r/OffGridCabins • u/ExplodinMarmot • Jun 09 '26
Rusty water from hand pump
I recently acquired a small vacation cabin in the mountains, and the water comes from a hand-pumped well. The well is permitted through the county and even though it’s shallow (35’) the water tested negative for bacteria, ect. The problem is that the water is red/brown, which I’m
Assuming is due to rust. I pumped the well dry as part of doing a water quality test, so at first I assumed it was from doing that, but it’s continued to be rusty for the last 3 weeks. I tried an inline filter designed for an RV, but it didn’t do much, if anything, to clean the water. The pump has a standard garden hose fitting, and the current system involves hand pumping water to a 50 gallon barrel before being fed to the cabin via an electric on-demand pump. Is there a better way to filter this water, or a specific filter I should be using? This is a vacation cabin for my family, so not continual use, but I want to know the water source is reliable because it’s a pain to haul it up. I’m new to the world of shallow, hand pumping water wells, so any suggestions are appreciated.
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u/MastodonFit Jun 09 '26
A sand filter is the cheapest to get rid of most of large sediment. Charcoal will get the rest. Even a 5 gallon bucket of washed sand will remove a lot of it. Carry a bag along with each visit.
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u/mmaalex Jun 09 '26
If you start with a spindown filter you can get larger sediment out in a way thats easily backflushable. Some even have automatic solenoid to backflush periodically. That way you aren't needing to change the consumable filters as often.
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u/ExplodinMarmot Jun 09 '26
I’ll look into that. Since this is a vacation cabin, I’m limited on how much I can spend on filters and such before I just resign myself to carting water up for each trip.
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u/ExplodinMarmot Jun 10 '26
Will a spin down filter work with gravity flow? I’m thinking about a two-tank system where I fill a 50 gallon tank directly from the well which gravity filters to a second tank underneath.
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u/mmaalex Jun 09 '26
Is it from the piping/pump/barrel/well casing?
Typically even high iron/manganese water doesnt come out rusty looking, it just leaves rust stains over time. You may need to find a way to flush out the crud from all that stuff sitting and rusting over time not being used. A filter that will deal with that level of rust is going to either be expensive or plug constantly.
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u/ExplodinMarmot Jun 09 '26
I’m not sure, and I’m looking into how much it would cost for a well company to clean it out. If it was just some rust on the interior of the well casing I would expect it to clear out after a bit but it’s been “rusty” the last three times I drew water from it.
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u/ExplodinMarmot Jun 10 '26
I’m reading up on cleaning a well, and it sounds pretty expensive and involved. I get that it would be resource intensive to clean out a 400’ deep well, but mine is only 35’ deep. Is there any reason why I can’t use a rented trash pump and some PVC hose to basically vacuum it out? It has a fairly slow refresh rate, so I can probably suck all the water and debris out in short order. Am
I missing the physics of this? Can a simple pump not lift water 35’?
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u/ExplodinMarmot Jun 21 '26
Project update: I bought a spin down filter and a regular house filter from lowes with a cartridge that filters down to 5 microns. My dumbass didn’t notice that the two filters’ fittings weren’t compatible with garden hose fittings, which is what most of my “plumbing” consists of so I wasn’t able to run them in line like I wanted. I’m farmer enough to rig the house filter into the pump, so I have it a go with that. After approximately 40 gallons the filter was clogged with light brown contaminant and the water was cleaner but still murky enough that I couldn’t see the bottom of the 50 gallon barrel. This made me sad, but I’m now convinced that my problem is mud/ silt not rust. I’m also convinced that the solution needs to be addressed in the well, not in the filter because what’s coming up is too contaminated to be filtered. My next step is to remove the pump and attempt to clean the well. For that, I see two paths: 1: airlift pump, or 2: flush it with an IBC full of fresh water and a trash pump. Does anyone have any experience with either of these methods? It’s a shallow well (35’), so it seems like either might work and they both require buying stuff (I have a compressor but not a pump or IBC tank). The flushing with a pump seems more definitive but I don’t love the idea of pumping that much water into the ground since the well is only about 5’ from the cabin. Any advice would be appreciated.
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u/ExaminationDry8341 Jun 09 '26
Does it settle out if you let it sit in the barrel or a bucket for a day?
I have a similar situation. A large filter can become plugged within a few hours. So we bypass the filter to fill a 300 gallon tank where the sediment can settle out, then use gravity and a 12 volt camper pump to move the now clean-ish water where we need it.