Another Workshop Time Waster: 3000 Gallon Masonry Cistern

[vtsteam]

Photos links broken by PhotoBucket now redirected.

[howsitwork?]

Hi Steve

Hope the bears just pose for photos for you. We spent a week I. Alaska last august and eventually saw two black bears on the Canadian border eating roots and having a play fight before wondering off. Beautiful to watch but very powerful. Glad we were inside a tour bus at the time. One lady wanted to get out for a better photo🤔🤔

She was persuaded this was not a good idea just before they decided to exchange a few playful blows....

Beautiful country and great people ( on both sides of the border ).

By now no doubt your enjoying the bountiful water supplies.

Ian

[vtsteam]

Just an update on the masonry cistern, it has been needed only once during the last few years -- for about two weeks the summer before last. It's a reserve water source in case of drought, and was sized to allow 50 gallons a day of usage for two months. Before I built it we had experienced two months of drought using containers for water and had reduced our water needs to 5 gallons/day. So 50 gallons/day is easily achievable.

Well, as of today we are again drawing water from the cistern. Drought conditions are back here in Vermont. This did not happen prior to 2010. Now it seems to happen every 2-3 years. Here's a photo of our stream from the bridge we built. Practically dry, except for a few wet spots. Fish dying.

[awemawson]

Good forward planning then Steve 

Anticipate what might go wrong and put a ‘Suitable Spare’ on the shelf, or in your case, in the garden!

[vtsteam]

Thanks Andrew. 

Ironic thing is, we're approaching the possibility of flash floods as we move into Fall. This would mainly be due to the remainders of hurricanes down in the southern U.S. If a hurricane strikes the east coast, it generally becomes a tropical storm and moves north. By the time it hits us it is usually swirling rain bands. Hurricane Irene hit us a few years ago and devastated our roadways and bridges and isolated whole towns. Some have still not completely rebuilt.

This is supposed to be an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season, so we'll see what happens. Might be a real test of the bridge, which was designed to handle a 100 year flood. Heh, both cistern and bridge finding essential use in a single season. Should be interesting!

[howsitwork?]

Steve

having made a plea to all to keep in touch....

How’s the water level going? Maybe use it to dowse a few hot headed politicians ? Ok staying off that subject but are you OK ?

regards and sorry been full on for months now so only just getting back in touch 😳

Ian

[vtsteam]

Hi Ian,

The rains finally did return a couple weeks ago and the ground is well saturated. We emptied the cistern for the winter, and are back drawing water from our spring. That's about a 1" hole in a rock ledge out of which comes very cold clear water. We had three days of unseasonably warm weather (20C), and it's predicted to rain for the next couple of days and then turn colder.

So everything is back to normal here..... at least re. water. Been sheltering mostly at home with the family these days, even though Vermont has had the lowest incidence of Covid-19 of all the US states. Ours are on the increase now, but still way below the numbers elsewhere in the country. People here took the epidemic seriously from the start and that's helped.

Difficult times.

[howsitwork?]

Stay sane Steve !

Too many nuts out here as it is ....🤪

[awemawson]

Too many nuts out here as it is

. . . oi . . . you talking about me . . .



 

[vtsteam]

No comment, here. I find getting back into machine projects gets my mind off the popular alternate realities. Temporarily, anyway!

[vtsteam]

Well once again, we are in a drought year, apparently. I'm glad I built the big 3000 gallon cistern nine years ago. Grass is turning brown on other people's lawns (we adjacent to woods have a bit more ground moisture). Unfortunately we were unable to fill the cistern in advance of this drought. It has only about 1000 gallons in it.

The reason is that we had too much rain this spring, all the way through June, and I don't like to fill it with surface water that can overflow into our natural artesian spring well during very wet weather.

Unfortunately we went directly from feast to famine with rain, as if someone turned off a tap. No rain for the last 3 weeks and very high temperatures (for us) have baked the countryside. I can't fill the waterball (as we call the cistern) because we are using all of the natural spring's output. And if this keeps up, we will not even get our reduced and minimal daily water needs met. The waterball can only provide about 3 week's additional buffer before being emptied, instead of its intended 3 month's.

Hoping for rain soon!