well that flows 15 gpm!

And any underground caverns will mess things up big time! One spot near Dubois WY that I learned about.... they drilled 650' and then hit a cavern.... time to stop. (The owners ran an oil/gas drilling company....) They installed 3-1000 gallon underground cisterns and get the water hauled in. Go 1/4 mile and on the top of the same mountain where there is a somewhat level area and a mountain stream fed by snows, and they can get water.

I'd assume that an area like Rathdrum, with the big flat expanse filled with alluvium, would be a lot more consistent and not too deep to water. The Snake River plain seems like it could be quite variable, with all the geologic changes.