Well cleaning

When we first discovered the well, a few years back, it was so infested with blankets of slime and nastiness, we poked it with a stick, decided it wasn't very deep (or exciting), made a secure cover, and then more or less forgot about it.  This summer there's been a water crisis in the village, so we decided to open it up and investigate what sort of well we have...
For the last 3 months we've been pumping out the water, removing buckets of slime/rubbish/plastic/glass/rubble/wire/mud, then letting it fill up again - and at 5 metres down we still haven't reached the bottom.  Soon our ladder will not be long enough, so we'll have to dangle off it to mine the slime pit..

As and when we do reach the bottom, the next question will be how we set up a management/pumping method to make best use of it.

Water

It’s all very well choosing to live in a forest, but you do need a little house for protection against the elements, and there are certainly plenty of elements around here.  The shack, originally built as a fish restaurant, has provided us with a place to live while we get ourselves organised.  This is the first item on the list to make living the dream a possibility.

The second need is water.  The availability of clean fresh water is not only a critical factor for our ecological sustainability goals, but also in itself truly wonderful and amazing.  High up on the mountain water is collected from natural springs and fed into a header tank, from where it’s distributed to all the village houses  by gravity feed (no electricity, no pumps).  Apart from a few weeks at the height of summer (when they empty the tank for cleaning) we can rely on drinking water coming out of the tap.  In addition, we’re also the proud owners of a well, completely overgrown, but full of murky black water, which we plan to clean up and use for irrigation.

There’s also a little stream running past the house, separating us from the forest, but creating the sound of running water at all times.  It helps to create the calm, peaceful and tranquil ambience of the place.  It also undermines our foundations and stops us hearing the telephone ringing or the bell at the gate – so if you come by, surrounded by all the silence and quiet, you must shout loudly to be heard...

CT