Solar Wells 101 and Hands-on Class
In today's world, access to clean, reliable water is essential for everyday life. It's necessary not only for drinking but also for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and maintaining overall health. The U.S. government says the average American uses 82 gallons of water per day. Most of us don't realize how vulnerable this supply is. Take, for example, Hurricane Helene in 2024, which left many of us in the southeast without water and power for days, weeks, and some even months. Municipal systems were knocked out by flooding and infrastructure damage, leaving residents scrambling for bottled water and alternative sources. In these situations, people who rely on wells could have had a distinct advantage if they could have only accessed the water in their wells. For 11 days, my area had no power during this disaster. Many people thought, no big deal, I am on a well, and I have a generator, which is great, until they realized they had no way to wire their generator into the well pump or the fuel ran out. Without the ability to get more fuel and most (notice I said most, not all of us) were in trouble or reliant on outside help.
I hear often from people, I have a creek, so I have water in an emergency. What we learned during Helene was on a good day, you could boil water, and through a fair amount of work, you could have clean water. On a bad day, your creek could be so contaminated with run off that no amount of boiling would make it safe. We saw creeks so contaminated that the water was causing skin issues for those who touched it. Before the hurricane, I would have said this sounds like something you would only read about in a fiction novel, right up to the time, it was our reality.
What Was Different For My Family?
The simple answer, our well has a solar well pump. Even without power my family had clean water. In fact, during the day, my well functioned just like it does every other day, and at night, we simply limited our water usage to what our pressure tank was able to store during the day (about 20 gallons).
Why A Solar Well Pump?
For the last 5 years, we have been running on a solar well pump. This is not an emergency backup; this system is used every day and functions just like any other well pump setup. I would love to tell you that I had some great foresight and put this in just incase of an emergency, but that would be a lie. The truth is, as the owner of a company that specializes in off-grid, I love to experiment with new and innovative things. Just like most people, I had a conventional well pump, and I woke up one day to a well that was no longer functioning. I thought, what a perfect time to install one of these cool solar pumps and see if they really work. As they say, the rest is history. I was so impressed that we made this a standard upgrade for most of our clients. Since that time, we have installed these pumps and helped others install them all over the region. We have never looked back.
Why Don't More People Have Solar Wells
I have asked this question countless times and the answers always surprise me. It's always one or a combination of the following:
- It costs too much
- My well is too complicated for me to work on
- My well guy said they don't work
In reality none of these statements are true. Solar well pumps are comparable in price to a conventional set up, wells are not complicated and solar well pumps work great.
Simplifying Your Well
What if I told you the explanation is as simple as, a well is a whole in the ground with water in it. While that might be an oversimplification, it is also the truth. Very few of us ever look at a puddle and think wow thats complicated, but in the end the puddle and the well share many of the same characteristics. They are both a hole in the ground that holds water.
With your well there are only 3 measurements that actually matter to us.
Well Depth, Static Water Level, and Recharge or Refill Rate
1. Well Depth
When I ask people about their well, almost always the only fact they know about their well is the depth. I assume that is because when the well driller came to drill, they were charging based on how many feet they drilled. So for most new well owners they are watching the well be drilled while they sweat out how much this is going to actually cost. Believe it or not the depth of the well is not all that important in the process of getting clean water out of hole, it is simply the depth they had to go to get clean water.
2. Static Water Level
Static water level is a measurement from the surface down the well until you first touch water. Most people think that if their well is 300' deep that's where the water is. They don't realize that hydraulic pressure forces the water up to a level usually much higher than the depth of the well. For example, most wells in my area are about 300' deep, but usually, the static water level will be approximately 35' from the surface. Static water level is far more crucial than well depth. This will define how large of a pump you will need to pump water out of the ground. The static water level is critical to know.
3. Recharge Rate or Refill Rate
This is simply how fast water is flowing into your well. For many of us this is a strange statement. We don't think in terms of water flowing or seeping into a well, but it is critical to have a viable water source. This gets measured in GPM or gallons per minute and should have been measured and recorded by the well driller. While static water pressure is usually pretty consistent in an area, recharge rate is unique to each individual well. I have seen property with multiple wells in close proximity to one another. One well produced 140 GPM and the other produced 7GPM. It can vary that much for each well. This is an important number to know because it will let us know how quickly you can remove water without the well ever running dry.
Where Things Get More Complicated
While I hope I have simplified the well side of things I would not be telling the whole truth if I left it there. There is a more complicated side of things. Simply put, it is getting water out of the well. This involves pumps, plumbing, electrical, (in our case solar) and some manual labor. All of which is not nearly as complicated as most people think. For most people, if they are able to be a part of it one time, they will learn that they can take control of one of their most valuable assets: clean water.
Upcoming Class
We have taken our passion for empowering people with skills and knowledge and put together an in person well pump installation class. In this class students help with the install of a solar pump
We will teach you:
- How to identify the critical information on my well tag.
- How and what plumbing you should use to make well pump installation and maintenance easy.
- How to hook up electrical to a well pump
- How a pressure switch works
- Why a pressure tank is critical
- How to install solar panels.
- Basics of solar
- Most important how to take control of your most valuable asset, Clean water.
Because this is a hands on class, class size is limited. Don't delay sign up at the link below.