While the water in our house comes from the city, we do have two back up systems for water. The primary back up is a well on our property that can be pumped by hand or through an electric pump. The previous owner of the farm has installed a pipe system that transports well water everywhere on the farm. Unfortunately we will need to redo a bunch of piping right by the well, as the original had to go when we expanded the main house. The pump we use, also from Gardena – do you see a trend here? – has an automatic on switch. This means that wherever in the system someone turns on a faucet the pump starts to run – very convenient.
The second back up system is a rain water system. The previous owner has installed about 5 big barrels near the various outbuildings of the farm. An elaborate gutter system goes to these barrels and keeps them nice an topped up. With these two systems we could be 100% self sufficient in terms of producing drinking quality water.
