Comments on: Water and Septic Systems Can Be Tricky in a Little House

By: Engineer Guy

Engineer Guy — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:59:05 +0000

Great, ‘been there’ advice from the Pros above. I laid out and designed our Solar Home, and jumped through all the hoops mentioned above. I chose to over-size Waste Plumbing some, and other details, because I could!

Prior to this Project, I metered Water Usage off a Cistern I put in and automated, fed from a slow, Rocky Mountain Well. 2 of us did fine on exactly 50 Gallons/day. The Shower Head was 0.75 GPM from a Well Pressure Tank set to 30 PSI ON; 50 PSI OFF. Inherited Appliances were nothing special or Low Flow. We used the Dishwasher only when completely full, and washed Clothes with only full Loads. We practiced Conservation w/o ‘suffering’.

Case-in-point, our Hard Rock Well was 410′ @ 50 Gallons/day. A Neighbor inherited a 75′ Well ~150′ away at >10 GPM. But, it’s in an Aspen Grove; a signal of near-surface Water.

For our latest House, I, too, used free, local Gov’t Info on local Soils. The local Well Driller was invaluable as a walking ‘Well Log’ of knowledge re: Well flow and likely depth. He Witched it AND drilled it. 7 GPM @ 72′ that we throttled back with a Fitting to 5 GPM to avoid Well emptying. We also could have run a pricey Water District Line from ~1 Mile away, but wanted to skip Water/Sewer Bills forever.

Do that Research for Water availability and Septic Perc performance! Along with Road Access and Mud, etc., take ‘The Long View’ on actual Land Ownership Cost.

By: Phil Taccetta

Phil Taccetta — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:02:16 +0000

I forgot to mention,we use a urine diverting toilet.
The buckets contents are composted outside.

By: Phil Taccetta

Phil Taccetta — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:59:14 +0000

Our off grid house south of Santa Fe, NM has a larger catchment area – about 1800 sq’( house is 1200 sq’) We receive less than 10″ annual rainfall average – maybe 7.5″ this year. (average 800 gallons/ 1″ ) We have 3 plastic cisterns totaling 5,000 gallons. We use a particle filter and a charcoal filter. This water is for household use. We buy filtered water in town for drinking. Our shower has a “pull chain” valve. We run water into a bucket until it’s hot, take a 3 gallon shower,and use the saved water for pets and plants. Dishes get washed once a day. We use a Staber washing machine – very efficient. Total usage about 170 gallons a week. Conservation works.

By: Hope Henry

Hope Henry — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:03:08 +0000

This might be posted too late to be of any help, but here is a link for an inexpensive water filter…they make a larger version. I saw a program on TV, showing that filters like these are being used in disaster areas where well-drilling is not a viable option.

http://tinyhouseblog.com/construction-articles/portable-lifesaver-water-filter/

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:02:02 +0000

The house I grew up in wasn’t a tiny house, but being in the country it still had to contend with no city water hook-ups available. My parents opted to build two rather large underground cement cisterns. These held a few thousand gallons of water which could be collected as run off rain water (which was filtered through a system in the house) or could be filled by water truck (our area has a few companies that haul large water tanks to fill cisterns and the like). When we had to use the water trucks, our fill up generally was only a couple hundred dollars and we took quite a while to go through the water (a dry summer might have taken 1-2 fill ups, but seldom more, and this was for a family of four with livestock and a farm to run). The initial cost of the cisterns and filtration are unknown to me at the moment, but that lasted us well. In the 20 some years we lived in that house we only had to reseal the cisterns once. And even if we didn’t have electricity (country living means plenty of power failures that can last days) we were able to draw water from the cistern via bucket through the man holes we placed to access them. A simple overflow spout also helped reduce problems by diverting excess water down the hill.

We had a septic system that needed very little maintenance back in the day, until city water and sewer can into the area.

Eventually, I hope to build my own small family home and return to the farm so to speak. I miss farm life more every year.

Good luck with your water situation. I hope your well water works out.

By: Susan McReynolds

Susan McReynolds — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:26:20 +0000

Thanks Arlo! You are a wikipedia of Tiny House living!

By: Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:32:54 +0000

Thank you, everyone, for chiming in. It’s these kind of discussions that might help the vast array of readers on Kent’s blog!

By: Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:31:21 +0000

Thanks for those suggestions, Alice.

By: Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:29:31 +0000

You’re right, Matt, everyone needs to consider the true cost.
Wells are tough to estimate because you never know just where the water will be. Our neighbors found water at a very shallow depth so we had a range. I say $5,000 over budget, because it was $5,000 over the lowest end of what we expected. I guess I could just as easily say we were $5,000 under because it didn’t hit the ceiling of the worst case. The good news is that we got rid of that ugly tank in our yard and we will never (hopefully) have to spend another dime on water again. As well, that huge diesel truck carrying water is expending more energy and pollution coming way out here.

By: Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:25:39 +0000

Thank you, Arlos, for your post. Very informative.