Anyone have a good link for info on old concrete cisterns? My sister/BIL’s house has an old cistern. I think originally, the house’s built-in gutters ran into the cistern, but I’m not sure that they still do (whether intentionally re-routed or the tiles just caved in).
We had popped the top on it last fall. Going from memory, but I think it was about 10′ deep and about 10′ in diameter with a baffle wall across the middle.
Maybe its the “green” in me, but I’ve always liked cisterns. With a filter box, you let your rain water collect there, and VIOLA! Free water for the lawn/garden.
jt8
Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. — Ann Landers
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my neighbour fixed his last year, it's under the front porch, it's about 4' diameter and maybe 5 or 6' deep. In our old neighbourhood, the water goes in with the main sewer line, so there's a possiblity to back up the sewer with a heavy rainfall. I like the idea, as long as it's allowed by the city, and it keeps the grass watered. I put drywells in my yard, made with landscape fabric, gravel and large pieces of concrete, it's working so far, I'm on a hill, and drainage isn't much of a problem though.
they were used to store water for use in house. if its connected to the sewerage its likely an overflow situation where backed up sewerage would not get into the sitern due to gravity and an air gap have it checked tho. alot of sisterns became contaminated causing health problems for home occupents due to stagnent water. so as tile collapsed or pumps failed they were put out of service due to the risk.
If you irrigate you may well want to bring it back into service. water treatment has come a long way to where with little trouble you would be able to protect you family. or you can repipe part of your home to use the recoverd water wich cannot come into contact with city water. from what i understand the rain water would do wonders for washings.
some parts of the country you can already get grey water recycling systems. where drain water from laundry, shower can somehow get reused. i think itll be 6000 yrs before one goes in retrofit in wi tho.
on the space shuttle they even recycle sewer water.
Sister & family certainly have a lot of water options. They could really drive the city water bill down if they wanted to.
In addition to the cistern, there is a hand-pump well (clear water) about 20' away from the cistern (I guess if it doesn't rain, you could fill the cistern up with the well), and another hand-dug well in the basement of their house (its water is a bit brackish looking though).
Looks like a pipe comes into the basement from the cistern. It has a pump/pressure-tank on it, but they have been disconnected, so we don't know if they work.
I suspect that my sister would rather fill the cistern in. She has seen too many Lassie movies and thinks the kiddies are going to fall in. BIL and myself are curious how a 7 & 9 yo would pick up the 200lbs concrete lid (or for that matter, pull the 100lbs of rock off the lid) and then manage to drown in the 2-3' of water that currently is in the cistern.
BIL is a bit more practical and is considering putting the cistern back in use. If it were on my house, I'd get the cistern, pump, and gutters checked out. If the water was plentiful, I'd run cistern lines to the toilets and exterior faucets. If it had a filter box on it, I'd probably try to use it for more than just toilets.
jt8
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. -- Ann Landers
Cisterns are great for conserving water.
Also pretty good for disposing of the bodies.
On a more practical level be careful. Good cisterns have provision for a person to get out and stout means of keeping people from falling in. Both, IMHO, good ideas.
Besides. People who fall in accidentally take up valuable space. Space better reserved for the bodies you really need to hide.
Or water to keep the petunias green.
We used the cistern to disponse of the cinders from the coal furnace for about 40 years!
We used the cistern to disponse of the cinders from the coal furnace for about 40 years
Would you like to come over here and start filling up my 14 foot deep cistern? You'd have the added challenge of it being under the floor of a shed building.
My house water is a spring and a cistern is a must. It is old and in much need of repair. The tree roots have managed to work there way though the mortar in-between the blocks and causing it to leak. Many of the houses here are on spring water in stead of wells. The local bank is the only one that will finance a house on a spring.
Most cisterns built now for house water are prefab two tank sewer boxes. The water flows into the first tank where dirt sediment takes place. Then the water over flows into the second tank where it is drawn from for the house. Extra water over flows out of a pipe back into the run, creek or what ever you want to call it.
Most of the water around here has tested to be in better shape then a lot of city systems.
Also many of the cisterns around here have a hand pump on them for when the power goes out.
Dane
I will always be a beginner as I am always learning.
how do you keep the h2o from getting stagnant. id like to do one for irrigation and laundry but ive been worried about water sitting.
you could maybe line your tank with fiberglass or poly, dont know what would be safe for drinking water.
do you have to treat the water at any point?
Some time ago, years, I was looking into greywater systems. My conclusion is that you would do well avoiding storage of any greywater. This stuff is highly corrosive and it begins to stink in just a day or so. Florida heat not helping any. The best, IMHO, greywater systems were designed to use greywater immediately. Simplest, the better ones IMO, use gravity to disperse the water onto lawn or garden. This eliminates pumps, filters and valves. Moving parts that are murphoid.On the other hand rainwater can, once passed through a rough filter and the first few gallons, likely to be polluted by roof and drains, are excluded, be stored for a long time with few worries. They have been doing it for hundreds of years in parts of Jamaica, Mexico and other dry places. The stored rainwater can be used for plant watering and washing the car as is. A polishing filter and, if it is felt to be needed, disinfection by chlorine, ozone or UV radiation make the water better quality than many municipal supplies. Old systems had little or no final filtration or treatment. Once the people adjusted to the normal flora in the area, it takes about a week of mild to moderate digestive discomfort, the water is fine for drinking.
You must have a continues flow of water to keep it from spoiling. I have never had to treat the water at the house, even when not in use for a few months at a time.
I have another building that has a cistern. The building went a few years with little or now water usage. What I did was shut off the pump at the spring box and then dropped a few chlorine tablets into the cistern. After a couple of days I drained the cistern then refilled it and drained it again and refilled it again. All was well with it after that.
If you look into the cistern and you see alga growing then all is not well. If all your going to use it for is watering the lawn and flushing the toilet then set up a chlorine drip. You don't have to use much. If you look into it and see crawdads in it leave it alone your water is just fine.
DaneI will always be a beginner as I am always learning.
Dane,Do you mind if I ask how your spring is utilized ?
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
Here at the house all of our water usage comes from that one spring, as does many homes in this area. One thing that we do have to make sure of and that is NO cattle are pastured in the field above that spring. After drinking REAL spring water, not that stuff you can buy in a store, I find city water to be rather nasty tasting.
Many farmers will box in a spring for the purpose of watering cattle and that spring is used for no other purpose.
I hope that I have answered your question. If not then reword it so that I understand what you are asking about and I will try again.
DaneI will always be a beginner as I am always learning.
How did you make use of the spring in the first place ?I mean, you didn't just poke a pipe at some water running up out of the ground, did you ? One of the water sources I may utilize here is an underground spring.The water dowsn'r flow to the surface. But it is making sinkholes across the neighbor's yard. And the ground above it is always muddy. Even in the driest part of the driest year I have been here.I am curious how you went about accessing and using the spring.
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
Take a look here:
http://peacecorps.mtu.edu/Springbox/design.htm
there is also a WA state web page I've seen, could not find it right off.
WA state wants a $100 permit, but you can always say it was there since before 1993.
Looks like you may be hauling another ton of gravel and winching it up the hill?
Thanks Art.I have seen this page before, and many others like it. You know I like to "research" for a good while before doing something like this.; )I have been looking at having a well drilled. That is in another thread here as well.According to the county offices here, I am not allowed to drill my own. I have to pay someone big bucks to tell me whether I can even have one or not. Then "design" it. (Design a hole in the ground ???) Then actually drill it. Then do all the followup. You are not legally allowed to do anything whatever in this county, for yourself, when it comes to a well.However, The last time I looked, it was still legal to "develop a spring" on your own. I didn't know about the permit cost. I'll look into that.The more I look, the better the design gels in my head, of course. I was hoping that Dane would have a good outline of what his is like. Maybe it's different from what I have seen so far.: )As is, though, it is looking like it could cost as much to "develop" this spring, as to drill a well. So, I am not sure what I will do.I would need to buy a large plastic tank. A lot larger than my current water storage tank.Then I would need to dig a really big and deep hole. Drill the tank full of holes in the bottom half. Lay a bunch of gravel in the hole. Wrap the tank in landscape fabric. Put it in the hole. Cover it the rest of the way with gravel. Then dirt on top of that, and cement on top of that.It would take a lot of good shoring to keep the hole from collapsing on me, if I do it by hand. It would be awfully expensive if I hire it done with big machines. Either way, there is the tank, and all the other needed materials as well. It really may end up costing as much as just having a well drilled.I am going to attach an arial photo of my ridge.The red circle indicates exactly where the wet spot is on the property. The sink holes that are still forming and getting worse, lead off almost directly to sunset falls, straight to the left of the circle.The river flows in the direction of the red arrow.You have been here. You know that this river is not as calm as this picture makes it look. There's an awful lot of flow in this river, all the time.It hits the back side of my ridge, and then has to almost double back on itself. It is my theory that the force of the river is pushing water beneath the ridge, and that is where this "spring" is coming from.-----An alternative design that I have been considering, amd one reason why I am checking out a thread about a concrete cistern...I could start with a hole about 20' x 20' by about 3 feet deep.Pour a concrete wall around the inside perimiter. Plenty of rebar...Dig another 3 feet down, inside of that. Pour another solid wall. Etc. Kind of an inverted pyramid.When you find the most major source of water, dig back under the previous wall, and fill under and behind it with gravel. Do this a small section at a time, of course. "Perforate" the walls as you pour them this time.If you reach solid soil bemeath the water bearing layer, then just fill the bottom foot of the box with gravel.Now come back up, and choose a level to build walls and/or a roof at.Or... set your plastic tank in at that point, then cover....Seal it in with a pickup tube, a cleanout, and a drain. Then cover the whole thing again.This could be done in stages, as I could afford it. The question is, would it all fall in, or worse, before I could afford to finish it ?The pictures on the page in your link lead into this latest idea. I could actually end up with the concrete box extending above the surface. Easier to maintain that way.The only real sticky wicket here is that the ridge comes straight down to the point where the spring is. It would be impossible, or close to it, to divert surface water away from the springbox.I'll include a crude drawing of a side view of this ridge, to show how close this would be to the steep ridge wall.
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
You could always "just" dig a hole in the ground, about 3 ft dia and 15 or so ft deep - thats what DW and I did 35 years ago and it lasted 30 years as water supply till they put the thousand houses uphill. Of course, no kind of permit required then except filing (no fee) for water rights, so grandfathered when all the ecology laws became vouge.
Art, Go back and take another look at those pics you took of me welding.I wouldn't fit into a 3 foot diameter hole, let alone be able to swing a shovel.LOL; )But hey, all of this talking about the job of putting the well in has settled another dilemna for me, should I decide to just dig one, and not worry about the revenooers...One of the best methods for digging a well by hand is to set a concrete cylinder on the ground, and dig out from underneath it.Once that cylinder has pretty much settled into the ground, you put another on top. Keep digging till that one is settled in, put another on top... etc.There is just no way I would be able to: 1.) Afford the cylinders and their delivery. 2.) Since they would NOT chance taking their truck all the way up there to the top, I'd have to get those cylinders up the hill myself. That would be next to impossible to do without breaking them. 3.) Once up there, I'd have to have a setup so large that anyone could see it from the road. Pretty much a red flag to the revenooers, and/or anyone inclined to call them...Instead.......A plan that can be converted to a perfectly legal cistern, if need be...Set up forms for say an 8' x 10' foundation. No footing. Leave the rebar sticking out the top.Once that is set up, dig out from under it until it is settled into the ground in a hole the appropriate size.Pour another on top of that. Dig again. Etc.Doing it this way, one man can do this in his own time-table, using something as simple as sackcrete.Get it a good 15 to 20 feet deep, and you've got a mighty big box of water if it fills up. (Ok, mr rocket scientist, how many gallons of water is that ? LOL)If it runs into the spring, and fills on it's own, yippee.If it doesn't but I make the floor of the thing gravel, and it fills up to the local water table, (About 2 feet down.), then it's a well.If it does neither... Or if it does either, and someone starts making nasty noises like I am going to be fined, or worse...Then I set up rainwater diversion systems, and harvest the abundant rain we have here.And hey, if I do that, we will be guaranteed the best, driest weather we have ever had here, for years to come... LOLThis is probably the best overall plan. because if it turns out to not be reliable at all as a spring or well, I can clean the whole thing out. Pour a floor. Fiberglass the entire inside of it to seal off water loss. And use it as a cistern. We do get enough water here to fill a box that size, even 20 feet deep, in just a week or less, sometimes. I would say the average time to fill that box would probably equal the time it would take to empty it in normal useage in our dry spell. That is, of course, for just me alone.The longest we go without rain here... The longest so far was almost two months. That was freaky weather for here. I have rainfall here, at least 6 times a winter, where less than one single days worth of rain would fill that box. The rest of the winter, the rain is off and on, but mostly on. Deal is, the box would be easily filled if I converted it to just a cistern.---If it works as a well or springbox, I'd dig down around the outside, and seal it as it is supposed to be with clay or concrete. Even though I don't really see what benefit that is. Since the wall of the well is concrete. They say the groundwater would find it's way along the side of that, down to the bottom, and contaminate the well.Well, if I dig down the outside edge, and pour more concrete, the water will simply follow the outside of a now fatter conrete wall, wouldn't it ? I REALLY don't see the logic in that....---A top for the box...Form it as you would for a concrete second floor. Only slope it like a roof.Cover most of the box that way, and leave a raised section, maybe 4' x 4' with another cover that can be lifted, so the box can be cleaned out.---Ok, I've talked myself into it.With all the other stuff I have to get done, it will be a looong time before I get to this. But when I do, the first thing will do is check the spring source, and see how viable that is. If it is not viable, I will not consider myself dead in the water. No pun intended.I can do the formed box thing to any dimensions I decide on. And I can end up using it as a cistern if nothing else. I'd still have a large supply of water at the end, no matter what.I never gamble good money on anything but a sure bet. (So, I guess you can say, I don't gamble. LOL) This is as close as I am going to get to a sure bet on this subject for this property, for my circumstances, etc...---My apologies to Johnt8 for hijacking his thread. My thanks to Him, Art, Dane, Ed, and the rest of you who have piped in with advice and anecdotes.If holes can be poked in my plan, I hope someone does so here, instead of me having a nasty surprise when it happens.: )
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
Well I had every thing typed out, took a look at your post again and the pictures. When I came back to here everything that I had typed had gone into cyber space.
My spring was here when we bought the place. It looks like a concrete box with no top or bottom laid on its side. A 2'' dam was made at the outside lip of the box to hold some water back. A 1'' pipe was laid across the bottom part of the dam to route some of the water to the cistern. Excess water just flows over the dam. This set up is letting the spring do its natural thing.
The picture that I saw in another post in this thread doesn't look like it would work here. I didn't see any way for the excess water to flow out, except through the cistern over flow pipe. If the spring is flowing at a rate that is faster then the over flow pipe is able to handle then you are impeding the flow of the spring. This is not good. All you want to do is tap into the natural flow of the spring without impeding that flow. If you impede the flow of the spring the water will back up in the cavern, or underground river, and start looking for another way out. A "what was a smaller then your spring" spring may become the main spring now, this could kill the spring that you have tried to tap into. In short a "one size fits all" doesn't always work.
If you have a university, some what near by, with a geology department that also teaches hydraulics, to Civil Engineering students, you could contact them and present this to them as a project for there students. Have them design a catch box that doesn't impede the flow of the spring.
I hope that I have done a little better at answering your question this time.
DaneI will always be a beginner as I am always learning.
Yes, Dane. Very well described. Thank you.: )My "spring" never makes it to the surface. It is just there under the ground. It shows itself by the always muddy ground, and the sinkholes it is making on it's underground way toward sunset falls.When I go to dig it out, I may find no real "flow" at all. Although with the ground always being wet there, I am figuring it is probably as close to "relaible" for a water source as I am going to get.I think that if I am going to dig to explore for this, I would do best to do so when it is driest here. If I find an actual water source then, I can be sure that it is more likely to be a spring. Rather than just the major runoff from this ridge.
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
A friend in northern Vermont was a baffled by the details of a drilled well as most of us are by using a spring for home use. He said that everyone around him used spring water. It flowed by pipe into an open metal tank resevoir located in his basement. From there it was pumped into the pressure tank.
As Dane mentioned, he had constantly flowing water into and out of that resevoir. He drank it for years without treatment or testing.
It sure would be nice if I found a constantly flowing spring.Could be a year or two before I do this anyway. LOL
The person you offend today, may have been your best friend tomorrow It is easy to be friends with someone you always agree with.
Growing up on a farm a cistern was just a fact of life.
We generally got our cold (drinking) water from a well, and the hot water from the cistern. The cold water side of the washing machine was also hooked to the cistern, so the water for clothes washing would be softer.
Taking a shower was interesting. The hot cistern pump would kick on, and the hot water would come streaming out. So you'd turn it down to compensate. Then the well pump would kick on as the hot water pressure was winding down. So you'd have to adjust the temperature again.
Sometimes the well would run short on water, and Dad would switch the toilet over to the cistern. Then the cistern would go dry and we'd buy a load of water for it.
When we'd get a big rain during the summer, everything was switched over to pull from the cistern for a whle. Once the water percolated down and the well was more reliable, it would be switched back to the well.
The basement was (and still is) a maze of pipes and valves so various things can be switched back and forth depending on where the water was available from.
Funny how the well and cistern got a lot more reliable after my Sisters grew up and moved out. (-:
Our cistern also had a brick baffle/filter wall. The rain water emptied into one side and filter through the bricks. The pump inlet is on the other side.
I know Mom and Dad have put a bit of bleach in the cistern a few times to keep the water from smelling. But as long as the water's being used/refilled, I don't think there was ever much trouble with it.
I can remember as a kid being lowered down into a couple of cisterns to help clean them out. That was always done during the summer when they ran out of water.
Sorry I don't have a lot of info - Your post just brought up some old memories.
Where does you Sister live?