RE: steve

Hi Al
thanks you for those highly constructive suggestions; especially the first 6.

A few clarifications:
There is no drought at present.
My wife ( ex water technician) would leave me if I switched to rainwater. She doesn't like drinking dissolved birds, rodents, leaves, excrement.
The bore is not drying up; its blocking up. The pump suction gets too strong and the water then comes through in the occasional burst. If the bore ran dry, the pump suction would most likely be lost, wouldn't it? The suction stays strong, just no water.The poly pipe looks thick enough to take a vacuum, but I will check.
I already have a 500l header tank in the roof; hot water cylinder feed with jumper line to cold in the case of emergency. Also additional 1000l ground level tank for holding bore water so the bore pump feed rate can can less than the domestic supply rate.
Will try a backflush and see what happens.

Cheers

Steve

-----Original Message-----
From: Al [mailto:alwynk@shaw.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2004 3:39 AM
To: PipingDesign@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [PipingDesign] steve

(1) divining rod - $0.09. Works best near taeri river.
(2) hire the Maoris to do a raindance ($9999)
(3) tap into robins supply
(4) spring rains wont be long , you can shower then
(5) silverstream... haha
(6) bottled canadian water

seriously
- a heavy rainfall might temporarily improve things.

• try the backflush first but if youre sucking s drying well it will block again soon.
• Doesnt hurt to have a second reservoir.
• tank filled by rainwater off roof. Could also runoff roof into dugout.
• look into gettin with the neighbours and cost share hookup. Likely youre not the only one with the current drought. its not that far to Mosgeil or the river. problem is Mosgeil might not agree.
• the water table is reasonably high there and theres good rainfall. make a dugout (better if lined). thats what they do in the prairies and it works fine. about 12ft is the minimum but the deeper the better. I know this will work because the bomb shelters always filled and they were shallow. Pump it up to header tank in the roof. they used to be copper but plastic would be better now.
• combination of the above may take the pressure off the well until the drought eases and it can recuperate.
• put in a water tank and collect roof runoff. be a lot less than $10K and probably should do it as a backup anyway.