A Water Storage Tank, High Pressure Pump Controller , and Well Water Cistern

Part 1 - Description
Living on a piece of real estate in a rural area, we have a deep well for domestic water supply (over four hundred feet deep), and a septic system for water disposal.  Our well’s refill rate varies seasonally, and sometimes is less than one gallon per minute (GPM). Combined with our well’s storage capacity of approximately 100 gallons (using the volume between the top of the pump and the water table level), the average flow is typically enough for our household, but when we have guests our peak consumption goes up.
 

We needed a means to increase our water availability – drilling a new well would have been prohibitively expensive (well drilling in this area works out to be about $15-$25 per developed foot, without including materials or pumps). We decided to add reserve capacity by adding a 1000 gallon tank (including it’s own pump and controller) to our system. Along the way we also added protection against running the well pump dry (by using a Franklin PumpTec controller).

This set of articles details how we added a 1000 gallon reserve water tank and pump, designed and built the controllers and sensors, and how it operates on a daily basis.

NEXT: Part 2 - The Design

Part 3 - Controller Operation