🚀 go-pugleaf

David Sidlauskas wrote:
> 
> In Santa Cruz County, CA 3 GPM is required before you can get a permit to build a
> single family house.  Since you will generally have a water tank or some other
> reservoir average flow rather than peak flow is the concern.  In other words,
> does the well produce enough water on a daily basis to meet your needs on a daily
> basis.  13 GPM is over 18,000 gallons per day, which is a lout for a house.  If
> you've been on city water, check your old water bills to see what you've been
> using.  Irrigation will of grass, landscape, etc. will generally take much more
> water than household use.

     We use a spring (for which the minimum used to be only 1 or
2 GPM), and the (sustained) yield is perhaps 2 GPM minimum late
in a drought year.  With a 5000 gallon storage tank, this has 
always provided far more than we use.  We have perhaps 2000 SF
of landscaping, and four people in the house, but no lawn, so
our irrigation requirements are noticeable but not huge.  I 
think we use perhaps 500 to 1000 gallons a day in hot weather,
when the irrigation requirements are highest, and much less otherwise.

     A large storage tank is really helpful, especially if you can
locate it high enough on a hill above the house to get gravity
water pressure.  That gives you stable pressure, even across
several days of power outage, without having to run the pump
on a generator.  

    As another poster pointed out, your yield test may not have
been complete enough.  We used to have a well, which initially
yielded about 6 GPM, when tested as you describe, but it turned
out not to yield anything like that much over a 24 hour period,
and eventually dropped to a 24-hour yield of under 0.5 GPM, whereupon
we switched to using the spring.  Also, the water from the well
was often cloudy with mud, especially as the rainy season 
progressed, despite being 180 feet deep.  It would be useful
to try pumping at a limited rate, say 2 GPM, for 24 or 48 hours,
to be sure you are drawing from a significant aquifer, not a small
pool with a very low replenishment rate (which is what I believe
my old well was doing).  The static level in my well, when I was
not pumping, was about 40 feet above the bottom, but it dropped
a lot after when pumping steadily.