Pond Boss
I'm checking into water for our soon to be new home on our pond.

Here's the question: Does anybody use the water from their BOW for home needs? I know it will have to be treated, but seems a lot less expensive than digging 550 feet for well water that will also have to be treated for excess minerals. City water is another option, but an expensive one as they'd have to run a special line 150 yards to our home site.

Any experiences or advice to relate?
Oh yeah, I should mention that we have over 20 million gallons and a constant small inflow, so using 200 - 500 gallons a day should have very little effect. 1 inch in my BOW equals roughly 200,000 gallons.
I wonder if a shallow well not far from the pond would deliver pond water filtered through the soil. Ground water recharged from the pond. Even a hand dug well might work.

Folks used to live on wells like that.
Interesting idea, Vortex! Hopefully the dirt would filter out some of the biological stuff...
If the constant small inflow, assume a spring, could be tapped prior to entering the pond, it should be ok. I have a shallow well that produced, when dug, 1/10 gpm. Not much but it goes into a 2,500 gallon tank and then to the house. We used a backhoe to trench and run our own lines about 100 yards. Have it tested prior to messing with it. I drink it but Wife drinks bottled water.
We have a shallow well on our property but has such a horrible gassy smell we chose to have a rural water company to supply ours. unfortunantly their lines were run on the other side of the roadway from usand it costs us $2500 to have a line run under the road to our property. Now we have excelant water and we do not have to maintain anything. Water bill is $35 a month. We figured the cost of digging a deeper well and the cost of a good treatment plant and having to maintain everything and thought this was our best option and it was. I figure in desperate times I could always get water from the pond and purify it if ever needed. Hope it never comes to that. Plus we stock bottle water and that is really all my wife drinks.
I'm not an expert on this. But my neighbors just built a house and put a whole house Reverse osmosis system in. This provides all their house water needs and purifies as it goes. They even use it to irrigate their 1 acre lot. I have no idea how a RO system can keep up with that since our puny RO system can hardly provide a few gallons of drinking water without taking 3 hours to recharge.

I don't see that whole house RO systems are that expensive online and if they truly filter the way RO drinking water systems do then I don't see why you couldn't source water from your pond and run it through the same system. My neighbor runs his water from his well but the iron and hardness is high enough from his well that he still thought he needed a whole house RO system.
Originally Posted By: anthropic
I'm checking into water for our soon to be new home on our pond.

Here's the question: Does anybody use the water from their BOW for home needs? I know it will have to be treated, but seems a lot less expensive than digging 550 feet for well water that will also have to be treated for excess minerals. City water is another option, but an expensive one as they'd have to run a special line 150 yards to our home site.

Any experiences or advice to relate?


My farm has city water. The water line is 1320 feet to the house so baring rock in your soil your 150 yards(450') is doable.
Meeting the expense of running city water solves all present and future problems.
Thanks to everybody for your responses. Thinking it through over the long haul, we've decided to go with city water hookup. Expensive at first, but reliabile & no worries about maintenance.
Anthropic,
Please bear in mind that long water pipe runs should be increased in diameter over the usual short runs found in the city, due to friction losses. The usual for a short run of 150 feet or less in town is 3/4 inch. In your case with a 450 foot run I suggest going with 1.25" pipe. If you go 3/4 inch you will have the same water pressure, but will start to lose volume after a few seconds with a wide open faucet.
Thanks, John. The lady at the water district suggested 2 inch pipe connecting to 3/4 inch at the house. From water hookup it is about five feet uphill first 60 feet, followed by downhill 30 feet the rest of the way.

Probably we'll ask plumber to do extension down to dock for cleaning area and washing fish. Want to start eating what we raise, searching for good fish recipes! smile
Originally Posted By: anthropic
Thanks, John. The lady at the water district suggested 2 inch pipe connecting to 3/4 inch at the house. From water hookup it is about five feet uphill first 60 feet, followed by downhill 30 feet the rest of the way.

Probably we'll ask plumber to do extension down to dock for cleaning area and washing fish. Want to start eating what we raise, searching for good fish recipes! smile


I think two inch is overkill, but whatever..... My water pump develops about 42 psi and I am getting about 115 gallons/minute out of a 2" poly pipe from the creek to the pond 400 feet. City water pressure should be at least 50 psi, and deliver in excess of 125 gpm out of a 2 inch lined poly pipe at 450 feet. Way more than you should ever need unless you are supplying a fire hose.
Considering beaver(s), cormorants, geese and ants, a fire hose sounds great!
© Pond Boss Forum