water well

niccy

Hi,
So here is my problem,

we have our own well which is situated about 100mts from the house, there is a pump 5mts away from the well which is 240v and the power cable runs from the house to it.
To pump water from the well we switch on a switch in the house for an hour a day.This pumps water from the well to an old concrete holding tank at the back of the house.
There is a second pump in the house on the ground floor, this activates when the tank in the loft empties and pumps water from the storage tank up to the loft.
Activation of this second pump is by a Heath Robinson device i.e
the black water tank in the loft has a ballcock attached to a straightened coat hanger in vertical fashion !! the coat hanger end then throws a light switch which has a 6in piece of plastic ( like a biro pen ) stuck to it !!.This turns on the house pump until the ballcock raises and flips off the switch

crikey this sounds mad:o

anyway what i would like to do is replace the pump by the well with a small wind turbine but i have no idea how ? the turbine i presume would only give out 12v, could i get a pump to match this,would it have enough power to push water up to the concrete tank 100mts away and on higher ground.

I have plenty of wind no worries about that:cool: and the well never runs dry

thanks for any help:D


Next week our electrics:eek:

moonrakerz

niccy wrote: »

I have plenty of wind no worries about that:cool:

Lay off the baked beans !

ariba10

You would have to have a battery to store the 12 volts (car battery would do it)

There are 12 volt pumps available but it would depend on the height it would have to push the water to get it out of the well.

I am afraid my knowledge on this is limited.

shandypants5

Errr..
I think you need to fix the heathrobinson loft switch 1st... before it catches fire..:eek: it sounds like the work of a mad scientist...:D

You can buy "proper" float switches you know..I will try find you a link.;)

Here you go.. one of these would be a lot safer.
http://www.drydenaqua.com/float_switch/float.htm

birchscrub

The important thing is how low the water is in the well - have you any idea? if it is a big lift from the water level to the tank then a wind turbine won't be able to provide the power. as the pump pumps the water level will fall so you need to check it at the end of the hour it runs for. it won't be easy to check without a special take measure (dip meter) that makes a noise as you lower it into the water and you can take a reading off the side.

A wind turbine might serve you better for the house, but solar hot water is often the way to get the most grren rays for your buck

niccy

yup, the well is not like a deep well with water at the bottom,its about 4 mts deep and is filled by a spring,so most of the time water runs out over the top.i suppose having the pump on for 1 hour drops it by about 1 mt.The concrete holding tank would be (guessing here) about 4mts higher

mute_posting

Used to have a similar setup where I used to live. We were on an old (very) low pressure main which used to fill a well in a pumphouse about half way between the main road and the house.

The tank in the loft had a float switch that ran the pumphouse as required. (kicked in at about half empty IIRC)

Like others have said, I'd deffinitely want to sort the float switch out first - as much for the fact it may not turn off as the fact it dounds like a death-trap!

I'd then probably look at getting rid of the outside tank and pumping straight to the loft tank - why pump it twice?