Developing a water spring

I have a year round spring up the hill from my house. How should i tap it? I would like to put a pipe in and run into a holding tank than run the holding tank to the house. My question is how do i correctly tap the spring at its source and pipe it to the holding tank? Will it have to pass code? Thanks for the help.

I managed a water system for four properties with a 14 acre watershed. Whether you can do this will most likely be determine by the health epartment in your county. Most places that I have been frown on open water sources because they are easy to contminate.
We had a small dam with a clean out for the holding pond. We had a pumphouse that sat over the concrete plenum. The water flowed out of the spring, into the holding pond, through the pump house plenum, and into the creek. The pump and the electrical panel were in the pump house. We had a 10,0000 gallon concrete reservior, ~110 feet above the pump plenum with a float switch that turned the pump on to keep the reservior full. The reservior was at a high point above all the properties and the water flowed by gravity oever a couple of miles of 6 inch pipe. We had to clean the holding pond, plenum, and the reservior out yearly because of leaf debris that got into the pond and sediment that got pumped into the reservior.

We had problems in the winter with the electrical line from the float switch being damaged by falling limbs (and once by a black bear!).
Developing a spring is very dependent of each individual site and the sizing of the resevior depends on the spring minimum flow rate. I would suggest you talk to the NCRS or you local county extension folks to gather information on how to proceed. Check with the health department to see if it"s permitted for domestic use. Our old system was condemened by the county because it was the last one around and they didn"t want to inspect it and deal with it anymore.

Find the spring bubbling out of the ground. Dig down with a backhoe until sure you have located the water vein about 36 inches below ground or just below the depth whatever the vein is. Dig a trench maybe 8-10 ft long at or below the level of the water vein. Buy standard 4"septic filter field pipe to install in the trench then place washed river gravel (3/4 to 1 inch graded round stone)all around the bottom and top of pipe installed in the trench bottom to collect the spring flow.Place river gravel also at least 6-12 inches above top of leach line pipe. Place a heavy gauge layer of plastic sheeting or impermeable material over the top of this layer of stone in the trench then backfill with soil. Install a septic distribution box that you can open up at the downstream end of your collection tile to serve as a sediment clean out access in the future. At this distribution box reduce your pipe size to 1.5 inch and trench this pipe into a storage basin such as a septic tank or plumb it right into your existing house water line. Take a sample of your spring water to county health department and have it tested for bacteria to be sure it is potable. Your local contractors may know how to do this if you are not doing it yourself.

Don't know the legalities other than you ought to be able to drink water out of a toilet on your own property if you want.
There were/is springs all over the area where I grew up. Two folks I remember the most ran the overflow from their house tank thru another tank (one guy had a real neat setup carved out of sandstone).
Both of them fished constantly and one caught snapping turtles from area ponds. They'd put their catch in the tanks for a week or two to let the spring water flush them out before butchering. Never had fish or turtle from anyone but them so can't speak for the process working or not.
Few places here with a pipe running out of a hillside into a sandstone tank where folks fill containers for drinking water.

Dave

There is a fiber filter material available that you could (maybe) should wrap the perf pipe in that will keep silt and other goodies from eventually filling the pipe. Used in landslide remediation dewatering systems.

No idea on codes, but in my area if there's a 100ft (I think) minimum well depth for new wells. If you don't care about codes, you can drive in a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Water-Source-Wp-3080-Supplies-Points/dp/B000BQR8PS">sand point</a>. I live where there are many springs and there are a lot of these in use. However, my neighbor built a new house a few years ago and he had to have a well drilled for the building permit. They wouldn't let him tap into the sandpoint well that he was using on the house he was replacing.

How much volume and the amount of fall? Maybe able to make a water ram operate?

HERE,to make it legal for drinking you have to install a chlorinator on it,if your using surface or lake water(for drinking) .How far above the house?I may still have a chart somewhere at home that tells how much pressure for each ft of fall.Or you could probably find it on the net.lots of times though when you start messing with them you seal them off and they stop flowing.especially in sand.Had a neighbor family that had four girls years ago that simply took a old barrel,cut the bottom and top off and worked it slowly down into ground over a matter of several days.After they had barrel down in ground,with only about six inches sticking up, they dipped out inside and put a top on with and a overflow out the side,then poured cement around out side to stop seepage.They got every bit of the water they used out of it for about 50 years.But they would boil their drinking/cooking water . If you are down hill you could try doing the same with a pipe from the over flow running to tank or a cistern where you could treat it if needed.

I built a new house on 40 acres back in 95. Had a very good spring in the hollow behind the house. The local well guy developed it for us and we used it for all our water needs for 10 years. He dug down on the uphill side of the wet area to find the max flow seepage point. Then he dug out a huge hole with his backhoe. He put in 7 round concrete tile sections-a stack of 3 and a stack of 4. I was told that they are 200 gallon each. Then two loads of peagravel. The water from the spring ran into this cistern. This was covered by heavy plastic and then aboaut 4 feet of topsoil. They put an 8 inch pvc pipe in the middle and ran a water line below the frost level from the spring about 600 feet up to our house. A submersible pump was attched to the water line and pumped the water uphill to our house. Worked great-just like a regular well. I still use that water for watering my garden and for our horses. Went to city water when it came thru here in case I ever want to sell the house to a city slicker sometime down the road. Don"t know if it was up to code though.

You could try just shoving a sand point down into it and start a siphon.