Well water - seasonal and infrequent winter use?
 

Hello Forum,

Thanks for opportunity to post here. We are looking @ an older camp and trying to understand how we might be able to shut the camp down and open it again without going nutzo over the well water. May I ask, how are you designing your systems to be as easy as possible?

best,
Chris

How nutz you have to go depends on how the well is setup... My neighbor has a well for their season camp, and it works ok, other then they have a sulfer small to their water... The shut off for the well head is below the frost line... and then there lines two the house are all down hill, to they drain... The house is all set so that it drains with ease.....

In short it is all about proper planning... and good drainage... with My neighbors setup, they could easily use there place on warmer winter weekends......and re-drain it at the end of the weekend......

This camp currently has a drilled well w/ a pitless adapter and a line run to the camp. Not sure of much more (daughter is looking and didn't know what to look @).

We use to have a seasonal place and we would just bring 5 gal buckets of water from home just to flush the toilet and regular bottled water to drink. It was much less work than draining the system every weekend. Then we would put ATV anti freeze in the toilet and sink before we left. But I do agree if you set it up right it can be an easy transition.
We had a neighbor that had the perfect set up. He built a little room under his kitchen and bath and heated just that room in the winter. He would just have to drain a couple of pipes down to that room and put RTV anti freeze in the traps when he left. The way he had it set up it took him all of 10 minutes and out the door. And it was almost nothing to heat that little room.

Another idea
 

Good idea to bring the water up. I had a friend years ago put a small pump in the lake(close to Lake), connected to a hose and connected to just the toilet and bathroom sink which was isolated from rest of house by shutoffs. He had a spicket in the line outside the house that you could run the pump. When he left all he did was disconnect the hose to drain the water, take pump out of Lake, add antifreeze and he was done.

Dave M

There's a thought.

I like the "pump water" or bring it options as well.

I think I read here somewhere about someone using the Retro-Line (or similar) inserted into the supply line. The person would allow the water to freeze, then, during a visit, energize the heat line, thawing the supply. I wrote to the company and they are concerned about the line cracking... "Technically speaking as long as the heating cable is installed within the pipe you can use the heating cable to thaw any ice formed around it; however when you do this to run the risk that the polyethylene pipe may crack or break. As a result Heat-Line does not recommend you allow your pipe to freeze. Although it will not harm the heating cable, you could fracture your pipe and if the pipe is buried it can be costly and time consuming to repair."

So that brings up a question - how do you drain the water coming from a well via an underground line and then entering a house which is not heated?

With our old camp, now replaced with a year round house, we had a drilled well. Underneath the house in a crawl space was a small walled off and insulated room with the hot water tank, well pressure tank and associated piping and a small 220 volt heater. The line from the well and the water lines in the house were set up so that by turning the well and hot water tank beakers off and then opening some valves in the small room, the water from all the pipes in the house drained onto the dirt floor and the water in the line from the well drained back into the well. Drained the hot water tank with a hose leading outside. RV antifreeze in the drains and toilet bowl and toilet tank and that was it. We used it a lot in the winter and kept the heat in the house off. Took about half an hour to close the house up and 10 minutes or so to open up. You need to be careful about what you leave in the house as we learned early on when a bottle of vinegar burst. I am not sure what the plumber did to make the water in the line from the well drain back, but it worked like a charm. The water line from the well came underground and then entered the house and it was just on top of the dirt floor in the crawl space and then it went into the heated room; it angled up from the dirt floor up to the heated room, so that may have helped with the well.

That was something I was looking into. Not sure it is acceptable by some, as the well water gets "contaminated by the backflow".

Our well water was tested multiple times in the years we used this system and there was never any contamination. The water that drains back into the well is only the water that was already in the well line. The water in the pipes in the house all drained onto the dirt floor and it was not a huge amount of water.

Much appreciated. Personally, the only thing I might see would be "stirring up" the sediment at the bottom of the well. However, I suspect that this might not be "code", hence, a plumber might be reticient to do it again now. I don't know as a fact, I just have a hunch. :)

The code issue is certainly possible. Our work setting up the camp to use it during the winter was done in 1983. Eventually we stopped draining the house since we were coming up more often and wanted to leave food, liquids, etc in the house and got tired of the draining routine and left the heat on at 50 degrees and just turned off the water and hot water breakers and opened the hot and cold water valves on the sink, bathroom sink and bathtub/shower. Still kept the heat on in the pump "room". Had forced hot air heat so the heat from the furnace in the crawl space and leaked air from the heat ducts going up into the house kept the crawl space warm enough to prevent the well water line from freezing. A Freeze Alarm alerted us to power outages and furnace issues. It helped being only an hour and 15 minutes away to deal with any issues.

Good luck with your investigation.

Since the general subject is water, and not to hijack the thread: My house pumps from the lake. I have a $5 Lowe's filter for sediment that I change every coupe of weeks. After that filter, a large 3 chamber system with a sediment filter, charcoal filter and a UV chamber for bacteria. The theory is the Lowe's filter may catch 90% of the sediment before it gets to the more expensive system.

It works great and I change the large filters and the UV light bulb every year. I have had the water tested and it is rated "drinking quality water".

The problem I have is with white laundry. No matter how much bleach I use the whites get a little less white with every wash. If anyone has had this problem and solved it I would be glad to know how you did it.

TiltonBB,

Sounds like your doing everything right filter / UV wise. Not sure why you would have a problem with whites especially since your able to use bleach. Living on the island and having a septic we can’t use bleach but we have no problem with whites. We are also very conscious and careful what we use for soap and laundry products. A number of years ago we changed to a laundry soap called “Ecos” and my wife says it’s the best laundry soap she has ever used. Seems to work extremely well with the lake water. It might be worth a try in your case. It’s available at a very reasonable cost through Sam’s Club or you can buy at Amazon.

God Luck!

Dan