So, got the well cleaned out. Bought a sprinkler. The grass is looking a lot better. If I can track down the guy who installed the full sprinkler system and get him to correct it it’ll be great!
Except the well isn’t producing that much water. Hmm.
Finally I bother to think about it. The sprinkler has a number of different settings – different shaped holes etc. Gives a table of how much it delivers, in litres of water per m2, over how much area, for each shaped hole. So I finally start to think about that. Bit of mental maths. Major setting is 10something litres per m2 per hour over 100 m2. That’s, umm, a cubic metre of water an hour. So I’ve been running this for 90 minutes. Well’s 1 metre diameter. Forget circles and cylinders ‘n’ stuff, that’s 1.5 metres depth in the well.
Ah, no wonder it’s running out of water. OK, with Pir2 it’s less than that but still. Call it a metre among friends. -Ish.
It’s not the well, is it? That’s doing just fine.
Depending on the geology, a well that makes 1,000 litres an hour is doing well. Around here, that’s right around the standard requirement for a domestic supply well – 4 gpm continuous – and to get that in a sand-and-gravel basin usually requires a well at least 100 feet deep. I’d say a surface dug well that can supply that much is a success.
llater,
llamas
Ah, no, the well takes a day or two to get to a metre, 1.5m, deep. So it’s not continuous flow of that.
There are other variables.
The flow rate through the sprinkler will depend on the pressure the pump is delivering. That pump pressure is also getting the water from the water level in the well to the sprinkler on the surface and the more flow you try to get from the sprinkler the more pressure losses you get in the pipework.
A friend spends a fair bit of time at the moment drilling for water somewhere in the vast Australian dessert. Boganboy will doubtles be familiar with the practice. He would probably give you a good price to visit the UK and help you out. The rest of the team, bulldozers, trucks, aircraft etc might be a bit pricy though.
Sorry Jim. As an urban bureaucrat I can’t help.
My water bill shows “similar households use 116 litres per day”, call it a cubic metre per week.
A cubic metre spread on a lawn twice per week is going to triple your bill – yep, you wouldn’t want to pay for that direct from a UK water company.
My parents’ friends built a villa in Portugal based around an old farmstead which had a big cisterna fed from a well (and roofs) over the winter and spring. They incorporated that feature (basically an enormous stone rain barrel) and were able to keep a lush Mediterranean style garden going without using mains water.
Bermuda is the same, rainwater catchment from the roof into an underground cistern feeds the house with water all year round. Until you run out. Then it’s $$$. So measure and budget, which seems like something Tim should be able to do!