Private Water Supply on BI (Hilo, Volcano: rentals, buy, maintenance)

[mdand3boys]

Wells can be drilled - and water actually obtained - at any location on the island. While that sounds great, there are a couple of problems. The water is generally at the sea level mark,meaning that if you are at 1000 feet, you have to drill a 1000 foot well! If you are real close to the ocean, you will get a brackish water that has lots of salt in it. Any problem is the high cost of drilling a well here. The lava eats drill bits and the price of fuel for the drilling rig is high and the lava makes for slow drilling which adds time, which is of course, more money. I have heard estimates of 3x-4x mainland drilling costs, per foot.

[hotzcatz]

Henry, why should the small towns put in water makers when they don't have anything to do with providing water? Everything is handled on either a State, County or private level around here, towns don't do anything. The State does the schools, ports and some of the roads. The County does the water (where it's available) and some of the sewers (where they are available) and most of the other utilities and services such as electric (where it's available), cable (where it's available), newspapers, etc. are all handled by private companies. Well, the electric and cable are publicly held private companies if that makes a difference.

Many folks who are on catchment bring in drinking water and use the catchment water for everything else. There are handy watering stations alongside the road where there are faucets to fill up drinking water containers at no charge.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by nwcountrygal

The other thought I found with catchment that you may not realize... no fire hydrants. That was a new concept when I realized it. Many areas even with public water still no hydrants. Just an interesting thing as a mainlander I originally didn't think about.

True. And as a result, to get fire insurance most companies require that you have a 10,000 gallon water tank, accessible to fire trucks. Here in Volcano the Volunteer Fire Department has a short bodied pumper, to negotiate the turns on narrow roads, and it only carries something like 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of water, which is not enough to knock down a fully developed blaze, so they depend on being able to drop a siphon hose into the water tank.

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Henry, why should the small towns put in water makers when they don't have anything to do with providing water? Everything is handled on either a State, County or private level around here, towns don't do anything.

I'd go further and say there are few "towns" on the BI that even have a local form of government, and most of what people are used to looking for in town services is provided here by the county. That is a shock to many people coming in. For example, here in Volcano, police protection is provided by the Puna County police, and their station is in Keaau, 20 miles distant. Outside of Hilo and Kona, think "rural."

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Many folks who are on catchment bring in drinking water and use the catchment water for everything else. There are handy watering stations alongside the road where there are faucets to fill up drinking water containers at no charge.

I might quibble with the word "handy." The closest county drinking water spigots to me are in Kurtistown, just past the 10 mile marker on Highway 11, 17 miles distant, and they are poorly maintained... handles are missing from several spigots, and you typically have to stand in a big puddle of water while filling your water containers. But they do get a lot of use. I see one guy there filling a 330 gallon tank in the back of his pickup, along with a lot of folks filling gallon jugs and 5 gallon cans.

The problem with using catchment water for "everything else" is that unless catchment water is filtered for contaminants... it starts out very pure, but can pick up bird droppings and insects from the roof and gutters, even with the recommended "first flush diverter" in the downline, and the tank itself can be contaminated by bacterial growth and small animals getting in... users are exposed to disease when they shower, wash dishes casually, etc. People mostly have done that in the past because typical filter and sterilization units (UV or Ozone) are expensive. With the inexpensive new .5 micron ceramic filters there is no good excuse not to filter all the water to drinking water standards.

Originally Posted by mdand3boys

Wells can be drilled - and water actually obtained - at any location on the island. While that sounds great, there are a couple of problems. The water is generally at the sea level mark,meaning that if you are at 1000 feet, you have to drill a 1000 foot well! If you are real close to the ocean, you will get a brackish water that has lots of salt in it. Any problem is the high cost of drilling a well here. The lava eats drill bits and the price of fuel for the drilling rig is high and the lava makes for slow drilling which adds time, which is of course, more money. I have heard estimates of 3x-4x mainland drilling costs, per foot.

Good points all, but at least in my area there are aquifers that can be tapped with wells, sometimes fairly close to the surface, if you can find them, and the water obtained from them is very pure and delicious. Rain falls upslope, and trickles down through layers of prehistoric volcanic ash, which is a natural filter. But for all the reasons you mentioned, few people attempt it. Drilling wells here is risky and expensive at best. And since we get an average of 100" of rain per year up here, rainwater catchment is the norm.

Originally Posted by henry1

has any of the small town that are located on the ocean thought about going in on a solar power fresh water maker and the cost is not that bad if you think about it ..the one i looked up for a small house is about $5000.oo dollars that will make up to 500.gallons a water a day with solar and wind power system and it the size of a front engine block of a small car body ..

Henry, as mentioned before, there really are no town governments to take on projects like that, so each homeowner has to provide their own water on most parts of the Big island. The unit you mentioned would be a big overkill for a normal person's house, and is at least 5X the expense of a top flight filtration and sterilization panel for rain water. And unless you are in one of the really dry areas, like Ka'u, there's no need for it. Perfectly usable water comes from the sky, free.

Hawai'ians in general use far less water than on the mainland. The average use across the country is about 100 gallons a day per person. Toilet use and lawn watering make up almost 2/3 of that. Hawai'ians average about 30 gallons a day per person. By going to a composting toilet and sticking to water conservation guidelines, like not running a dishwasher until it is full (dishwashers actually use less water than proper hand washing, but not if they are run half empty), and xeriscaping with native plants rather than putting in a lawn, that use can be cut to about 10 gallons a day.

So save your money, do what people already do here that works, invest in a new keyboard with working SHIFT keys, and live happily ever after.

[mdand3boys]

Originally Posted by OpenD

True. And as a result, to get fire insurance most companies require that you have a 10,000 gallon water tank, accessible to fire trucks. Here in Volcano the Volunteer Fire Department has a short bodied pumper, to negotiate the turns on narrow roads, and it only carries something like 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of water, which is not enough to knock down a fully developed blaze, so they depend on being able to drop a siphon hose into the water tank.

The thousands of homes with 4k, 5, 7.5k, etc tanks aren't all going without insurance. In general, you can get a discount if you have a larger tank, provided that the tank has a fire department style hookup attached. They don't drop a line in and pump your tank. The action would rip the liner out of the tank.

Just because one has a 10k gallon tank doesn't mean it has that much water in it. Last Jan/Feb, we went 8 weeks with less than 1 inch of rainfall. Our 7.5k tank got down to about 1200 gallons left. Wouldn't have mattered at all to the fire department.

If you live anywhere outside of a village - the fire department will take so long to get to your house that it doesn't matter how much water you have available. A fire will double in size every 30 seconds or so.

[henry1]

So basically what you saying is that it falls back on me to make sure i have a clean fresh water supply on the island there not a town or county problem ..

iam going that way a manul flush toliet with grey water flush system that holds the drain water from the shower and kitchen sink to flush the toliet system ..

also as part of the landscapeing with all native plants and grass on the land after the place was bult with a basic old school gravel driveway entance to the place and i have been thinking adding six 500.gallon plastic fresh water above ground tanks for water stowage because what you said about rural time lags for fire and other public services to get to your place outside the townships or small villiages areas of the island .. ..

two for use household fresh water use and the other four tanks for the fire fighting dutys in a fire break out around the house and i can help control it intill help get there .

[OpenD]

Here's something a lot of people apparently don't know about the water on the Big Island... it has almost no mineral content from wells, zero from rainwater (which is why your hair gets so squeaky clean when you shampoo with it) so you should either plan your diet to provide the minerals your body needs (for instance, I eat a lot of seaweed and beets and kale and such) or take a nutritional mineral supplement. I also amend my garden soil with added minerals so my veggies and fruit are mineral rich.

This is actually a bigger issue than most people realize. One of my friends just had a physical, during which he discussed various health problems with the doctor. His blood test revealed that he was depleted of several key minerals. The doc explained that rainwater and distilled water* for drinking leach minerals from the body because they are so pure, so supplementation is important. My friend added an inexpensive mineral supplement to his diet and the health issues disappeared.

* This is why distilled water is NOT recommended for drinking by health authorities unless it is the only possible source.

[mdand3boys]

henry1: what subdivision is your lot in? That will help determine what you would do as far as catchment system. If you are in a wet area, you might need much less capacity whereas if you were in a drier area, you would want additional capacity to cover you during longer periods of little or no rain.
Where I am, we get about 125" a year so a really big tank isn't that important.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by henry1

So basically what you saying is that it falls back on me to make sure i have a clean fresh water supply on the island there not a town or county problem ..

Exactly

Originally Posted by henry1

iam going that way a manul flush toliet with grey water flush system that holds the drain water from the shower and kitchen sink to flush the toliet system ..

That's one way to do it, but it's much cheaper and easier (and ecologically better) to use a composting toilet and eliminate the septic tank. A greywater leach field is much simpler to install, and you only need a single water system. As a rough guess, going this way will save you 50%.

Originally Posted by henry1

i have been thinking adding six 500.gallon plastic fresh water above ground tanks for water stowage

That will cost a LOT more than a single tank, and involves a lot of extra plumbing and adds complexity. I don't recommend it. Water tanks get cheaper and cheaper per gallon of capacity as you go up in size.

Originally Posted by henry1

two for use household fresh water use and the other four tanks for the fire fighting dutys in a fire break out around the house and i can help control it intill help get there .

Here's a simpler, cheaper solution, and one that is in very wide use here. Get a Doughboy type swimming pool and cover for storing the non-potable water. You should not use them for drinking water unless you replace the factory liner (which contains fungicide) with a food grade liner (which can be hard to get), and be aware that in earthquakes this type of pool can collapse, so make sure it is downhill of the house.

For the drinking water supply I prefer two tanks, one large and one small. The large one is for everyday use, the small one for backup in case the large one gets contaminated, and to make cleanout of the main tank (about every 3 years) less of a hassle.

You don't need to keep reinventing the wheel, Henry. Did you get the CTAHR rainwater handbook yet? I think it is the best single resource available, and the author, Patricia S. H. Macomber, is consulted on rainwater catchment by people all over the world.

You can order it here: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/wq/publi..._Directory.pdf

Here's a quick read, 4 page document about assessing risks from rainwater catchment systems: http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/HH-10.pdf

And here's an informative blurb from the above document:

Two Internet sources of general information on water
catchment systems are The Sourcebook of Alternative
Technologies for Freshwater Augmentation in Latin
America and the Caribbean, <International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC) &ndash; homepage
Publications/TechPublications/TechPub-8c/rooftop.asp>,
and the DTU Roofwater Harvesting Program, <http://
www.eng.warwick.ac.uk/DTU/rainwaterharvesting/ (broken link)
index.html>. Another site of interest is the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) at <http://www.nsf.org>, which
provides information on the effectiveness of various
water treatment and filtration devices.

Oh, and thanks for the use of a capital letter, Henry. The effort is commendable. Now try for one in each sentence.

[henry1]

Thanks for the info on the rain catchment system for use with the house and iam trying to figure out a couple more things to get them right the first time and not spend more money than i need ..

Out on the ranch in Utah we had a four 5000.gallon non protable water tanks with two heavy duty 12.volt power pump and battery bank and a inline hose hook up for the fire retardant foam in 5.gallon sized buckets to get the spray foam into the line for use around the house to keep a bush or wildfire from destorying the house and barns and other outer building that we have there . ..

The hose could reach up to 160.ft from the tanks in a complete circle around the ranch yard from the house and outer building and barn where within that mark at the 75.ft mark to the 100.ft mark was the fartherest building away from the tanks to be able to get water to the fire if need be area around the house and outer building or form a fire break with a back ho and a foamed cover area to keep the fire from getting on to the house and building ..


By the time we where 14 years old we knew how to do wildfire figthing tactics and how to dig a fireline and stop the fire from jumping the fire break and start the pumps and how to hook the foam into the line and change out the buckets as they where need .

My GrandFather and my Father both made sure we understand the basic thinking behind the how to do this as childern ..They drilled into our head that they time it took the fire dept to get here from town would be to late to do anything and we need to be able to fight the fire ourself intill then ..

[hotzcatz]

Our neighbor's house three houses over burned down last year. We have County water so we had water and water pressure. We had five garden hoses going on the fire and we barely kept it from jumping to the next house until the fire department got here. The whole house was a complete loss. Fortunately, there was a huge stand of bamboo between the houses, that kept the fire from spreading. The bamboo leaves would catch on fire and we would spray it down but the stems didn't catch on fire. If that hadn't been there and if the fire department hadn't arrived as soon as they did, the next two (or three!!) houses would have gone up as well. I can't imagine the pressure tank and water pump sized for most catchment systems would have been able to do much to help at all in an instance like that one was. Still, every little bit helps, but I wouldn't rely on it over much.