THE RIGHT WAY to develop a natural fresh water spring at an off grid cabin

all right so we're up at cabin uh we are just uh getting up here got all my stuff out of the shed and heading up to our spring that is going to be the first order of business and as you can see the driveway is a bit treacherous but uh i'll get to that another day um this camp is about 10 years old we've built it from the ground up from just a piece of ground uh up here in upstate new york and uh it's been a it's been a good project it's actually the second cabin uh that i built and uh yeah it's good stuff so we are getting up to where the spring is right now um this spring is served has served us very well i gotta say uh but it is in need of some uh life so let me get out show you what we got and we'll go from there all right so i want to talk about uh springs um it's a topic that comes up a lot i've helped out a couple people with this and it's something that is not very well understood and i'll explain some quick i know i get a little long-winded but i'll explain some quick details on on what's what's good what's bad how to make it work for you um there's really three types of springs right there is a truly natural high quality spring like this okay which is what you want and this one i'll explain in a second comes from the ground uh this and the reason why you know that is because it flows all year long in the middle of august you could have a heat wave no issues uh it'll keep flowing it could be it could not rain for a month and it doesn't slow down one bit so that's typically how you know when you have a real spring the one you want to watch out for please you know i see this stuff all the time um is what's called a fissure spring so and i i apologize the the the upstate new york flies are out right now and they're driving me nuts but anyway um a fissure spring is basically a hole in the ground way high up and then another hole further down and it's it's like almost like a pipe in the ground so it's just taking ground water from somewhere else and shooting it out here uh you do not want to use them for obvious reasons there's a ton of contamination possible there's a ton of um you know just it's just nasty it's groundwater you don't want to have that this water is being filtered by you know metric tons of soil and sand and sediment and everything else in the earth and it's coming out of here um you know with 15 or 15 tds which is really low i mean that's total dissolved solids there's basically nothing in this water when it comes out of here uh a fissure spring is going to come out you know with whatever the heck is on top of the ground which you don't want so keep that in mind the other type of spring would be a ground spring and we have one of those over that way and we're probably going to develop that too this year so we'll get to that in another video but what we're going to do today is basically cut this and make what's called a dam containment so you actually build a dam around where your actual water is coming out and then you basically run one pipe out and then an overflow pipe and uh you call it a day and it uh they typically work much better than the system we have because what's happening is hold on one sec so if i don't fall down this hill so here's the problem you're seeing right this is our spring that i tapped years and years ago put hydraulic cement around it's been working great that's my problem i'm getting seepage all around it mostly from this side in fact if i move some of this uh you can literally just see it percolating right out from there see that that's our problem um it's a good thing and a bad thing i mean this spring runs really nicely you know i get a lot of flow out of this spring but the problem is it's getting bypassed right now out of where i originally tapped it probably my fault probably shouldn't have tapped it like this this works sometimes but sometimes the earth will kind of reroute itself and i think that's what occurred here so yeah i uh so i'm gonna cut this um and then start building a containment so i'm gonna start building you know dig this all out right here and then build a u-shaped containment dam basically and then line the inside with hydraulic cement um big job but not too bad should get it done in a couple hours all right so we'll do a little time lapse of that and we'll get back to in a minute [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] today i'm gonna put in the main pipe the overflow and then a bunch of hydraulic cement um to secure up you know kind of the areas that i sealed around and um kind of get it more squared away than it is basically um and then uh so yeah and then i'm going to also be fixing that sagging uh delivery pipe over there putting it on i have a new aircraft cable that i strung up from two trees so it's nice and tight uh with just a slight uh slope i forgot the exact slope i gave it but it's perfect um so i'm gonna do that while this is setting up while i'm after i'm done with the hydraulic cement and uh yeah we should be good to go i'm getting tons of flow right now the water's super clean uh after flowing overnight for a while and um i'm happy with this it's gonna it's gonna come out pretty well i'm gonna give it a nice seal all around the edges and then my pipes and uh yeah and then we should be good to go uh and then i gotta redo this pipe fit it on here and we should be back up in business [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right so i'm tired but we're getting real close this is pretty much done at this point i'm gonna get something else for me to put a knee on here uh so yeah we're real close now um i did all the hydraulic cement uh all around the sides two so a couple things you want to keep in mind when you're doing these um one you don't want to restrict the flow inside so you want to be real careful where you put hydraulic cement inside the dam right that's obvious um the second thing that a lot of people think about is you want to seal the sides because you know ground water is going to come down there will be a lid by the way that's coming later but um groundwater is going to come down everywhere and try to get in it's it's water water gets in wherever it can so you want to build kind of gutters with the hydraulic cement around the dam and away so just try to do that if you can and then just seal up around your uh your penetrations really well so around your main flow your overflow seal it up as well as you can you know you don't want to get this stuff on your hands too much that's why i was using gloves you can get a lot of people have pretty bad reactions to hydraulic cement and cement in general so i would probably wear gloves but you know at the end of it when you want to smooth it out it's just tough those gloves have rips in them anyway so i just went over with a wet hand and kind of smoothed everything out made sure and it's not so much about looking good it's more about flowing water well i want the water to get away from this thing as fast as possible so just something to think about when you when you're doing this main flow pipe has a slight pitch for obvious reasons it is just about a half inch above the uh the floor inside the dam and that's for a purpose uh later on i will likely be coating the entire inside of this um spring with hydraulic cement just for sanitary reasons it just makes cleaning it out much easier plus if a a a new or whatever a lizard gets in there uh i don't know if they're called lizards in the northeast but whatever you know what i mean if he gets in there it's just easy to see them easier to get them out he'll flow out easier and it is what it is plus if anything does get in there it tends to flow out better so you make kind of like a you kind of contour with hydraulic cement inside to make debris that does get in come out and you can you you float it right to the bottom of this pipe so that it's all just kind of like one big gutter in there uh so i'll do that at a later point that's there's no real reason to make a video about that you guys know what i mean to just do it um pretty solid i'm gonna let it set up at this point i'm trying to think there's anything else these are all going to get sniffed the ones that i couldn't pound down any further i probably hit some sort of rock down there couldn't get them down anymore so i'm going to sniff this rebar as low as i can and then i have foam uh close seal foam tape that's going to go underneath the lid to really seal up against the back wall and this you know for now it'll be good enough uh so right now i'm going to reposition and then we're going to do my delivery pipe is a disaster it was a loose rope that i've had for years it's got a big belly in it it would freeze in the winter it was it was a nightmare so uh i got a really nice aircraft cable over there that i strung up nice and tight and uh it should be perfect it's gonna be a little wonky i got to get up on a ladder in the middle of a creek so hopefully you don't watch me bust my you know what but such is life so you see the flow we're getting now too it's a million times better than it was you know this is how it should be i mean this thing is flowing i don't know the gallons per minute but it's it's pretty good i'm not upset about it at all um and this water is just beautiful water this is this work was worth every bit of it i mean we've been drinking this water for years i got it tested a couple years back and all it had was high iron which isn't the end of the world you can you can filter that out and um but otherwise this is like almost pure water you know this spring is just a beautiful thing and and if you have one on your property i suggest you take advantage of it it tends to be much better water for drinking than what you're going to find out there you know a lot of the bottled water you're going to find is uh reverse osmosis purified and then they barely put the minerals back in you actually need minerals in your in your body and your water so um and spring water tends to be again not all of it so get your water tested please as a disclaimer don't just go spring you know drink drinking spring water because again like i talked about earlier it could be a fissure spring but it does tend if you have a good spring and you've hopefully tested it um it tends to be just amazing water you know it's it's it's deep enough but not too deep where you get a lot of the nasty stuff real far down in the earth like a well well water tends to have a lot of stuff you don't want it it's very hard it's got a lot of calcium and this and that and spring water is is kind of what you want it's it's it's just it's earth filtered water it's kind of an awesome thing so anyway i've rambled enough so i'm going to leave this alone let it set up oh that's another thing if you're doing this hydraulic cement you probably saw me struggling a little bit and i've done this a million times so i should know better but it sets up uh very quickly hydraulic cement um in a couple minutes it's hard you know uh so make small amounts that's why i was using this small bucket i got a huge bucket of it down there but if you made all that right now it would be hard by the time you use the quarter of it so don't do that and use it quickly when you bring it up to your site bang it in there and then smooth it out later get it in because it will get hard and then you gotta fight it and it's just a nightmare um another thing i forgot to mention yesterday right under the camera i don't know if you guys can see it there's a bunch of clay so when i first cleaned this out i took the natural clay it's really good stuff up here in new york we have um just really high quality clay it's it's almost like a mixture of like red and gray clay this stuff is awesome back in the day and i've done a couple springs like this too where you just use clay you don't have to use hydraulics i like hydraulics man it just tends to be a little more permanent and whatever i like it but clay uh does a beautiful job too i mean this stuff that we have up here um is is almost like hydraulic cement uh there's a piece of it in the creek down there that was there for two days now and it's still a big chunk sitting in running water so it kind of gives you an idea of what clay can do so yeah that's um that's another thing to keep in mind almost all real springs natural springs uh have clay at the base of them typically the clay i mean this is from thousands of years of of you know earth forming and you know what but um it's what actually helps these these dam up and form you know it helps the springs come out of the ground because the clay is so packed in right here it basically forces the water up and out so something to keep in mind if you're on a low budget or if you just want to keep things all natural clay is pretty amazing and if you play your cards right and really do a good job with your with your excavation and and maybe use concrete for your blocks but then you can use clay to pack in all around it if you have enough i have plenty i just decided you know what i just like using hydraulic cement so something to think about all right so i'm gonna call this job done uh you can see the new delivery uh pipe right there looking pretty good i got aircraft cable going from that tree to that tree it's all protected the tree's protected it shouldn't have an issue with that um yeah so that's all looking good let me get across the creek here so as you can see the uh flow is amazing this is actually better than i've ever had it um which is not too surprising but yeah i'm really happy with it i just did a quick test with that bucket which is a gallon bucket it filled in a little over a minute so call it one gpm um which is i mean that's a gusher of a spring really most springs flow about a quarter of that some flow much more than that i mean i've seen springs up here that are just insane uh but the average spring is you know this or a little less but uh so i cleaned up this two i cleaned up some of these rocks made a little uh platform to fill tanks with and you know i got i got two guys that own properties down the way there uh good friends of mine and they come up and fill their tanks and you know whatever in the winter so this is the winner uh i forgot we used to call it the winter you know shoot let's call it i think that's what we used to call it so it's basically just a piece of drainage pipe cut in half and then uh i put that pipe in in the winter and then just let it all flow down and it could be the middle of february nothing ever freezes it just there will be a pile of ice all around it and then you'll just see the water coming right through it's pretty cool actually so let's get up there i'll show you what we did this oh boy oh yeah jesus this hill is uh something um it doesn't do it justice how much work this was you know dragging up that five gallon bucket of concrete um yeah it sucks but all good things i don't know kind of suck sometimes i guess i don't know what that saying is but uh anyway it's uh it's worth the effort so there's the spring now it looks great it's still kind of curing around where the hydraulic cement is that's the overflow that's my main um just put that up there like i said earlier that lid is going to be replaced by a concrete cast lid uh soon i don't know when i get to it i'm actually going to use that as my form for it so i'll probably do that with the kids they like doing stuff like that so yeah whatever um so in a minute here i'll put it up uh on the tripod and i'm gonna actually uh get the spring running again which is pretty exciting this thing is uh you know i always used to get a ton of flow by on the on the left side and it kind of stunk you know and even from day one uh this spring was quickly done let's do it let's call it that now it's it's something that will be here you know when my kids are older uh and you know hopefully i am but you know whatever i mean this thing should last a long time and give us really good water for a long time which is really the goal here um delivery pipe i still got to play with my uh my angles and my you know i can't even think or talk right now i'm pretty tired but anyway you guys know what i'm saying uh there's got to be a drop from here to there and i just got to make sure it's gradual and enough so i gotta play with that i'm gonna put a uh just a rock on top to weight the lid down um i have double sided actually you know what let me pull it open for you so you guys can see what the inside looks like i don't think i've showed that yet on these videos so that's the inside of the spring um oh man so i uh that's the old one see how little that's flowing that's all i was getting that's where a lot of my water is now coming from i mean it doesn't maybe look like it in the video but there's a ton of water flowing right there uh main pipe there overflow there not too much sediment in there it's looking pretty good uh like i said i'm probably going to end up um you know putting a hydraulic cement on the bottom just to make it a nice clean bottom but uh we'll i'll get to that when i get to it you know right now this is great it's solid good to go so here's the uh double double layer of uh double or of uh closed cell foam does a great job i've used this on another spring it's phenomenal cut down all the rebar good to go concrete's pretty cleared i'm happy not too bad so just gotta snug that up in the back there kind of get a better seal and then i'm gonna grab some rocks to uh throw up there so hang tight real quick all right again this is temporary uh eventually i'm going to put a nice cast cover cast lid but uh let's get to it let's get this thing running again i got to pump up to the cabin soon so uh might as well uh i don't know if i call this a pro tip kind of a just an easy obvious tip but i leave this junk screwdriver up here no no bits uh for all the hose clamps so i'm never you know in the winter spring whatever i have to work on it it's really the only tool i need which is kind of nice so yeah i would leave one of these up here and then i also leave this guy which i'm just gonna use that for now but i i leave my closing caps up here too uh facing down so they don't get bugs and water in them and you know that's that so let's undo this guy pull that down i don't want to get too much water oh i undid the wrong side like a dope tired doing stupid stuff now all right i don't want to get much water coming down here because it's just starting to dry up now which i'm pretty excited about it's been pretty nasty in here for a while uh that hill is looking great i haven't seen it like that in a long time so so that's that uh that's your delivery pipe i mean it's it's that simple you know and then in the winter uh around november i'll pop this pipe back on and just let everything go right down the winter shoot um you know it tends to work pretty well i'll leave that like that to keep water out of it and i'll just leave that pipe right there i'll leave this guy right there you know i kind of keep things simple um yeah and it's flowing great now like i said i'm getting about one one gallon per minute i can't complain with that i mean that ibc tote down there is a 320 gallon uh and this will fill in a couple hours not even probably an hour and a half two hours i mean well what is that so two two three hours yeah if i'm doing my math i don't know it feels quickly you know for 300 something gallons uh you know you can pump that thing dry go do something and before you know it it's back up again so um another project we're gonna do is likely bury uh an underground 500 gallon storage tank on the other side of the creek because and just so you guys all know we don't live on this side of the creek we own this property but the house is on is up on the hill over there that's why we have to go through all this hassle of you know hanging a delivery pipe and a big holding tank and all this stuff you know it's a little bit it's a little bit convoluted i guess you would call it but it works it works really well actually it's always worked and uh we love it you know it's done well for us so um this should just further that that's all i got this job done i'm happy with it i'm going to put a little cover on the overflow and kind of call it a day if you guys have any questions concerns comments concerns don't post them please but comments uh you know questions you may have i'll try to get to them like i said if you're in the northeast i do a fair amount of these for other people as well as some solar stuff and a lot of cabin stuff in general so i'll try to help you out any way i can that's all i got hope you guys enjoyed the video and uh if you could throw me uh i don't know what do they say throw a like throw a subscribe hey i'd appreciate it you know i'm trying to build a channel to help out kind of like-minded people so i think that would be kind of cool thanks very much take care

Channel: DownstaterADV

Views: 202,484

Keywords: off-grid, mountain spring, tiny home, cabin, mountain house, shallow well, spring development, tiny house, camp, off grid, offgrid, prepper, prepping, sustainability, water filter

Id: fSz6uZS7Q2M

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Mon May 25 2020