Pump house layout
I’ve been thinking about the pump house, how I’m going to construct it, building the walls, how the cover for the well is going to work. I’ve got some of the details ironed out.
I need the pump house for a variety of uses; water storage, canned food storage, root cellar, wintering over plants, water treatment. It’s got to be multipurpose or there’s no point in changing what I’ve got.
Right now we have the pump house sitting on top the well which makes servicing anything about our water supply situation problematic. The outside dimension of the pump house is 6’6″ square. The interior height of the pump house is between 3 and 4 feet. Anything done in the pump house is performed squatting, sitting or kneeling. Ugh. If we needed to service the pump, we’d have to lift the roof off the pump house to pull the pump out of the well. Double ugh.
So, a new pump house is the plan and it’s my task for the summer while Wadly’s working. I did the research this morning for a building permit and the building I’ve planned comes in at 196sf, under the 200sf threshold for requiring one.
There are two walls of the new pump house which will sit on the well curb. I can put posts in the ground set in concrete for the three outside corners, but the posts for the three inside corners must be mounted to the well curb.
To mount the posts to the curb I will need to drill holes in the curb and mortar in rebar at the post locations. I can drill the posts and set them over the rebar pins. I’ll need smaller holes between the posts for fastening the reinforcing wire. If I don’t have an impact drill by then, I’ll need to rent/purchase one.
The new pump house needs to have room for a pH conditioner, two 36 inch diameter storage tanks (165 gal ea), a carbon filter, a uv filter and shelves for canned goods. I’d like to put the chest freezer in there as well. I don’t know if the heat generated by the freezer compressor would cause a problem. I’ll have to look into that.
I also have to look at what I’m going to do for a floor. I want to keep the room connected to the ground to moderate the temperature year round. That will involve insulating the ground around the pump house and well out about 6′. I plan to strip the surface cover back and spread bentonite clay to seal the area around the well anyway, so there’s no reason not to lay an insulative layer over that.
I’ll probably pack crushed rock inside the pump house footprint to provide a level base for the floor, then I can lay whatever material I choose as my floor surface over that. Concrete may be best, with a central floor drain that exits out away from the well.
As you can see, I’m still planning. The more I explain it, the more the bits I think about and the more my plan comes together. The eps-crete walls are a given. That stuff rocks.