In August, we had the water well drilled and electricity run to our temporary power pole. I now have a very nice well with 60 feet of aquifer depth, bottoming out at about 450 feet, and a 3 horsepower submersible pump. They told me I have enough water to run the pump continuously and never run dry.
I had initially planned to have a solar powered pump in a second, more shallow well to supply the pond, but the water well folks talked me out of it. They assured me I would not have a lot of luck with the shallow well as it would have tons of iron in it and that would not be good for the submersible pump. They assured me I could run the pump in the house well for a very reasonable amount of money. So I took their advice.
A couple of weekends ago, I bought 300 feet of 1-1/4 inch PVC pipe and ran it from the pump to the pond temporarily, on top of the ground. It will be in a ditch later on when I start doing the ditching for the water lines to the house and shop.
I turned on the water, took a picture of the pond, and read the electric meter. Here is the way it looked when I started pumping water.
I came back 27 hours later, and about $11.00 worth of electricity later and it looked like this.
I came back again 21 hours later and turned off the pump and checked the meter again. After approximately $21.00 of electricty altogether, it was up to this level.
That is where I stand today. I won't be pumping much more in it until I get the dam and spillway finished. I wanted to see how much it will cost to keep it full during drought conditions. If I can pump that much water in it for that little money, it will be kept full all summer with no problem. I spend that much for diesel fuel every weekend.
We are about to have our shop built, then a house will hopefully follow around the first of the year, so my pond building fun will be curtailed for a while. I should be able to finish the dam and spillway in the next few weekends though before it gets too busy. It will be nice when I am done scraping dirt and it can green out and not be a big mudhole anymore. I'm going to plant some grass seeds as soon as possible to try to keep the erosion down and help clean up the water running into it during a rain. It will take time, but I can wait. I'll post more as it happens.
