The Everything Guide to Living Off the Grid (34 page)

Surface/Shallow Well Pumps

If your house is located near any kind of fresh water, a surface pump can be used to transfer water from the stream, river, lake, or pond to a top-inlet
holding tank equipped with a float switch. Whenever the holding tank water level drops below a set level, the float switch will run the pump. If you have a shallow water well and the water level is within twenty feet of ground level, you can also use a surface pump.

Designed to push water over long distances, surface pumps are well suited for supplying water to outlying buildings, fields, or a house situated on a hill above an available water source. And with the use of special pumping controllers, DC pumps can be run directly from solar panels or wind generators. This allows you to install them in remote locations like livestock watering stations or even in the middle of a garden.

There are more than 17 million homes in the United States that get their water from private wells. The principle is simple—a hole is dug or drilled deep into the ground and a pump draws out the water. There are many regulations that apply to private wells, so you should only use a licensed well driller. It’s easy for harmful contaminants to leak into your well if it’s not installed properly.

Submersible/Deep Well Pumps

If your home is in an area where water tables are far underground, submersible pumps are the only choice for running a well water system. Although not suited for situations in which water is required to be pumped over long distances or up considerable heights, a deep well pump will operate quite well on its own for a household system. You can supplement this system with a holding tank and a pressure tank. This way, the pump can fill the pressure tank from the holding tank, and the pressure tank will supply water pressure to the household.

Irrigation

There are several options for irrigating your garden and orchard area when you live off-grid. As discussed earlier in the chapter, if water harvesting is an
option, you can create a system of trenches and furrows to move rainwater from one area of your property to your garden. You can also collect rainwater in containers and use a gravity-fed drip-irrigation system.

Another option is to dig a channel from a nearby stream or river to your garden area. You should check with you local government entity to ensure this is legal in your area. At the mouth of the channel, next to the water source, create a gate that can be opened or closed manually. Then dig a series of connecting channels from the main channel that separate into smaller furrows throughout your garden and orchard. At the head of each of these connecting channels, create a gate to stop the water flow. When you are ready to irrigate, open the main gate to allow the water from the water source to stream down the main channel. By opening and closing the gates to the connecting channels, you can divert water to the areas of your garden and orchard that you want to irrigate.

Finally, using a solar- or wind-powered surface pump, you can push water through a series of larger PVC pipes to either drip through an irrigation system at ground level or be sprayed from an irrigation system built above the garden.

Graywater Use

The term “graywater” is used when you are talking about water that has already been used once. This doesn’t include water from the toilet, which is known as “blackwater,” but does include water from the sink, the washing machine, the shower, and the bathtub. Graywater comprises about 50 to 80 percent of all residential water use.

Graywater systems are used for several reasons:

• To promote a green lifestyle by using fewer resources
  
• To conserve water in an arid area
  
• To place less stress on a septic system
  
• To save money, when the cost of pumping water is more expensive than the cost of reusing water
  

When you build a graywater system you separate the graywater from the blackwater and send the graywater through a separate treatment system.
Blackwater will go into your septic system and graywater will pass through a filtering or purification system and then be reused. Ideally, after the graywater passes through a purification process it can then be reused. Graywater systems are particularly appropriate in off-grid locations. They reduce use of fresh water, place less stress on existing conventional septic tanks, have a highly effective purification process, and there is less chemical and energy use.

If you plan on using graywater for irrigation, avoid using laundry powders. These powders often contain high levels of salt as a bulking agent, and this has the same effect on your soil as a drought. Use an organic liquid laundry detergent instead.

If you create a system that will separate blackwater from graywater, the graywater can be recycled back into the home and garden. Graywater can be used to flush toilets or irrigate the garden. Although there are systems that filter graywater enough to purify it to a state of drinking water, most graywater systems do not allow that degree of filtering. For that reason, graywater should not be used for drinking, cooking, or cleaning.

Because graywater still carries particles from food, your skin, and cleaning agents, and is often discharged warm, it is important not to store it before using it for irrigation purposes. Storing graywater would allow bacteria to grow in the water and transfer to your plants.

There are many ways you can filter graywater. The systems that allow you to feed the water back into the home for use in toilet flushing are more complex than those that simply filter the graywater and pressurize it for irrigation purposes. Some building designs, like the Earthships, have an entire graywater system built into their blueprints.

Septic Systems

The most common system you can use to dispose of wastewater is a septic system. Whether or not you decide to recycle graywater, you will still need a septic system to get rid of the blackwater from your home.

There are four main components to a typical septic system:

• A pipe to carry the waste from the home
  
• The actual septic tank to start the digestion process
  
• The drain field to spread out the wastewater
  
• The soil with microbes to do the final filtering and cleaning of the water
  

Once the used water enters the system, the pipe carries the water and accompanying waste out of your home and into the working parts of your septic system. The septic tank is actually a watertight tank that is buried several feet underground. Septic tanks have concrete manhole-size lids that generally sit at ground level, providing easy access for cleaning, inspection, and pumping the tanks.

Tanks can be made of concrete, fiberglass, or polyethylene. When wastewater comes into the tank, the solids settle to the bottom. This material is known as
sludge
. The oil, grease, and other nonsolid components rise to the top and are known as
scum
. This separation allows for a partial decomposition of the solid material. This decomposition is aided by a variety of different bacteria and enzymes that naturally break down the human waste in the tank and help it dissolve back into the earth, so you are not just accumulating a massive amount of refuse.

Sludge and scum are prevented from leeching out of the septic tank by a T-shaped outlet design that holds in the more solid materials and allows the water to seep into the drain field. You should use additional screens throughout the system to ensure that the solids do not make it into the drain field.

Once wastewater has been separated from the solids, it exits the septic tank into a drain field to complete its treatment in the soil. Wastewater is fed into the drain field every time new blackwater and graywater are introduced into the tank.

The soil surrounding the drain field is essential in removing contaminants from your wastewater before it is returned to the groundwater. The microbes in the soil remove harmful bacteria, viruses, and nutrients from the wastewater. This is accomplished by the wastewater filtering through the drain field.

Have your soil tested to be sure it is porous enough to allow natural filtration. Once installed, your septic system should be inspected every three
years and pumped out every three to five years. However, maintenance of the septic system should be an ongoing process.

The death of beneficial bacterial colonies in your septic tank can be lessened by changing from potent chemical cleaners to organic cleaning products, which are not quite as harsh on the bacteria that work in the tank.

Unfortunately, the bacteria and enzymes that eat away the sludge and scum are easily destroyed by bleach or paint thinner entering the system. You can restore the natural enzymes in the system quickly and inexpensively. All you have to do is buy a box or package of the enzymes made for septic systems and flush it down one of the toilets in your home. Some have found that adding brown sugar with the enzymes helps to increase their viability. You should add enzymes to stimulate the function of your septic tank about once a month for optimal performance.

Water Storage

When you are living off-grid you need to think of supplying water for more than just household purposes; you also need to think about extra water for fire protection or emergencies. And, if you have livestock, you need to be sure you have enough water to care for them as well.

Your ideal off-grid water storage system would be a sparkling spring that had plenty of water all year round. Then you would never have to worry about your water supply at all. Unfortunately, you probably can’t count on that kind of source for your off-grid property unless you are very lucky. For most, some kind of water storage is critical to ensure a safe, reliable supply of water. Even if you have a plentiful supply, you still might want to consider extra water storage for fire protection or emergency preparedness.

In the September/October 2001 issue of
Backwoods Home Magazine
, found at
www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago71.html
, .effrey Yago, a licensed professional engineer and certified energy manager with over
twenty-five years’ experience in the energy conservation field, described the water storage system in his off-grid home. After the pump system he installed at a nearby stream was swept away after a storm surge, Jeff realized that he needed a more reliable source for water, but one that could be viable under the limitations of his solar-powered home. Jeff put a 500-gallon water tank into the basement of his home and set up an array of two pumps, installed near a shallow well. The first pump was a slow-flow 24-volt DC solar pump that would supply a slow but constant water supply into the tank during the day. The other pump was a 120-volt AC pump that was powered by a generator and could pull in large quantities of water in case of emergency, like a forest fire.

He installed a ball float switch to activate the DC well pump when the water level in the tank is low, and turn it off when full. Jeff found that 300 gallons a day would supply his family for several days. With an “on-demand” water heater, he could also meet the household needs for hot water.