2500 Gallons of fun!

We bought our cistern! Hurray! It was very expensive for us. Yet worth every penny. This cistern is going to provide our water for the rest of our life. The cistern holds 2500 gallons. We will need to get a second one eventually. But this will be what we have for at least the next few years. Look how huge it is! We were told it weighs 400 pounds! We thought it would be difficult to get from the end of the driveway to the house, which is about 1/8 a mile. It wasn't at all though! It practically rolled itself half the way. The other half took only a small amount of effort. Standing it up and getting it into place was the most difficult part, but nothing even close to "difficult." So, the two of us got it up there, no problem!

We will harvest our rainwater with it. Water will be collected off our roof, and into the cistern. From there it will gravity feed into a series of filters. Then it will go into a pressure tank.. Or the other way around, I'm not sure actually. But we wont be doing that until (probably) next winter. It's an above ground cistern. This means that if we want to bury it (which we do), we have to put tire walls around it to support the dirt, so the dirt doesn't push into the cistern walls. The plastic is about 1/2 an inch think.

We had such an awesome day of friends helping us on Saturday! Three friends from ABQ came and dug dug dug. They also pounded, and moved dirt too! It was such a relief to have some help. The first help we've had all winter. The summer was great, friends showing up to help left and right. Luckily that's right around the corner again. Our neighbor, who has been super helpful and awesome, also showed up and helped us connect the cistern to the water pipe. Without him, we would have listen to the guys at the hardware store, and really botched this one up. We really got lucky with our awesome neighbors. Nick and Nora moved dirt from the "kitchen" all day long. It looks great! We're about 75% done with moving the dirt. Unfortunately, moving the dirt is much easier than leveling it off for the room. But man oh man, what a great start! I'm so excited! It looks like the kitchen will get its roof in much less time than I originally thought. If we skipped burying the house, we could have it done in 3 or 4 months! But, I think we'll stick to the plan, and bury the side and back of this thing so that it starts holding a much more constant temperature.

busy busy busy