THE HOMESTEAD CISTERN

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Although we don't necessarily recommend the use of such poisons, chlorine and other chemical disinfectants can be added to your cistern—either manually or by means of an automatic dispenser—from time to time to ensure the sterility of your water supply. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Some commercially available water disinfection units rely on heat or ultraviolet light—rather than chemicals—to get the job done. Look in the Yellow Pages of your phone book under "Water Purification Equipment" or "Water Supply Systems".] You may want to consult the local health authorities—or your county agricultural extension office—about whether or not you should disinfect your cistern's water.

THE PUMP

Unless your cistern is situated above faucet-level, you'll need a pump to force the water out of it. Here—as with wells—you can choose from any number of kinds of devices (some expensive, some not) to do the job. For simplicity and low cost, we installed a hand-operated piston pump atop our cistern . . . and it works quite well. If you decide to go this route, remember that a piston pump can only draw water a maximum of 25 feet from the source. (Which means you should build your cistern close to the house if you intend to use an indoor hand pump to empty it.)

THE KUJAWINSKI SYSTEM

Our own system—though it works well enough for our needs—bears the marks of a first-time do-it-yourselfer and could stand some upgrading in certain areas. For instance, our water collection surface (a 24' X 24' cabin roof) should really be somewhat bigger to furnish us with a truly adequate water supply. (As it is, it takes a 5" rainfall to bring our cistern up to the 600-gallon mark.) Then too, the underground tank could've been a little larger . . . but digging through the hardpan clay we have in this area is no easy chore.

I might add that although fieldstone is inexpensive and abundant, it was not the best possible choice of construction material for our holding tank, since [1] the stones in our area are of odd sizes and shapes (rarely square or flat) and [2] the process of fitting each rock in place individually was excruciatingly slow and fatiguing. A small additional outlay for the extra cement and gravel that would've been necessary to do the whole job in concrete would have made life a lot easier . . . and construction a great deal speedier. (The cistern's reinforced-concrete top was certainly easy enough to fabricate.) Now that the job is finished, though, I suppose our only real regret is that the beauty of the cistern's stone walls cannot be seen from above.

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