Water Pressure on Undeveloped Land

SoonerAviator said:
Right, well I can't imagine there should be a really high consumption need. It's going to be a standard house with a shop, probably 2,400 sq ft of living space or less. No pools or major agriculture needs. Certainly nothing greater than a standard 3/4" line would be able to provide. I really just didn't know how to get adequate pressure when head pressure is low to begin with. We may gain a few psi from building the house 20'-30' lower in elevation than the neighbors, but that may just take it to "marginal".
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How many people are going to run the bath/shower, and flush toilets while the washers (dish and clothes) are filling up and the sprinklers are running?
 
TCABM said:
How many people are going to run the bath/shower, and flush toilets while the washers (dish and clothes) are filling up and the sprinklers are running?
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This is just a house for 2 adults at the moment. Home will probably be a 3bd/3 bath arrangement but I doubt more than one shower would be running at a time. Maybe on occassion.

Sprinklers could be a thing, but we aren't trying irrigate a golf course lawn or anything. Mostly just some flower gardens. Hopefully a water well is still feasible as a backup water supply and outdoor watering primary. Don't know how well they drill wells through rocky terrain.
 
I'd suggest stop thinking as much about pressure. It's more about flow rate.... can you get enough gallons per minute out of the shower head? Pressure in the pipe is only interesting because that's what pushes the flow rate and it's teh variable that's easier to measure. With lower pressure you'll need fewer restrictions...bigger pipe... to help offset.
 
Dana said:
So you do the same thing people with underproducing wells do: a storage tank and booster pump.
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Yep, that's what I would be doing...if building my own 90ft+ water tower wasn't in the cards
 
Brad W said:
I'd suggest stop thinking as much about pressure. It's more about flow rate.... can you get enough gallons per minute out of the shower head? Pressure in the pipe is only interesting because that's what pushes the flow rate and it's teh variable that's easier to measure. With lower pressure you'll need fewer restrictions...bigger pipe... to help offset.
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Right, but it's nice to have both. I have a feeling that we'll end up with a decently-sized storage tank to ensure we have plenty of water on tap for any household needs, with a booster pump to keep it flowing at acceptable rates. I'll certainly advocate for larger diameter pipe up to the house connection to get the lowest restriction possible. We're considering a "barndominium" style home, so the shop space and house may be under one roof (and slab) and all insulated, which would make a water storage tank easier to position without fear of freezing temps.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Gotcha. I was only considering static pressure, but that probably is a good idea as it would be probably a 250' run or so from the front of the lot (where I assume the water line runs). A little extra cost for materials, but in the grand scheme of things it's rounding error.



Well, the 400' is mostly regional topography difference, the hillside itself seems to be about 200' from top to bottom but overall has about 400' above the surrounding 5 square miles or so. Either way I agree that it *should* be doable to get enough from the upper line. The thought of a reserve tank/pressure tank was what I originally considered, where the service line feeds a sizeable tank, so as long as you don't draw out more water than the tank supplies, the pressure would remain stable and would refill as needed.
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A 200' change in elevation equates to 86.6 PSI.
 
3393RP said:
A 200' change in elevation equates to 86.6 PSI.
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It makes sense that the gentleman at the bottom of the lot in question has about 90psi pressure, since he is roughly 170' below in elevation plus whatever head pressure exists at the top.
 
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SoonerAviator said:
Right, well I can't imagine there should be a really high consumption need. It's going to be a standard house with a shop, probably 2,400 sq ft of living space or less. No pools or major agriculture needs. Certainly nothing greater than a standard 3/4" line would be able to provide. I really just didn't know how to get adequate pressure when head pressure is low to begin with. We may gain a few psi from building the house 20'-30' lower in elevation than the neighbors, but that may just take it to "marginal".
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We normally assume 350 gpd/EDU on a daily basis, but the bigger issue is how you are going to convey that to the house. You have a 400 foot rise in elevation, plus you need a decent service pressure (40-60 psi) so we are looking at roughly 540 feet of TDH on the pump, discounting whatever pressure may be there at the source.

That puts you in to a turbine type well pump (which you will have to put in a can.) The problem is that the throwaway submersible turbines you put in residential wells in the 5 gpm or less range generally aren't going to have enough lift, and you can't cram more stages on like you can commercial turbine pumps. If you put in a pump with a 20-30 gpm capacity and try to run it through a long run of 3/4 inch pipe, it will likely deadhead and pump nothing. Solution? Either daylight to a day tank at the top and repump with a smaller booster more in line with your use, or have a much larger than standard residential pressure tank. Or, pump it up in stages using tanks and small end suction centrifugals, but that gets messy in a hurry.

Of course that also begs the question of what kind of flow is available from the source? Can you draw 20+ gpm from it?
 
Sac Arrow said:
We normally assume 350 gpd/EDU on a daily basis, but the bigger issue is how you are going to convey that to the house. You have a 400 foot rise in elevation, plus you need a decent service pressure (40-60 psi) so we are looking at roughly 540 feet of TDH on the pump, discounting whatever pressure may be there at the source.

That puts you in to a turbine type well pump (which you will have to put in a can.) The problem is that the throwaway submersible turbines you put in residential wells in the 5 gpm or less range generally aren't going to have enough lift, and you can't cram more stages on like you can commercial turbine pumps. If you put in a pump with a 20-30 gpm capacity and try to run it through a long run of 3/4 inch pipe, it will likely deadhead and pump nothing. Solution? Either daylight to a day tank at the top and repump with a smaller booster more in line with your use, or have a much larger than standard residential pressure tank. Or, pump it up in stages using tanks and small end suction centrifugals, but that gets messy in a hurry.

Of course that also begs the question of what kind of flow is available from the source? Can you draw 20+ gpm from it?
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I think something might be lost in translation here. There is a water tower (rural water district) less than 0.5 miles from the property, at or above the highest elevation of the property. Even with that said, the pressure reported at the top of the ridge by other residents is "low" (probably in the 20-30 psi range) but I have no direct evidence. If we were to tap into the rural water line at the high-point in elevation, it would have ~20psi and then feed down the property to where the house would be located (probably about 20' lower in elevation from the rural water line itself). I don't know what flow is available from that line. The ridge may be 400' above the surrounding area, but the water source itself should be the water tower which is on the same ridge as the property.

If we tapped into the lower water line and ran it UP the property to that same housing site, you start with ~90psi but it would have to go up 120' or so in elevation. While this starts with higher pressure, it's probably no better off pumping it from the bottom than running it from the top at lower pressure, and potentially may have other issues if the pump goes out where you'd get no water at all. At least when drawing from the upper line you'd still get something out of it, even if the pressure was low.

It seems like the best potential solution is to tap in at the UPPER water line, run it down 20' in elevation to the pad site with sufficient size piping to minimize flow losses into a supply tank (say maybe 300 gallon) with a boost pump to provide good pressure at the house. Assuming you don't run through all of the 300 gallons in a short period of time, the flow from the rural water line should be able to replenish the supply tank. That's what I'm getting from the comments so far.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Here's an updated view of the layout:
View attachment 116970
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Okay I misunderstood.

It doesn't matter one bit which point in the line you tap into as long as it is still under the tank water level in terms of service pressure. Your house elevation vs. the tank level elevation is what determines the pressure you will see.
 
SoonerAviator said:
We're considering a "barndominium" style home, so the shop space and house may be under one roof (and slab) and all insulated, which would make a water storage tank easier to position without fear of freezing temps.
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I moved into such a place last year (frost protected shallow foundation with pole barn style construction and steel roof/siding).

Let me know if you have any design questions, mine is very well thought out. I can also share the design drawings if you’re curious about how anything was done.
 
jesse said:
I moved into such a place last year (frost protected shallow foundation with pole barn style construction and steel roof/siding).

Let me know if you have any design questions, mine is very well thought out. I can also share the design drawings if you’re curious about how anything was done.
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I'd love any advice you're willing to impart! We have a 30x50 pole barn on the current property, with a lean-to across the back 50' which mainly serves as a covered porch for the most part. One thing we didn't do was good insulation, so I'd imagine spray foam will be the best bet for any new builds. If we do the barndominium idea, I would probably combine a house and shop into one structure so that there would be approximately 2,400sq ft of shop and similar or less of living space. Trying to keep it single story for the living space, but a loft or similar isn't out of the question. Thinking about running in-slab radiant heat or similar to help with efficiency a bit. Main "have to have" from the female of the house is a wrap-around porch, or at least most of the way around.
 
SoonerAviator said:
I'd love any advice you're willing to impart! We have a 30x50 pole barn on the current property, with a lean-to across the back 50' which mainly serves as a covered porch for the most part. One thing we didn't do was good insulation, so I'd imagine spray foam will be the best bet for any new builds. If we do the barndominium idea, I would probably combine a house and shop into one structure so that there would be approximately 2,400sq ft of shop and similar or less of living space. Trying to keep it single story for the living space, but a loft or similar isn't out of the question. Thinking about running in-slab radiant heat or similar to help with efficiency a bit. Main "have to have" from the female of the house is a wrap-around porch, or at least most of the way around.
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Shoot me a DM with your email address, and I’ll send some things over tonight.
 
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