Potable water system for a cottage

My parents have a cottage on a lake in Ontario. There's no potable water on their small island, so they fill up containers at a local spring and bring them to the cottage. The problem is that the shore is a bit steep, so they have to carry the water up an uneven path with tree roots, dirt and rocks. Given that they're both in their mid-70's, this is starting to become an issue.

I've been thinking of how to make life easier. The original plan was for a suspended basket that could be run up and down via a winch, but the geometry doesn't work out due to various railings, trees and walkways. So now I'm thinking of putting a small tank by the dock and using an electric pump to run that up to a dedicated faucet in the cottage. Then they can just dump the water right into the tank and save the effort of the climb.

The floor of the cottage is 25' above the dock. Add another 3' or so to get the water up to a faucet. I'm thinking of mounting a shallow well pump under the cottage (about 20' above the dock). Most of them show they can pull about 25' of suction with a total head of 98' or more. So I think that'll work.

For the tank, I'm thinking of the typical plastic potable water tanks. Looks like there are many options.

The whole system will be drained at the end of the season to prevent freezing.

So, questions.

Does the pump plan sound plausible?

Assuming the water coming into the tank is fresh spring water and the tank is closed up, will I have to do any sort of treatment to the tank to prevent any sort of bacteria growth or nastiness? We don't have wash out the current containers at all, so I'm assuming not. But they also get fully emptied and refilled on a regular basis.

Edit: the cottage has electricity and pressurized lake water. Just no potable water on tap.

How about a cistern ?

Sounds like there's some electricity there. Any chance you can just run something like a marine reverse osmosis system and just pull the water from the lake?

The container/pump idea is basically a shallow well. Should be very do-able.

Can't comment on the purity thing- maybe use a O3 system to keep it clean? Or some light duty chlorine?

iceracer wrote: How about a cistern ?

You mean, to catch rain water? It would have to be purified if only to get the tree gunk out of it. Many trees.

We do have electricity. My parents love the taste of the spring water, so we're hoping to keep that. Interesting idea, though - I hadn't thought about trying to purify the lake water. It's pretty clean stuff other than the fact that it's basically tea with fish poop in it.

Karacticus wrote: Sounds like there's some electricity there. Any chance you can just run something like a marine reverse osmosis system and just pull the water from the lake?

Was thinking the same thing. Even if there's no electricity, you could set up a small solar/wind system to run it.

May be useless, but when my mom had problems with her well I sustained us for the better part of a week with a dehumidifier. (we had bottled water for drinking).

With some care as far as conservation we were able to flush toilets and wash hands off of it.

you could run a small hose and just do a onetime pump to a reservoir in the cottage as long as you have some hose rated as such.

Anything permanent holding water is going to be a task to keep sanitized unless you want to keep a bit of bleach in your water supply.

A 1000 L plastic tote to catch the rain water,(under $100), 1/2 hp well pump, and a small purification system (I use rainfresh) will do the trick. You could also pull it out of the lake.

We had no electricity, so ours was like this:

1. B&S 3.5 Hp powered pump at lake.
2. 45 Gallon Plastic drum raised up at the back of the cottage. Gravity feed into cottage.
3. Fill drum and use. Re-fill as needed.
4. End of season - pull water line out of lake, drain everything, including pump housing.
5. Spring - throw water line back in lake, prime pump and repeat.

You can't drink it though. Purify drinking water in small batches and keep in fridge. Cold clean water for drinking.

Drinking unpurified lake water = "Beaver Fever" (get your minds out of the gutter). You will get sick!

What type of flow rate do you want? You are okay with 120V pump or do you want a battery powered 12V pump? Why do you need a tank, just pump on demand, unless the problem is the spring doesn't provide enough on demand supply. You really don't need a big pump to get decent head, most "proper" well pumps are overkill for merely drinking water.

A small diaphragm pump will do 50+ ft and a couple gallons/min with 6amps/12V. No need to spend $100s

I think beaver fever is a regional term - anyone around here thinks I'm nuts when I use it. Giardia for those who aren't from the area.

The cottage already has a lake water supply. There's a pump pulling water out of the lake into a pressure tank. Like everything else in cottage country, the pump is about 50 years old. But the concept is the same.

fritzsch wrote: What type of flow rate do you want? You are okay with 120V pump or do you want a battery powered 12V pump? Why do you need a tank, just pump on demand, unless the problem is the spring doesn't provide enough on demand supply. You really don't need a big pump to get decent head, most "proper" well pumps are overkill for merely drinking water. A small diaphragm pump will do 50+ ft and a couple gallons/min with 6amps/12V. No need to spend $100s

The problem is that the spring is a few miles away and on the other side of the lake Water retrieval will still involve driving to the spring, filling the containers, driving to the dock, taking the boat across and unloading the containers out of the boat. It's the next part I'm trying to avoid. I will talk to them about a purification system to see if they're willing to give up their Ontario Evian. But they have no problem with getting the water to the dock on the island, it's the climb that's a problem.

A pressure tank isn't really required, but it makes the faucet easier to work - it's easier to run a pump off a pressure switch and use a faucet to regulate water flow instead of flipping on a switch and dealing with whatever the flow rate ends up being.

Very little flow rate required. It'll be used for things like cooking and brushing teeth, so that's all. There's no 12v at the cottage, so 120v would be preferable. If I can get a small pump that will lift the water that far, that's the sort of thing I need to know.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Ah for some reason I imagined the spring at their house. Anyway, I would have them just use a small pump to pump it all up. Just stick a small section of the inlet tubing into the containers and pump it all up to containers up top. Shouldn't need to spend more than $100 especially since flow rate is not critical. 120V will be more expensive than 12v though

Lake water runs to the house, right? Just run it through one of these:

http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/global-emergency-gear-water-filter-kit?a=1790822

or if you want to get really fancy,

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002F5732Q

The ceramic/carbon filter element was developed for missionaries in the third world so they could have clean drinking water. "I've Read" that you can pour swamp water in and get water clean enough for an IV out of that filter.

This is just for drinking water? Other household (cottagehold?) Water is sucked from the lake?

Our cottage is in Haliburton and we started using a Rain Fresh under counter filter system, for drinking water, a few years ago. The ceramic filter works great and we've never had any issues. We installed a whole house filter as well to extend the life of the under counter cartridges. The bonus with using Rain Fresh is that they're an Ontario based company with really good customer support.

The whole purpose is they want to drink the spring water right? I think your system sounds ok but I also think it'll start getting a bit funky in there and defeat the purpose of this fancy spring water.

Otherwise I would say an RO system off the lake water sounds like a better plan.

mazdeuce wrote: This is just for drinking water? Other household (cottagehold?) Water is sucked from the lake?

Yes.

"Getting funky" is one of the things I'm wondering about. I know the containers we use now don't have any problems, although they do get drained and refilled over time. It's my biggest concern with this setup.

I've pinged my parents about how they feel about the idea of purifying the lake water. That's a great example of missing the forest for the trees - this started off as "it's heavy carrying the water up the hill", so I looked at the problem as being "get the water into the cottage" instead of "drinkable water on tap". Wayslow, thanks for the local recommendation, I know they'd prefer to keep things Canadian if possible.

I'm pretty sure the easy button is a purifier run to a separate potable tap. Then heading off to the spring for 'special' water every now and again can still be a fun adventure. Keep a cold pitcher of it in the fridge for when guests come, that sort of thing.

Gut feeling is you should stick to improving the hauling of all things up there, not just the water. It sounds like that path could use improvement. How big is this island? To piggy back off the donkey idea, could you keep a UTV, beater jeep, something to that effect, there?

On reverse osmosis, I know the units used on boats to turn sea water into drinking water are generally powered with a pressure washer pump running off the main engine, heavy power load.

The island is a few acres and heavily treed with a relatively rocky shoreline. Wheeled vehicles aren't practical, and there are none on the island. The extended family has a series of cottages on the island, so the typical way of dealing with lots of heavy stuff is to tap into the plentiful resource of idle young men. But that's not always easy.

Groceries are different than water in that you can always break them down into fairly small components

I've been looking into the RainFresh setup. One of their triple filter setups under the kitchen sink looks like the winner to me - Canadian made, high level of parts availability, easy install, easy to live with.

Keith Tanner wrote: The cottage already has a lake water supply.

That would kinda make that a no brainer then, wouldn't it?

Dr. Hess wrote: Lake water runs to the house, right? Just run it through one of these: http://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/global-emergency-gear-water-filter-kit?a=1790822 or if you want to get really fancy, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002F5732Q The ceramic/carbon filter element was developed for missionaries in the third world so they could have clean drinking water. "I've Read" that you can pour swamp water in and get water clean enough for an IV out of that filter.

my inlaws have the latter and it turns their nasty sulfur smelling well water into normal tasting water. my dad, on the other hand, is a little crazy so he takes his nasty rusty well water and settles the crap out of it, then boils it, then adds a drop of chlorine to a 5 gallon bottle. i refuse to drink that

If you run two tanks, one at the cottage and one on the dock, you can mount the pump at the dock and run two lines between them. One line goes on the outlet of the pump for the water going uphill and another at the top of the house tank to let overfill drain back to the dock tank.

Fill dock tank, run pump on timer to pump up to the upper tank, and when it's full it will just recirculate back to the dock tank. Put a charcoal filter on the pump output and the water will be cleaner for the pumping and a timer to circulate once in awhile will keep it all from getting funky.