What a simple cabin water system

 

Tiny Shurflo pump produces four gallons per minute

When we were planning our cabin for Red Lake a few years ago I talked with a merchant in Red Lake who sells solar products. I was planning on mounting a big water tank on the hill behind the cabin that would feed by gravity. I wondered if there was a solar pump that would fill that tank. If not, I would use my Honda fire pump.

"Please, don't do that," said the man. "Try this system instead."

So last year, even though we only have the smaller "dockhouse" finished, we bought his system. It consists of the little pump shown above, a 12-volt battery, a small solar panel and a small charge controller. The whole thing, except for the solar panel, will fit inside of a plastic tote. The solar panel can be mounted to the top.

We hurriedly installed it, just to save carrying water pails from the lake to the dockhouse. We just have a single water tap inside. 

It worked like a charm although we were never able to connect the solar system. We were missing electrical connectors and the wire we had was too heavy to wrap around the little screws on the charge controller. So we just attached the pump to the battery. It has an automatic pressure switch built in. The pump comes on when we run the tap and supplies four gallons of water a minute. That's enough even for a shower. When we get the bigger cabin finished it may be necessary to add a pressure tank to keep up with demand but right now, that's all the water we need. 

I charged the battery with our generator only twice during the time we used the pump. It ran about two weeks between charging. The battery charger showed the battery really hadn't discharged very much in that time.

I was stumped when I went to attach the intake and discharge lines. None of my half-inch fittings would work. Finally Brian from the camp looked at it and realized it actually was made for Pex pipe. He gave me some clamps and his Pex tool and we were in business.