Tiny House Off-Grid Water Pressure

Getting the water is half the battle.  Once I set up a rainwater catchment system wherever we live, I was wondering how we would get water pressure to the house.  The good news is, it didn’t take long to figure out how it will work!

Water Pressure to a Tiny House

Tiny House Water Pressure SystemIt’s as simple as buying and installing a ‘water pressure system’.  Here’s a photo of one I found at Home Depot (at right).  I’m not quite sure how the pressure is adjusted, since this comes pre-charged at 40 psi, but that’s probably an easy problem to solve.

Anyhow, it’s nice to know how we’ll be be getting water pressure, whether it’s from this system or one like it.

Next Considerations

I’ll have to calculate how much electricity would be required at any given amount of time to keep the pressure up in whatever system we decide to use.  This will allow me to more properly build the solar system that provides us with electricity.

This enormous task of building a tiny house is getting a bit funner as I go along!

  • Calvin

    When I worked as a camp manager, we used well water. We had a high capacity pump that drew up water and pushed it into a tank similar to the one you have shown. I think it must have pushed the water in near the middle or bottom, and then had the water outlet at the bottom. When I first started working there, I noticed that water in the shower would fluctuate in pressure continuously. It was eventually explained to me that this was caused by the pump cycling on and off continuously (which apparently causes them to wear out quickly). That was what the tank was for, but all the air had dissolved into the water over time and eventually there was next to no air in the tank. So, what we did was shut off the pump (I think), open several taps and hook the air compressor up to the valve on top of the tank (it was the schrader valve like on car and bike tires). That forced the water out and replaced it with air. Once the tank was emptied of water, we closed the taps and fired the pump up. As the tank filled with water at the inlet, the air trapped in the tank above the water inlet compressed so that, when a given pressure was reached and the pump shut off, there was still water pressure for a good while. When the pressure dipped too low, then the pump would cycle on, refilling the tank and restoring the water pressure.

    Now, I have no idea if your system works anything like this. But I thought I’d share my experience in case it is in hopes it may help or give you an idea of what to look for as you research how to set up your system.

    • http://www.caseyfriday.com/ Casey Friday

      Wow, Calvin, this is really good to know! I’ll probably be coming back to this comment and asking you a couple more questions about the setup you ran. Thanks for the insight!