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solar wells

J

jigs

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Joined
Mar 17, 2005
Messages
8,447
Location
KANSAS
anyone use a solar well?
if so how reliable are they, and how expensive?

how do they work in the winter?

I am thinking of putting one in, only 25 feet to water,
 
Jigs: Try these sites;while we don't use them I've heard good things and if they'll work in our winter they'll work anywhere!

www.kellnsolar.com
www.frostfreenosepumps.com
 
The only place here where it's 25ft to water is on a bluff over the river. My well is 480'. There is several around over 700 and I know of a dry well over 800'. I think our community water projects are 2500' or so.
 
We used a couple of them for years, but they were the vibrating type of motor. In shallow wells, they would pump 2-4 gallons a minute, That was enough to water quite a bunch of cattle. A wire placed in the tank would shut to pump off when the tank was full.

Since then, they have come out with a submersible pump which pumps a lot more water and is more reliable. Our neighbors have a solar system backed up by a windcharger. They pump the water into a pipeline and it waters a herd of 3-400 cows. I noticed last week they had the windcharger shut off and it was working solely on solar - and doing a good job.

We quit using ours because of water quality (neighbors have the same problem) and we put in several miles of pipeline and pump good water from the sand next to the creek.

Winter is not a problem - just put a small drain hole near the frost line and when the suns goes down, the pump stops and the water drains back to below the frost line.

We would have upgraded to submersible pumps if the water had been good enough for cattle.

It takes quite a bit of solar panel surface to pump against pipeline pressure but it just a matter of adding panels, A 2 X 4 foot panel makes about 75 watts so that 8 or 10 pannels hooked up would pump water most anywhere. My guess is that there are some outfits that could pump water from 1000 feet deep. It wouldn't be cheap.

We were running generators 24 hours a day all summer for a while, but we finally built the pipeline. (A state highway road project provided some excess money which we used for the pipeline.)

P. S. Does the sun even shine in the winter there?
 
Not for long but it's appreciated when it does. You can tell your in Saskatchewan when about Jan. 2 people are already noticing that the days are getting longer.
 
We could never run a solar anything during the winter and count on it. We have weeks when the sun don't shine and everyone around here gets SAD due to the lack of sun.. Always know who is affected more by it when you see them. We can run off water pretty shallow here, we have a water 10-12 feet down most times of the year if you want to run a sandpoint well but if you want to hit the rock aquifer you need to go down 105 or so feet. We have good water for the most part but the rock aquifer has a lot of iron in it. All your white shirts sget a rusty tinge to them after a bunch of washes.
 
We had that rust in Wyoming too, IL Rancher. Do you realize a water
softner can nicely take care of that problem?

Here we have oil-based tannens in the water and that is said to be the toughest water problems to solve. We have a whole house RO system now and that has really helped. Some places around here the water looks like ice tea. It is safe, but sure raises heck with your white clothes, especially.
 
We have 7 solar pumps going and like cowpuncher said they do not have to have direct sunlight. With the shallow pumps the diaghram type storage is what you need when you reach the maximum depth about 230 they pump real slow. The 2 deep well solars one at 550 and the other at 680 they are able to be backed up by a generator. For the shallow well pumps the whole setup is right at 2000 the deep well setup is running just short of 10000 with a big chunk of that being panels. We are putting in 2 new wells this year (thanks to eqip)and will probably use the deep wells.
The little pumps have been averaging 5to6 years before needing the pumps rebuilt.If you have any questions feel free to ask I am locked in the house for the next week or so.
Adios
 
Fh, yeah a water softner cant ake are of the problem but thw wife doesn't like the "slimey" water that is produced by water sftners.. I just shake my head, shrug my shoulders and ask her than to not complain about the water... It works for about 15 minuts and than she starts up again :lol: I grew up on heavy Iron/sulpher water and we ran a softner.. worked well and I got a lot of good exercise hauling the softner pellets for mom.. I'm jsut glad the place she gets them from now delivers and fills the tub for her as she is just not as strong as she once was and Dad is always out of the country.

We are running on a sand point right now for this house so the water isn't a problem. AT the other house we dug a well and I had to run vineger throught the pipes a couple times a ear to clean out the deposites.. Trying to figure out how to do it with the livestock wells because over the years they will get rusty as well. When we blow the pressure tanks because they get water logged the water that comes out in the end looks a bit like tomato soup. I :l
 
Two of the slickest I've seen are Kelln Solar and CAP Solar's winter systems. They both have ones witha motion detecting eye on them, so when the cattle come up, the pump kicks in, when they walk away, it drains back below the frost line.

The Kelln unit we have will pump 200 feet horizontal, to a maximum of 12' vertical, but it's just a little guy for pumping out of our dugout into a trough. Works good though.
 
Aztumbleweed,
With the shallow pumps the diaghram type storage is what you need when you reach the maximum depth about 230 they pump real slow
Click to expand...
Does 230 mean the well depth? And when you say real slow, how do you figure number of head you can water with a system like that? Do you think a 30' steel tank set in concrete would be enough storage for daily water needs?
 
Yes Frisco 230 is the well depth, and the shallow pumps will make about a 1/4 gallon a minute at that depth. We have 2 of those that are at that depth that feed 10,000 gallon storage tanks if the cows only hit them everyother week they hold real good. they fall behind when the rains come but then the dirt tanks pickup the slack. We put about 250 cows in those pastures toward the end of the rotation it can get a little nerve wrecking on if we have to haul water or not.We have taken the loader and run the pumps all night off of it's batteries not quite as cost effective as the generator driven solar pumps but in a pinch. At 100 feet the water output is comparable to most generator pumps. Hope this helps.
Adios
 

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