Deposit or well?

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bbobandannie
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Deposit or well?

Postby bbobandannie » Wed May 27, 2020 9:09 am

Please dont shoot me down for stupidity but any advice would be appreciated.
We recently bought a campo house outside Coin. It was described as having town water and irrigation water. It does in fact have town water. However in the attached garage/lean to is a pump which feeds into the house supply line and also goes underground. There is a manhole cover next to it. The pump fires up automaticly every time the pressure drops below 1.5bar. Most of the time the town supply is above this but recently there has been work being carried out and ir drops of, hence the pump is currently working more. I have lifted the manhole cover and there is a tank of water, with a fair bit of vegetation, a pipe into the ground and a submersible pump. When i say tank, its just rough concrete. Additionally, the area uses an irrigation system with pipes, channels etc passing around our property.
My questions are: does anyone have any idea of whats what. Is it probable that the pump is pumping from a well (hence the vertical pipe in the tank which goes into the ground). What is the water in the concrete chamber? Could it be from the irrigation system? As the pump seems to kick in when town water is week, is there a possibility its pumping this water thats in the chamber into the domestic system. If this is the case can i have the water tested?
A long winded story and maybe i sound like a proper dullard but I've never seen a system like it. Weve been drinking the tap water for 6 months now with no issues but having seen the stuff in that tank im now concerned.
Any ideas, advice appreciated.
Thanks

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GerryinCajiz
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Re: Deposit or well?

Postby GerryinCajiz » Wed May 27, 2020 9:23 am

Your local chemist will probably have sample bottles and also arrange for the sample to be tested. My local chemist does this, just check what day the sample will be dispatched so your sample can be as fresh as possible. The last time I checked, the sample bottle was about 8 euros and the test about 50 euros.
Gerry

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Trooperman
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Re: Deposit or well?

Postby Trooperman » Wed May 27, 2020 10:05 am

Hi! Complicated eh?
You seem to have worked out some details correctly viz: the visible pump kicking in whenever the town water pressure drops below a certain level: in your case you say it's 1.5 bar. But where does that pump draw its water from when it "kicks-in"?
If you've traced all the pipework and found no other deposito/tank I suppose it's reasonable to assume the concrete chamber IS the deposito.
Is the second pump, the one inside the chamber, the one that draws well water up from below whenever the level in the chamber drops? In which case there will be some automatic switch - float switch? - that turns that pump on to keep the level up.

That's the end of my thoughts, but some background for you: We had village water, but the supply was variable and, to keep some water available all the time (washing machine - dishwasher - guests etc) I put in a fibre-glass tank with the associated pressure pump that you describe. I seem to recall that there was some jiggery-pokery mechanism that allowed normal pressure village water to flow directly into the house, by-passing the deposito and without the pump starting up and that the deposito itself was thus only used whenever that pressure dropped. I didn't have a seperate irrigation supply.

So. From your description, I am assuming what you fear is correct. However, all is not lost. There will be a seperate supply from the town and that can be routed direct to the house or, if the pressure/supply is not reliable, via a system I've described above. (We never drank copious quantities of village water 'cos it came, possibly, via the tank with associated and potential health concerns that you are rightly concerned about). Your irrigation supply would, as a result, be just that: underground water via the concrete tank, for your land and, presumably, there is a seperate valve controlling its release onto your land.

Best wishes
nil illegitimum carborundum

bbobandannie
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Re: Deposit or well?

Postby bbobandannie » Thu May 28, 2020 6:48 am

Gerry, Trooperman,
Thanks for the help guys. On further invest it looks as described. Easier to work out once i determined one stop c0ck wasnt working and the ballcock is sticking. The chamber is the deppsito, the vegetation is invasive roots and what i thought was a submersible pump is in fact a float valve for the main pump. Bad news is our domestic water is, when town supply drops below 1.5bar (fairly normal) supplemented by water from the deposit.
Short term, drinking water filtration system being fitted this weekend. Long term, above surface plastic deposito required.
Thanks guys.

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peteroldracer
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Re: Deposit or well?

Postby peteroldracer » Thu May 28, 2020 9:05 am

We had a similar system, except the town water filled the deposito (above ground but we never managed to seal it completely to prevent slugs getting in!) with all the water supplied through the demand valve. This worked well unless there was a power cut - common at one time in the campo.
We never drank water from this system, bottled water being cheap as chips and much tastier.
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