Our plans for water

We have no water on the land at Green Hamlet but there is a marsh area which Philip will survey in June 2009. At the moment we intend to dig a pond in the marsh to create a pool where we can take water for building and filter it for drinking. Neighbours nearby have drilled for water and discovered it at 50m but it was too sulphurous for drinking. Drilling (as of May 2009) costs 180zl per meter. There is no charge if the drilling team don't find water. If water is found there is no guarantee that it will be sweet, so we could be paying about 10,000zl for bad water.

The council will install a supply from the mains at Pupki for about 20,000zl. Drilling 50m and finding sour water is about half the cost of getting the mains water supply to the land. In future years at Green Hamlet we hope to be running all sorts of interesting courses and events that will attract lots of visitors. This will require a reliable water supply, so for the moment we are thinking of installing a mains solution. We will investigate the logistics and planning issues about this in June 2009. We will of course collect as much rain water as we can to minimise our dependence on mains water.

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More here about water as the months go by. The next installment will probably be in July 2009, hopefully with pictures of our progress with the pond. Jarema, who teaches survival, will show us how to filter water with moss and charcoal.

For the moment, if you're interested in how to purify wild water, here is Ray Mears on the BBC showing you how to make a sphagnum moss and charcoal filter. The bit about water purification is 5 minutes 20 seconds in to the clip.
 
 

And here is how to tap a birch tree for water. You can only do this in early Spring. Birch sap is said to be one of the healthiest and purest drinks, full of minerals that the tree has sucked up from the ground. Of course I'm not suggesting we will use birch sap for our water supply but a fresh drink of birch sap is something you really must try one day.

Tapping a birch tree for sap is quite common in Eastern Europe including Poland, Scandinavia and Russia. The birch sap season lasts from around late March, early April for about three or four weeks, until the trees start to bud.