Water works

We will need decent pressure and a ready supply of water, so a new water tank complements the new septic tank. It's being placed roughly 10 vertical meters (1 bar in head) above the roof of the new house, making it a good 1.3 bar head for the cottage!!

Installing the tank was interesting and fun, but cold and muddy.
Ally the digger man prodded around the source and located our spring, and then the existing "pipe". This is an old traditional stone drain and runs down the field to the existing blue water tank (a small barrel sunk in to the ground). We believe that at some point the stone drain at the downstream (tank) end was damaged or blocked, so they dug it out and put in some unknown length of blue MDPE. The outlet from the tank/barrel is 3/4" black alkathene - i.e. old.

Ally dug out the source, and we decided to utilise the stone drain as the overflow/runoff, and install a brand new feed pipe to the cottage. To enable this he brought up a concrete collector ring.

First we got the source's seam exposed, which exposed a very interesting pink granite, fractured by the constant water flow. As he dug it and unblocked it, unsurprisingly it flowed better. To maintain this flow we put in place a concrete ring, and then backfilled over the seam with new, cleaner 40mm stone.

Stone being delivered - for the soakaway & source

Concrete ring in place. The overflow drain goes west (right and down in the photo) and the outlet to the new tank, south (you can just see the tank lying down on the right)

The ring from the drain's position

Once the ring was in place, we dug the hole for the tank and fitted it with an inlet and outlet connector. This involved drilling a hole in the tank (scary thing to do with a new expensive tank). Jaimin had to crawl in to the tank to do this, and fit the connectors. At the outlet position, a trench was dug for the outflow pipe which was then connected and run out to the track that leads down the hill. Also - the section through the soil was very interesting.

A great soil section - topsoil, weathered subsoil, weathered bedrock.

Big hole

Outflow pipe trench

Good height/head for pressure

After backfilling the tank hole and trench we turned our attention to tidying up the spring, and covering the collector ring with a pallet to save the sheep from harm. Notice how the water has filled up and collected. The cement ring collects it and has a hole in for the outflow to the tank. There is also an outflow to the drain, which is higher than the pipe outlet thus coming in to effect only when excess water needs to be taken away. You can see the drain in action in the video below:

Our own Highland spring 

The next thing was to dig a trench down the middle of the "track" all the way tot he cottage to lay the rest of the new blue pipe:

It soon became evident that the drain water was surfacing and would need dealing with, so we got hold of a 100m of 100mm perforated land drain coil and laid this alongside the blue pipe, and in to the ditch by the road.

With the blue and black pipes laid, the drain taking effect and the tank in place, we headed back up the hill backfilling, and then cut the final trench from the source to the tank, installing a stopcock upstream of the tank to enable us to stop the supply and empty the tank if required.

The water flows well, and although we've not yet connected it to the cottage supply fully, it's all ready to go...