we have water!

temporary overflow pipe; will remove this when we hook up

So we finally hired an awesome guy to install our spring box after months of searching for someone who could do it. I was surprised that there didn’t seem to be anyone that did this professionally in an area where so many homes use springs and springboxes for their water supply. We were told by a few people to do it ourselves, and it seems our neighbors who have lived on the mountain forever most likely dug their springboxes themselves years ago. However after doing some

research, I discovered that we could possibly block up our spring if we did it incorrectly. You have to dig your way down to where the water first emerges from rock, which isn’t necessarily the same place where it exits the ground. If you are using a large piece of equipment for the job, you could potentially block it up by digging in the wrong place. And it turned out there was a lot of digging involved…definitely NOT something we could have ever done by hand.

So I chimed in on a post on a local Facebook page called the West Asheville Exchange where a gentleman was being praised for his work ethic, character and good prices, and I asked if he could build us a springbox. He said YES! So one Saturday in September, we met Lance up at our property to have him take a look at what he would be doing and to give us a quote. After a couple of days, he came back with a quote of $2600 for installing the springbox and leveling the tiny house parking spot. The springbox is a 250 gallon concrete tank that is fed by pipe from the spring head underground and then to the tiny house parking spot near the creek. We saved up some cash over the next few months, but by the time we scheduled Lance to do the job, the price of pipe and concrete had gone up. Also, our property had become pretty overgrown after 3 months of rain, so Lance had more work cut out for him than he had expected. It took him two days to do the job, rather than one. When all was said and done, we paid him $3600, and we are quite happy with his work!


Here’s a cool video of Lance down in the hole he had just completed and the cold, clear water spillin’ out!

The springbox was finished back in September, and at that time it was producing about 480 gallons per day.

So here is a step by step photo gallery of the springbox installation (photos were taken before the pipes were buried)…

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