Water is An essential, primary consideration.
Where is it? How much is there? and of course,
What is the quality of the source?
We are fortunate have a natural spring that flows year round, in winter it becomes the headwaters of a small creek, and in summer it moves below the surface. Unfortunately this amazing feature is located about 175 feet below, and 900 feet down range of the most hospitable area for the development of house and garden.
We started by hauling water manually for drinking, cooking, and washing, clearly that wouldn’t be adequate, It would have been easier to get a noisy, combustion engine driven model, but there was something in me that resisted the idea of becoming dependent on gasoline for water. so we purchased our first solar powered pump. The technology was just then improving to the point where reliable, inexpensive solar pumping was feasible.
Our first pump used a 48 watt solar panel and a small linear current booster- an electronic gizmo designed to adjust the current to volt ratio of the available power, so that on overcast days and at each end of the day the pump continued to run and slowly fill a 450 gallon used polyethylene olive curing tank.
Polyethylene, is an inert, chemically stable co-polymer, once a waste product of oil refining. We also used black polyethylene pipe, careful to purchase the slightly more expensive food grade NSF (National Science Foundation certified) rather than the cheaper ‘utility’ grade which may contain impurities from recycled feed stock. We later found this pipe was also resistant to freezing. After a deep winter freeze our neighbors 1.5″ PVC pipe had cracks spiraled down its length, while our more flexible poly line thawed out, ready for service.
The spring was not located in the sun, so we had to run a line to a holding tank, another 450 gallon olive tank. Because of the terrain the gravity flow was just adequate to fill the tank on the road that bordered our land, but still lacked solar exposure. We had to string wire up the hill about 100 feet, this was a 12 volt DC system so we would need a heavy wire to keep line losses to a minimum. The first wire used was 12 gauge 3 conductor Romex, with the 3 wires twisted as one for each leg of the circuit. The limitations of this pump became apparent as it readily overheated. The small pump house enclosure I built was inadequate, and placed in a way that allowed accidental inundation. After replacing rusted bearings, ruptured diaphragms, and at one point the entire unit, it became clear we needed an upgrade. It was no wonder, as later I saw a catalog listing a quite similar pump as a replacement for an industrial carpet cleaner, clearly it was designed for lighter duty.
