Help! those with cisterns

[chickentracy]

Hey friends!

My family (of 3) have had the unfortunate experience of having our rural 2 acre hobby farm run our potable water well run dry of water today.

Good news is we purchased a 2100 GAL plastic water cistern this past winter. The cistern is NOT hooked up or anything.

I would like those who have installed (or who have theirs installed) to give us some ideas of the installation theirs has. Routing of pipes etc etc.

Our current well system has a 3/4 HP shallow well jet pump hooked to a medium size bladder storage tank.

What we would like to end up with is:

1) Being able to use the cistern for household water (though, how do we keep the water healthy for drinking/cooking?) or would we require some kind of a circulation pump?

2) We get decent rain fall during Fall and Early Spring, would like to find a way to turn the cistern into a rain water collection tank in off season. Plus if we could feed (water) the farm "Critters" off the rain water I bet our well would not go dry during the Summer.

I'm hoping some of you who have cisterns will respond with info/advice etc.

Also any good web links to installation of cisterns appreciated. I've tried searching online and seem to get "Installers of cisterns" and my family are not in a position to pay somebody to do the work. Plus my hubby put in our well pump system in himself so he's pretty "handy".

Thanks ALL!

 

[chickentracy]

** BUMP**


Anyone??

 

[Bluemoon420]

I wish I could help you. We have an old stone cistern in our basement that was built when the house was built. It hasn't been in use for a VERY long time. (our house is 109 years old) It does leak during very heavy rains, but as far as we could tell there are no pipes going to it.
The new well they installed before we bought the house is situated in the area of our cistern, but as for how exactly it is hooked up we don't know. I would imagine you'd have to have a circulation pump for household needs. As far as where they put our pipes, our county has records of that since it was done recently.


Bluemoon

 

[Bluemoon420]

Maybe some of these links will help... To start off anyway. The third link explains a lot.


http://www.oasisdesign.net/water/storage/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7CMDZD_Sc

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/AE029

Bluemoon

 

[chickentracy]

Thanks for your reply Bluemoon.

Could still use other replies on this subject....

 

[Ol'FashionHen]

Most of my life we had a cistern. Do not collect the rain water in the hot months, and I would not suggest drinking the rainwater coming through the gutters because of birdpoop on your roof etc., boil the water if you are going to drink it. Some people who collect rainwater will use a whole-house water filtration system to be most careful of bacteria/parasites etc.