At my cabin deep in da' woods of Luck there is gravity fed spring water... pretty rad huh? I thought so too until I realized my system needed a bit of re-vamping. At first when I left Big Sandy Mush I cried a little bit cause I knew I would miss it, then I started crying cause when I went up to take a look at the pure spring source for my water - i found POOP!!!I didn't recognize the scat, but I saw a racoon track and one other animal track that was smaller near the water. (When I looked up the poop, it was a raccoon for sure.) Duh! Of course animals are gonna be thirsty too which is why the system may need a little more protection from their tongues...and unintelligible potty habit. Since there is tons and tons and more tons of water on the property for the animals to drink, I don't feel too bad setting this one aside for the picky humans, like myself.
I scraped the poop away from the water, then took rich black clean dirt from the forest floor and placed it on top, then covered that with leaves - in order to keep bacteria from being airborne and to get the poop reminents into a composting stage.
So here is how the gravity fed water system here works... for now...See that little dark cave in the pic below? There is spring water coming from rocks under there and making a pool of water. The water then goes down into the white pipe. The pipe is on a slope, going towards a holding tank.
The pipe at one time went into that old cement tank, which has long since fell apart - the blue tank was added instead. Water fills up the tank from the downward pressure and the tank creates even more pounds of downward pressure to bring water to the house.
After the tank is full, water goes down a larger pipe all the way to the house - because it goes quite a distance it gets good water pressure. I was told if i add more tanks it creates even more pressure and more sediment falls to the bottom of the tanks and is less in the water.For now, I put a sediment filter on it inside the house.
Any of ya'll have experience, tips or thoughts about gravity fed spring water?
XoXOx
