Water source for wildlife

[Kurt]

I was perusing Whitetail Property listings and now can't locate the farm I was looking at. It had a sandpoint well hooked up with a solar panel/battery system for maintaining water in a 4' diameter horse tank. There were pics of deer, turkeys and even a bobcat drinking from it. My place has a pretty high water table for being so dry and the soil is a sandy loam.

Any of you all have any experience with sandpoint wells and or solar powered well pumps. Thinking 2" diameter pipe and maximum 20' pull. Just beginning my research and wanted to see if the knowledge base here had already done this. Thank you

 

[Mennoniteman]

Because of our tight rocky soils I'm sure there's no sandpoint wells in Pennsylvania so I don't know anything about them.
But there is a lot of Aermotor windmills here in Amish territory, and they do a good job of pumping water into stock tanks. You probably have more wind out there in Kansas than we do here in the east. Or maybe windmills are obsolete since solar became available?

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[KSQ2]

Because of our tight rocky soils I'm sure there's no sandpoint wells in Pennsylvania so I don't know anything about them.
But there is a lot of Aermotor windmills here in Amish territory, and they do a good job of pumping water into stock tanks. You probably have more wind out there in Kansas than we do here in the east. Or maybe windmills are obsolete since solar became available?

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There are still some windmill water tanks running in western Kansas. Many of them have been going for decades.

 

[Kurt]

Looks like I need to get a sandpoint permit from Kansas, seems easy enough, and then can look into wind or solar powered for the tank. I kind of would like to try a solar panel as I have never done anything solar and it may be handy to learn about it.

 

[cutman]

I don’t have any first hand experience, but I think the technology for this is pretty well established. When I was in Botswana a couple of years ago there were solar powered wells/water holes every where and they worked great.

 

[MarkDarvin]

Solar is very easy. I can do it. That is proof.

If you custom design your own setup, it can be done for hundreds of dollars. You'd need a solar panel, solar panel stand (mount it on your box) a box to store your pump and well head, a charge controller, and a battery.

$125 pump
$100 100 watt panel
$100 charge controller
$100 battery

Make a box and get some some 14-2 romex.

I'd rent a mini ex and dig it vs trying to pound a sand point. Get a machine that can reach down 10', and dig a ramp down an extra 6' and you're 16' deep. Put a 4" pipe inside a 6" pipe, line it with river rock at the bottom and fill it in. Hook a piece of 1/2" pex to your pump and you're in business. The tricky part would be rigging your power supply to a float to keep it automatically filling.

If you're serious, the guys at Backwoods Solar are tremendous when it comes to expertise in system design and will help you get the right parts.

https://backwoodssolar.com/