Is a water cistern part of you water system? When should a cistern be part of your water system? It all depends on your water source, usually a well, and how much water you need at any given time. Having a large supply of good water can come in handy for watering a garden, or for emergency fire protection. Cisterns to store rainwater are also growing in popularity. Here are a few tips from our experience with our 3000 gallon above ground poly cistern.
Getting a hot shower in your remote off grid home when its five degrees Fahrenheit outside is priceless. If your water is stored above ground in a cistern, it will be more difficult than pumping it from a well on demand. Your cistern can get a frozen layer of ice, that will hold water as cold as 28F at the bottom. It takes a lot of energy to warm this to 100F for a comfortable shower.
All too often
When deciding to purchase our remote property years ago, there one strong positive feature, and another feature that took some ‘getting used to’. On the plus side the property included a small 12×16 cabin and a working 370′ deep well. This took care of the big unknown everyone faces when developing their remote property – WATER. The detracting feature was that the property had been in a wildfire burn and there were many 6″ diamater black poles that were formerly known as trees.
Well its been a few years and we’ve had several years of wood cutting when jackie and myself and the kids would look like coal miners after working with the black charcoal coated wood. Things have grown back and I’m really thankful that we didn’t let that factor keep us away! On the plus side, that well has supplied our water needs without any problems.
