Emergency water access

Well folks I have been talking with a plumber out on the farm regarding some things that I would like to see done as soon as we finally get this loan closed with the bank.... I wish these guys would hurry up and get this scheduled to close so we can get busy. Of course there seems to be a run around about info they should have collected in the prequalification stage of a home loan. Well they are asking for it now so we are trying to fill in gaps that shouldn't even exist at this point which makes me wonder what is going on over at the bank... But I digress... Today we are talking about water...

Getting access to water in an emergency:
We have talked about having water storage in the past. So I am not going to cover these specifics in this post. This is more of a post about something I have learned so far in the process of thinking about being prepared. So I asked the plumber about installing a hand pump to install on the well casing so that we could pump water by hand in the even of a power outage. I found the following pumps to be available for this purpose:

Bison Pumps

With the Bison Pumps they advertise the fact that you can mount on a well that has a submersible electric pump in it. So I called up the plumber and asked them how deep the water is in the well on the property we want to buy. Of course the response was that they weren't certain that we do mount a pump. So I provided them the URL and they called Bison. Sure enough you can mount a hand pump on a well.... But here is the catch... You have to have a casing that is 6" in diameter. It appears that the people who sunk this well on the farm only used a 4" casing. I was informed that all of the wells they have done in the area are all 4" casing. Now I don't know if that is a fact, but I have seen the top of the well casing and it does appear to be only 4". So my plan to attempt to install a hand pump on this well has been thwarted for the time being. So unless I had a new casing put in or I drill a new well I am stuck.

The purpose of the hand pump is that you can still get access to water in your well if the power goes out. Now I can try to work around this with a generator. However that is still something that would rely on energy inputs. So I will have to give this some thought as time and money permits a way to work around limitation. With the Bison Pump you will need to know the depth of the water in your well to determine which pump you would need or if it would even work for you in your well. Here is the advertisement for Bison Pumps:



So I thought I should share with you this limitation on the hand pump. If your having a well dug then make sure that it has a large enough casing so that you can install a hand pump. If your looking at a home/homestead/farmstead this might be something you will want to look at as something to know going into the purchase or if your looking at renting a place with a well and considering something like this as an option. This would give you some options if you plan for it in advance.

So that is the water access installment on hand pumps and what I am learning so far. I hope you find this info helpful.

God Bless,
Longsnowsm