Off-grid-Water for your home

Dealing with water needs can be a challenging part of being off-grid. If you have access to a well and a hose, it will be relatively simple to connect your home to pressure water. However, many of us will not have access to pressure water and will need an internal or external tank for water storage and some type of pump to deliver the water to faucets and other outlets. I am among the camp that has an internal water tank.
When I was building my home, I planned for my water tank under the kitchen counter in the corner of the "L". This is a space that is frequently difficult to access so why not put something in that space that does not need frequent access. One of the cheapest and strongest tanks I could find was a basic "spot sprayer" designed for garden use; mine is 26 gallons and approx. $60 with postage (from Northern Tool).

This tank has a mounting pad on top for a 12V pump. However it does not have an inlet for the pump siphon-a drill will open a hole and a piece of PVC (about 1/2" diameter) will work for the siphon. Make sure to vacuum out any drill debris before use as it will clog the pump. I purchased the flojet 2.9 gpm 50 psi water pump from amazon and mounted it atop my tank.

The left side of the pump with the inline filter goes to my PVC siphon tube in the tank and the right side goes to my plumbing lines. 

Below are a couple images showing the installation. The large diameter plastic hose is my water fill that hooks up to my exterior water fill panel.

The left hole is for filling the tank and the right side is for hooking up pressure water. The small round screen between the two fills is for venting the tank.

I have three plastic jugs, about 7 gallons each, that I use to bring water to my home. These are a bit to heavy to hold up while the water drains into the fill so I setup a 120V water pump outside my house to draw from the totes and pump into the tank. Because I live in a cold environment, I disconnect both hoses from the pump so no water is retained in the pump-freezing would destroy the pump and lead to a bad day.

My water tank services my kitchen sink, my bathroom sink and my shower. This is a labeled drawing of the rats nest of pipes that feed the various faucets.

Let me know any questions and I will try to help with better information. (Purchase of any of these items through our links will give us a few pennies to cover internet costs and allow us to continue providing additional content, thank you).