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Frequently Asked Questions / Re: Advice requested re: CSV usage with .75 GPM water usage in home
« on: September 01, 2014, 08:43:57 PM »
I'll need to ponder your suggestions to see if I understand all the implications; I do have one question though.
In our current setup, the garden irrigation uses one half to two thirds the 1,700 gallon cistern on day 1, refills that day and part of the night at .75 GPM, and then uses more than half the water on day 2, refills that day, part of the night, all the next day and part of the night. Then the cycle starts again.
If the irrigation uses two thirds of the cistern per day, running it down to less than 25% capacity on the second irrigation day and before the full day of rest, I'm not sure there is enough water in it to to avoid running out of water on Laundry Sunday (or some other day). Of course, the well pump would be refilling the cistern at full blast instead of .75 GPM, so that would most likely take care of the household usage also.
But how would I keep the well from running dry during refill, since the cistern holds more water than the full well pipe? Is there some system that will stop the pump relatively immediately, wait half a day and then start up again automatically?
Years ago I ran the well dry deliberately to test the capacity. Using one outside hose bib (back before the cistern was installed and everything ran through the house), I filled four 5.5 gallon buckets in 4 minutes, 15 seconds. That works out to about 5.18 GPM. Continuing to run the hose, the well ran dry in three hours three minutes, which is about 948 gallons, including the one GPM well recharge rate.
So the well holds a lot of water, but still can be run dry.
In our current setup, the garden irrigation uses one half to two thirds the 1,700 gallon cistern on day 1, refills that day and part of the night at .75 GPM, and then uses more than half the water on day 2, refills that day, part of the night, all the next day and part of the night. Then the cycle starts again.
If the irrigation uses two thirds of the cistern per day, running it down to less than 25% capacity on the second irrigation day and before the full day of rest, I'm not sure there is enough water in it to to avoid running out of water on Laundry Sunday (or some other day). Of course, the well pump would be refilling the cistern at full blast instead of .75 GPM, so that would most likely take care of the household usage also.
But how would I keep the well from running dry during refill, since the cistern holds more water than the full well pipe? Is there some system that will stop the pump relatively immediately, wait half a day and then start up again automatically?
Years ago I ran the well dry deliberately to test the capacity. Using one outside hose bib (back before the cistern was installed and everything ran through the house), I filled four 5.5 gallon buckets in 4 minutes, 15 seconds. That works out to about 5.18 GPM. Continuing to run the hose, the well ran dry in three hours three minutes, which is about 948 gallons, including the one GPM well recharge rate.
So the well holds a lot of water, but still can be run dry.