One of the first things anyone moving to the country will need to do is plan out where the critical survival items will come from. You can’t always run into town every time you need something. Planning is a skill you will need to develop.
For me the most critical needs are Water, Power, Food, & Shelter. When we found our future country home, the shelter
was taken care of. A Septic was already installed so we didn’t need to worry about that.
But next I had to verify where we would source the remaining 3 critical items.
Water is through a pre-drilled well. As part of the buying process we had a professional well and water test done.
As we learned, a well test consist of a couple parts, much more than can it squirt water?
First they ran the pump off and on over several hours, measuring mainly throughput. In other words how much flow or Gallons per Hour can you reliably plan on. Following this test they took a water sample and had it shipped of to a lab to test for water quality. The test takes about a week for results to come back.
Yes, I was a bit nervous while waiting, but everything came back well below the minimums. Woo-Hoo!
The previous had not only installed multiple levels of filters and water softener, but also a nice Reverse Osmosis ( RO) filter directly under the kitchen sink.
Always verify where you will get water from. While city water may be an option for you, avoid it when possible for two reasons; Cost and chemicals.
Power was next on my list. As I discovered to no big surprise for this area, everything was electric with no Solar or Generator augmenting the normal source. I have found my first challenge.
In my case, I decided to add a stationary generator (Generac) for the house in case of outages. When you are all electric and the commercial power goes out you not only lose your heat source ( no woodstove yet) but also the ability to flush the toilet ( remember I will be on a well).
But I am not stopping there. Although I plan on doing more and larger arrays later, I plan on starting with Solar by building a solar array for the pump house. This way we will still have a source of water for cooking, and yes, for flushing.
Solar panels are fairly easy to build at substantial cost savings if you have even a minimum of experience with a soldering iron.
As I get closer to building the array, I’ll share it all with you along with photos. Then, if it works as designed for the pump house, I can move on to the garage shop and the house.
The only remaining item is food. Since I plan on growing as much as possible on this 5 acre lot, and there are only two of us, I don’t see that as much of a problem. However, there will still be the issue of storage and preservation.
From the food I am able to grow in the fruit orchard and the garden, we will be canning and freezing which is what I have done with my produce for years now. Nothing beats fresh peaches in the middle of the winter and know they are from your own garden.
In an upcoming post I will share my plans to bring water out to the garden and build a drip irrigation system.
How are your country plans coming along? Have a date yet?
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