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Texas Drought |
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Texas has been in drought for several years and the situation is going from bad to worse. By the 2nd quarter of 2006 the drought was creating real water problems (fig. 1). Crops were dying and aquifers were receding. When 2007 rolled around there was a reasonable amount of rain but not enough to make up for the previous year so when 2008 turned out to be dry it did not take long for the drought to return to Texas with a vengeance (Fig 2)
By August, 2009 a huge area of Texas was in exceptional drought and many Texans are beginning to find that the water table is dropping to the point that they are running out of water trying to do simple things like clothes washing and showering. Well Manager® Systems have helped Texans to collect water they could not get otherwise so Well Manager owners are weathering the drought better than some of their neighbors. One example is Roy Vance, who lives about 40 miles up Route 183 north of Austin. Some neighbors were drilling new wells or drilling deeper because their wells were starting to have problems while others seemed to be okay. Roy considered drilling deeper or drilling a new well but decided to conduct an online search for options. He learned through research on the Texas Water Board website that the location of your well can make a big difference in the amount water available from your well. If his well were located 1000 feet east or west he would be one of the neighbors who were not having water problems. Unfortunately, those locations were on someone else’s property. Once Roy discovered that, he began researching tank systems. He had seen a number of large tank systems in the area as they are fairly common in Texas where everything is BIG.
You see, in Texas the most common tank storage systems are built using a 2500 gallon tank with an electric float to turn off the well pump when the tank is full. The well pump is protected by a Coyote, a PumpTec or some other brand of motor protector which turns the pump off when the well is emptied and keeps it off for a selectable period of time after which it allows the pump to come on again. Operating the system this way treats the well like a sump pump pit; pumping it empty then waiting for it to refill only to empty it again. We explained why that type of operating system was a bad for the well’s health and he was comfortable with that explanation (if you would like to read about this see Over pumping can lead to yield decline ) but we were proposing less than 10% of what others considered to be the proper amount of storage and that seemed inadequate to him. We discussed the matter and explained that, in the case of potable water storage, we did not believe that more was better because more usually creates problems with bacteria and algae growth. (You can read more on that here Storing Water in Above Ground Tanks – when done use the back arrow to return here). After reading the information we provided he was convinced but, just to be sure he added a second tank so he would have 400 gallons of storage. Roy’s system was installed in August, 2006. If you are wondering how Roy is doing this year (2009) your answer is in Roy’s testimonial which he sent in August of 2009. You can read his words here Do It Yourself Testimonials . Roy is one Texan who is not having the water problems during the extreme drought that has left others in his part of the country suffering. Not long after Roy bought his system, his son Scott bought one. Scott had much larger needs than Roy so he has a Texas sized system that stores 1750 gallons but manages collection in a very interesting way. To read about his system go here |
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We met Roy in July, 2006 when he began having trouble with his well. Roy ran out of water and had to lower his pump 60 feet. That put him back in business but he was becoming concerned because the well was 540 feet deep and the pump was now at 504 feet. If things got worse, he could lower the pump a little more but he would probably need foot the bill for a larger pump to do that. 
His internet research eventually led him to