jolondon
New Member
Greetings. I live in Costa Rica and am planning on installing a 6 kw off grid system on my farm. The farm is in a very sunny area so no problems there.
The solar system will be used to power two shipping container homes I am building.
I want to use my well for drinking water and rainwater harvesting for toilets and showers. My well is around 5 meteres deep with high quality, clean water.
I want to pump water from both the well and the harvesting system to two storage tanks about 400 feet up a hill from where gravity will then feed the container homes. My questions are:
1) Is there a type of pump that can sendfrom a rainwater harvesting roof whenever water is detected flowing in the catchment pipe? In other words avoid another tank and just send the water up to the storage tank at the top of the hill? If yes, how is this accomplished with solar? My current rainwater system in another part of the property collects water off a roof into a 2 inch pvc pipe where it goes into a tank (and this is drawn to water crops). I am trying to explore if I can skip the tank next to the harvesting system. I assume the water flow would have to trigger the pump.
2) At the top of the hill I will have two storage tanks for the rainwater and well water. Assume that I need to get water from the well and the harvesteing tank. What kind of pumps do I use at the two origin points? I see that Amazon sells pumps with panels but I would rather use the solar infrastructure I am planning to build (the growatt system). There should be enough power. For the well is a surface pump best? How about the rainwater harvestsing tank?
3) And then the real mystery for me is what technology do I use to tell the respective pumps that water needs to be sent to teh tanks? Float switch? Controller? It seems like there several options but not sure which one. Also how does the pump get turned off if the tanks are filled.
I see the pumps being used very intermittently as water usage in teh container homes will not be high.
Thanks in advance for any info. I have attached a diagram of the water flows.
The solar system will be used to power two shipping container homes I am building.
I want to use my well for drinking water and rainwater harvesting for toilets and showers. My well is around 5 meteres deep with high quality, clean water.
I want to pump water from both the well and the harvesting system to two storage tanks about 400 feet up a hill from where gravity will then feed the container homes. My questions are:
1) Is there a type of pump that can sendfrom a rainwater harvesting roof whenever water is detected flowing in the catchment pipe? In other words avoid another tank and just send the water up to the storage tank at the top of the hill? If yes, how is this accomplished with solar? My current rainwater system in another part of the property collects water off a roof into a 2 inch pvc pipe where it goes into a tank (and this is drawn to water crops). I am trying to explore if I can skip the tank next to the harvesting system. I assume the water flow would have to trigger the pump.
2) At the top of the hill I will have two storage tanks for the rainwater and well water. Assume that I need to get water from the well and the harvesteing tank. What kind of pumps do I use at the two origin points? I see that Amazon sells pumps with panels but I would rather use the solar infrastructure I am planning to build (the growatt system). There should be enough power. For the well is a surface pump best? How about the rainwater harvestsing tank?
3) And then the real mystery for me is what technology do I use to tell the respective pumps that water needs to be sent to teh tanks? Float switch? Controller? It seems like there several options but not sure which one. Also how does the pump get turned off if the tanks are filled.
I see the pumps being used very intermittently as water usage in teh container homes will not be high.
Thanks in advance for any info. I have attached a diagram of the water flows.