For all your apocalyptic... drinking needs.

Did you know there are people out there referred to as "preppers"?  I had never heard that term until a couple of months ago.  These are people who are convinced that some kind of worldwide economic meltdown, or some similar apocalyptic event, is coming and it will end with complete anarchy.  Remember the people who built bomb shelters and hoarded food before Y2K... this is them.

Anyway, due to forces outside of my control (e.g. spouse and neighbor) the Sustainable Family movement in our house at times seems to be taking on some subtle tones of "prepping"... much to my dismay.  The latest is the question of how will we get water when this inevitable apocalypse starts affecting infrastructure and there is no longer any electricity.  Lucky for us, when we first bought the house we bought a generator and had a switch box wired to power, among other things, our well pump.  Problem solved?  Not quite.  The great thing about preppers is they think on the one-in-a-million level whereas your average human might only think on the "things that actually might happen" level.  As such, the natural next question was what are we going to do if there is no gas available to run the generator.  Yes, that's right, no gas available.  [roll eyes here]

So anyway, there are a few ways that I've found to get water out through a well head.  These include the old fashioned "little house on the prairie"-style hand pump, an Amish-style well bucket, or a submersible pump that can run off of a solar cell.  Initially, I thought the pump and solar cell would be super cool to have, but the cost of something like this is way too much for me, especially since it is very likely that it will never get used.  I moved on to the old-style hand pump.  These can be a little expensive too, especially if you are trying to get water from 100 feet down.  Again, the likelihood of it not ever being used makes this option less than desirable in my mind...  especially when the 3rd option, the Amish-style bucket, seems like it would be so simple to build myself.  This is the trade-off I guess, these seemingly crazy ideas allow me to do some DIY experimenting!

Basically, an Amish-style well bucket is a big tube with a check valve on one end.  As the tube gets lowered into the water down the well shaft, the one-way check valve allows water to flow into the "bucket" and as it is retrieved, the check valve closes and the water is drawn up.  I'm planning on tackling this project over the weekend, so I'll post an update soon.