Huichol page 22
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This was the tricky part. Setting the
storage tank in the right place. I only had
so much head (pressure) to work with due
to the vertical distance to the spring
and I needed so much height to get water up to the kitchen sink also. We used a
plastic tube to determine how high I could push water through the filter and up
into the tank. I didn't have enough head pressure to put the tank where I had
originally planned. The spring was too low. So we had to remove a big boulder to
put the tank on a rock ledge on the edge of a cliff. Here's a couple pics of
getting the rock out of the way.
And there she goes.
The reason we needed a storage tank was two fold. One, the spring only flows about a liter a minute and only holds about twenty gallons of water. If neighbors come in for water consecutively we can run out and it's a long paddle for some not to get water. Two, by heating up the water by the sun each day in the storage tank everybody who wants a warm shower in the evening gets one. The spring water is not cold and you can shower with it but another ten to fifteen degrees would sure make it more comfortable. That's why I call it our "flywheel" for the spring. Like the flywheel in a car engine evens out the changing torque of the engine, our storage tank evens out the useage of the spring water. I am going to add three more valves to the outflow end of the filter next trip so we can get colder water in the early morning directly from the spring without using the storage tank for the coldest drinking water. The tank is filled at the top directly from the filter and has a float stop when it is full. The bottom then feeds what used to be connected to the filter outlet.
Here's another shot showing the cliff it sits on.
This placement was very
critical to both be able to fill the tank from gravity flow from the
spring
including the pressure drop going through the filter as well as
being
able to supply gravity feed water to the kitchen sink. The rock cliff is
taller
than it looks; this is a closeup with the camera.
