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A spring is an upwelling of water at the ground's surface. If you intend to use stream water, youabsolutelymusthaveit comprehensively tested at a laboratory. The good news is that natural sediments and soil organisms do an excellent job of keeping water clean, but they can become overloaded with heavy or repeated contamination. Pollutants in your test results may mean you need to change sources and go deeper for cleaner water. You may find pesticides from the farm next door, and E. coli or increased phosphates indicate contamination with sewage. Finding a spring is often easier than it sounds. A good time to look is during the early spring months, in periods of high snowmelt or heavy rain. Watch for small runnels emptying into roadside ditches or otherwise dry canyons or arroyos, and follow them to their sources. Check back monthly and watch the progression of the local vegetation. If it remains green, or the ground remains wet year-round, there's a spring there. Many springs are little more than seeps. If you live in a wooded area, look for wide, indented lines in the ground. This indicates a channel of some kind, either above or below ground. Seeps will produce a muddy basin or a small pond. The presence of marsh plants growing there in dark soil means a spring is present. It's okay if the marsh stinks a bit; you're going to have the water tested anyway, and smell isn't necessarily an indicator of serious contamination. Once the spring has been located, it needs to be cleaned out and prepared. It's easier to wait until the surrounding area is at its driest before digging out the stagnant sediment (which, again, may have an unpleasant smell). The water that feeds the spring comes from subsurface saturation or from subsurface flows in the deeper sediment or cracks in the bedrock. The object is to dig out enough to locate this clean source. Then gravel and perforated pipe are put down to collect the water, and a dam of compacted soil, plastic sheeting, or concrete is built downstream of the source, to force the water into the pipe. The pipe is run to a spring box to collect, settle out dirt and sand, and protect the water from contamination. Here are some simple instructions to help you maintain the spring: Keep livestock and other potential pollutants and polluters away from the spring. Divert surface water, which can contain contaminating sediments, away from the box by digging diversion channels well uphill from it. Clean the settling basin out twice each year, or at least once each spring, Fix leaks in the pipes or spring box. Do not allow the overflow pipe to clog. Once you've got a spring, how do you tap it? By bucket is the easiest way, but for most of us, that's a bit harsh. If the spring is located upslope from the house, the water can be moved through a gravity-flow system to a font, a cistern, or a water tank at the house. The font, cistern, or tank drain should be configured to allow overages of clean water to drain back into the streambed. Bales of hay or straw (or dirt), placed over the box, will help prevent freezing; also, allowing some water to run from the box will retard freezing. |
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