Water and Waste Disposal, Vital for Your Few Acres

By Stephen Berberich and Elmer Jones.

Water is a basic necessity of life. For your small farm or homestead, the success of just about every activity depends on having a safe and unfailing water supply. Careful design and construction of the water system is essential.

Directly related to your water system is a sanitary sewage disposal system. Both should be planned at the same time if possible.

By profiting from current knowledge on rural water and sewage disposal systems, you can have good to excellent water service and sanitary waste disposal at reasonable cost. Private systems can be constructed which will give long satisfactory service without damaging the environment or endangering the health of your family or community. You start by defining your needs.

To estimate water needs, consider the future. Whether you choose to install a new well, reconstruct an old one, tap a spring, or add water to your system from a cistern, reservoir or storage tank, you should plan for any dream projects or goals as well as for your immediate needs.

Research studies have produced this formula for estimating home water needs: The largest water requirement for a single fixture (usually the bathtub or automatic washer) plus 1/4th the requirements for every other fixture (the kitchen sink, the shower, each toilet, etc.) equals your home's peak water demand those periods when the well and pump must supply water continuously.

The unit of measurement for the formula will be gallons per unit of time, such as gallons per minute, or GPM. After you've established a reasonable GPM demand, a water source and delivery system can be set up with capacity to meet the demand.

50 Gallons a Person

Many studies show that home water use is 50 gallons a day per person, an average for people in. this country. However, the figure is only an average. Many people use less. Some use much more.

Wells which meet demands of the farmstead home will usually also meet the water demands of a small scale farm operation, one with just a few head of livestock, for example. For more elaborate projects, such as automatic stock watering or extensive irrigation, the water source serving the home may have to be re-tooled to reach higher peak demands of the farm. Or new water sources may have to be developed.

By having a private water system, you should know more about well construction and sanitation than city friends who depend on a municipal water system. However, familiarity with your waterworks does not rule out the threat of waterborne diseases. If one factor in the system is most important it is sanitary protection of the source of your water. Contamination of a source can be caused by sewage, animal wastes, or chemical pollution of various kinds.

Newly constructed wells can lead to contamination of ground water, unless precautions are taken. In the process of drilling, boring or digging a new well, natural earth barriers to surface and subsurface waters will be disturbed. The well itself can become a low resistance path for contaminants to travel from ground level to below the water table. However, the path can be sealed off with a grout made of neat cement and water.

Your best assurance of the proper installation, materials and location of the new well is to hire a licensed well driller.

Authorized drillers know the water-bearing strata in their locality and should follow state health department regulations.

Sometimes ground water serving a farmstead can become contaminated from nearby wells which are old, poorly constructed, and unable to hold out surface drainage.

Remember this model to help avoid contamination problems: Three things are needed for the entry of surface contaminants into the ground water supply, (1) a contaminant, (2) a transmission path, and (3) a transporting medium. Exam-pie: (1) harmful bacteria, (2) a well bore, and (3) surface water or rain.

Rebuilding Old Well

It may be more economical to reconstruct an old well than to install a new one from scratch. Before reconstructing the old well, however, ask the following questions: Are there any obvious contamination sources near the well site? Is there excellent drainage? Will the proposed well structure be an adequate barrier against contaminants?

Also before you begin, measure yield of the old well. If the water is laden with sediment, clean out the well before taking a measurement. You can normally have a rural property with an existing water source evaluated by the county health department.

The old well may have been designed for use before electricity was readily available for pumping. It may be inadequate after you add modern pumps and plumbing. However, old wells often can be made deeper to reach a greater flow of water.

With modern well casings and pumping equipment, a reconstructed old well no longer needs a large diameter. A new casing of five inches or less will meet farmstead water needs. In figuring the cost of renovating the well, or installing a new one, add the cost of closing the old well bore properly.

A typical procedure is to backfill the hole with sand, after the new casing is placed and special well-grade gravel is poured around intake screens at the base of the casing. As the sand is filled around the new casing, water will surge into cracks and crevices of the old walls, carrying sand with it. This improves sanitary protection of the new system.

Spring Water

Springs, or natural flows of water from the ground, can also be developed as a water supply source. If you have a good spring on your property, ask these questions before acting:

Is the spring water good quality? Is the flow adequate? Could a gravity feed be set up from the spring? If not, would the cost of pumps and piping be within reason? And finally, because springs and areas of seeping ground water are frequently flooded, can the water source be protected from contamination?