Colorado Sustainable living question.

[ZombieKillingGeek]

I live in Colorado. I am considering moving up into the foothills (conifer, evergreen area). The houses I am consider moving into are mostly served with water from wells. Unfortunately, the power goes out in these areas quite often and I am concerned about long term disasters (winter storms are quite common and so are fires) that will leave me without water. I have found some hand pumps that I believe will serve me well, but I am afraid water rights may be an issue.

From what I can tell, you need a permit to drill a well in Colorado. Typically, this refers to a residential well (many appear to be exempt), well for irrigation, or well for livestock. I haven't been able to find anything about a well for a hand pump.

My intuition is that hand pumps are not regulated because they are pretty archaic, few people use them, and they would have little practical impact on the depletion of water resources. Does anyone have any insight?

Also, are home gardens and small greenhouses covered within residential wells?

Thanks
ZEEKGeek

[Blacksmith]

Water is tightly controlled in Colorado. There is some good information from the sources in this Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_app ... n_doctrine

[ZombieKillingGeek]

Thanks for the reply. I live in Denver now. And water is becoming an even bigger issue because we have no snowpack, no rain, and constant wildfires this summer. My problem is I can't find anything on hand water pumps. My best guess is that if it was used for household use, it would be fine, because there is a residential exception for household use, but I would hate to buy a place thinking I have a plan for water and later find out I am SOL.

[Katica]

Try calling your city bylaw office?

[Blacksmith]

I would look for an existing place with transferable water rights and/ or water with rights to the water. We could have a long conversation about the destruction of the highlands due to improper water management out there but it would likely get pretty political.

[RoneKiln]

I am not an expert in water rights or wells, but I would expect the permit would be to dig the well (and possibly tied to a certain volume of water allowed) and the pumping mechanism would be less relevant. Any permitting agent or code enforcement official worth anything would be pretty suspiscious of someone claiming they wanted to dig a new expensive well and only attach a handpump to it. They'd expect you to attach an electrical pump the moment their back was turned.

Why would you dig a new well for this if the property already has one? I expect it would be far more affordable to attach a handpump to your existing well alongside the electric pump. That's what the few people I've known to put in hand pumps have done in Western Washington.

You'd also need to ensure the water table was shallow enough for a handpump to be physically capable of bringing water up. If the well has to be run too deep, your hand pump won't be capable of generating enough power to bring it up.

[ZombieKillingGeek]

I believe you just outlined the problem quite well. Shallow wells (30 feet) can be hand pumped quite well, unfortunately, most of the water is below that. Probably close to 100 feet or more. From what I can tell, these systems need a pump system with mechanisms that go all the way down to the water level. I don't think I can put one of these systems in next to my existing well. So, I was kind of hoping to be able to drill a second well. But maybe I should be a different question.

How should I be getting water in a long term power outage situation. (Keep in mind, I am not asking how to store water, I am more interested in acquiring it.)

Is there a better way? Living near a brook or a stream that runs all year long is hard and the rockies don't get a lot of rainfall. How do you plan on getting water?

[doitnstyle1]

A well is a well is a well. You have to have a permit to dig one. If you have more than 35 acres you can apply for an agricultural permit well which allows you to use the well to water crops and water livestock. There may be limitation to what they actually permit you to use it for. Anything less can only be used for household uses. You can't even have a spigot on the outside of the house.

Current laws recently allow for water catchment in cisterns but unless things have changed in the last two years you must have the system tied into your existing water system. I heard that most recently the cistern system is being allowed with even less restrictions, but I haven't researched that personally. It is merely here say on my part.