O/T Hauling drinking water

Growing up on Dad's farm in the 40's,and 50's we didn't have city water. The only water was well water. During the summer months the well went dry. Every Sunday Dad would load a water tank on his chevy flat bed, and go to the next town and fill the tank with water. Dad would pump the water to our water tank for the next weeks water supply. Water came to our area in the early 60's, then we got a inside flusher. I didn't realize at the time this must been a real pain for Dad to do every Sunday morning. Anyone live in a area where it is necessary to haul water? Stan

Yep.. We have to haul water every 7-10 days or so.. Summer or winter..

We had a well when I was a kid.. and I believe the mid 90's is when most everyone in the township started having well problems (local stone quarries were blamed, but was never officially proved)..

I must have been 12-13 when we had a new well drilled, it lasted almost 2 years, but the water was horrible with sulfur and iron.. Most people put in burial vaults to hold water.. Now the county health dept. says no more burying tanks.. So my house (put up after the new regs) has a 1500 gal poly tank in a small shed just behind the house.

We're pretty lucky.. only about 4 miles to the water station.. Dad or I haul for My uncle, myself, and my dad.. Most weeks we'll haul 3000 gallons (or 3 loads.. Dad bought a brand new "nurse tank" trailer like the co-ops rent out for liquid fertilizers in about 1998).. and since i know it'll get asked, a load of water is between $8.50 and $10.00, depending on the day of the week, time of the day.. Usually pressure is highest about 5 to 6 am (or so dad says.. I just put the money in the slot and go.. got to have water whether it costs a dollar or 20, right? ), and the higher the pressure, the more gallons for the money..

The only person I know that still has a actual drilled well around here anymore is my grandpa and grandma, and you can smell the sulfur when ya walk in, and look at grandma's dish towels, kitchen sink, washing machine drum (you get the picture..) and you can see the signs of the iron.

Hard to believe something so simple can make such a long post.

Brad

before we got a new well put in our well would usually get pretty low in the summer. I used to go to the neighbors every few days with three fifteen gal. poly drums in the bucket of the tractor to get water for the animals.

You are in northern Cal huh? Yeah, no fooling. Imagine what your grandad had to do before chevy trucks and bulk tanks? Your grandma walk to the next town with a 10 quart pail?
All these painful threads worrying about chinese ships and the future of ground troops... hey, if Washington -and state capitals, don't grab the H2O bull by the horns... well military problems don't mater if food don't grow and toilets don't flush.... dehydration, starvation and viruses kill just as efficently as bullets. the US becomes third world really fast.... How deep are your wells nowdays? Or does everyone around tap into the line? Yours comes from Mendicino or Sierras? I was falling in love with sme 'cheap land' in Calavaras County... you know why it was cheap huh??

"The higher the pressure, the more gallons for the money..."

Can you explain what you mean by that?

The only way it makes sense is if you are buying X MINUTES at the water station instead of X gallons.

Water can't be compressed, so 1000 gallons at 5PSI is 1000 gallons at 5000PSI...

When we had well problems we would get 10 gallon
milk cans of water from the neighboring farm!

Not any more but I remember hauling water with Dad with 6 or 8 - 40 quart milk jugs in the back of his pickup. An old Buick with the trunk lid and back seat removed.

Dad told me the story that when he was a youngster he visited an aunt who lived in the "City."
The city had no running water so they kept a barrel in the back porch that was filled twice a week by a fellow with a water wagon.

Don't know if this is the same, but a large thourghbred horse
Farm I worked has a farmall 460 with a gutted manure spreader with a couple hundred gallon water tank mounted in it, 7 days a week someone would have to fill the tank and drive to all the pastures to fill the stock tanks with water for the horses. There is no way to bring hoses to all the paddocks.

(quoted from post at 06:53:37 12/19/11) "The higher the pressure, the more gallons for the money..."

Can you explain what you mean by that?

The only way it makes sense is if you are buying X MINUTES at the water station instead of X gallons.

Water can't be compressed, so 1000 gallons at 5PSI is 1000 gallons at 5000PSI...

Click to expand...

I'm no expert as to how the "dispensing unit" works (but ask my dad.. he KNOWS *rolls eyes* just like he knows everything else.. just ask him) But.. we have a 50 cent, dollar, and 5 dollar button..

Every time the water "seems" to get more expensive dad will tell you it's cause they turned down the pressure.. "Look, listen (says thy guy who is supposed to be wearing hearing aids) the pressure is low.. They come and turned it down again!! (explicitives start flying here)" (Yea, whatever.. Possible I suppose, but I don't see em coming to toy with it every week like he thinks)

I do believe we buy "time" and not "water" with the money, as nearly every time you'll get a different amount of gallons for say 50 cents (yea, we have to do it 50 cents at at time, because if ya put in a $5 they rip ya off *roll eyes again* ) the end result is one load will set you back say $9.00, the next load might only be $8.00 or it could be $10 (or any 50 cent increment between.. I think 50 cents is good for 40-80 gallons, per the board at the station)

So I hope my long rant about dad (and short answer to the original question ) sum it up a little.. and hopefully dad brings a chuckle to the topic.. (I love my dad.. He's just not happy unless he's complaining.. or unless he knows..)

Brad

Yeah water in lower MI sucks. We lived in Eaton Rapids area on an old farm and the water was terrible...rusty and stinky. In-laws near Fowlerville have it even worse. I LOVE Washington water....don't have to treat it in any way and I get a little over 2 million cubic feet delivered to me at 70 psi for $375 a year!

I hauled water for the cows one winter. About 500 gallons every day. Biggest pain was waiting for the tank to fill. Didn't have a valve but 2 90's with a short nipple between them so when I got home the couplers would not be froze. Bud

I just do remember my Grandparents on Mom's side living on a farm, that the well was bad. Grandpa walked a half mile to a neighbors house and carried back 2 three gallon buckets full every day. I don't ever remember them having a car.

Kinda brings me back to my early youth in Chicago in the early '50s. I lived in a high-rise on Lake Shore Drive, AKA the "Gold Coast", that overlooked the Oak Street Beach. Several times a week, the ice man would come down Elm Street and chip off about 25lbs from a big block in his 1-ton van. He would carry it to the exterior icebox door of some of the single family houses that ran back to Clark Street. Hard to imagine now that those houses did not have refrigerators.

Back in the early 50s we had a hand dug shallow well. Had a pump in the house and every summer the well would go dry. Hauled water in milk cans every day for the house about a quarter mile from a roadside spring down the hill. Finally had a well drilled 385 feet deep plenty of water and great tasting. This was on my parents farm. With a Ford 8n, a milk can just sits on the drawbar between the staybars and doesn't fall off. A long long time before we moved to the farm in 1949 someone had dug out that spring and built a concrete box around it and a small wooden shed over it. We dipped the water out with a bucket.

I still haul all the drinking/cooking water at the farm about a half mile from well to the house.been meaning to run a line since 38,(i'm begining to suspect i wont ever get around to it).If i run a line i would have to put in indoor plumbing and all and thats just more to keep up.LOL Did run electricity down a few years ago,since global warming kicked in summers have been hotter than when i was a kid,and air conditioning is pretty nice these days.even added electric heat since firewood has got so much heavier.

Back in the 40s we had a dig well that was rock lined. Had the worlds best tasting water but would go dry in extreme dry weather. I was a small boy then but old enough to go to a spring down a hill behind the house on the side of a creek. We would carry water back in 2 gallon buckets, preferrably aluminum because they were lighter. We couldn't get the well dug deeper because of the rock lining, in fact well diggers refused to go down in rock lined wells.One well digger said he did go down in one once and was being drawn to the top when the bucket he was riding hit a rock and the walls started caving in. he could see the rocks piling up beneath him but they kept pulling him to the top. Later the bucket got stuck in the bottom of our well and Daddy lowered a short piece of railroad iron to flatten it out so it could be pulled out. You guessed in, the walls fell in and we had to have a new well dug. This time the folks put a pump in and we had running water in the house. No bathroom until I was grown, but running water was a great luxury. The well didn't go dry either.

KEH

I grew up on cistern water. A few homes here still have it but mostly we've gotten municipal water all over the county. Around here not many wells and those that are, arent fit to drink. Too much fractured limestone. We'd get a load hauled every other week or so, less if it rained. Dad would set an alarm clock when I got in the shower, 5 minutes, no more.