Anyone cleaned out their cistern?

[Igloochic]

Ummmm if you lose a treasure hunter you just shovel back in any removed dirt and walk away...no one is the wiser

What's the risk heh heh.

[lupinfarm]

Funny My hubby would say that we had a treasure hunter clean our cistern or in other words a contractor looking for doddering ditsy old lady who has more money than sense to con money out of. But that`s just him, always loving and understanding.

[catya]

Ive been putting off asking this question, because I'm not sure I want to know. It might mean MORE WORK I have to do but have no time for ..

What exactly should one DO with a cistern? Why are you cleaning yours out? I know I have one- there is some sort of big round cement cap that in the back of the house near a downspout. At that same corner there is some leaking into the basement during long or heavy rains - that may or may not be related to the cistern.

[lupinfarm]

Hi Catya...My cistern is directly under my kitchen sink area( I say the area as I ripped out the kitchen units). It is a poured cement cistern about 6ftby 12ft and is not capped or covered. The cistern was fed by run off from the porch roof and had
filled up with silt and water and was also at some time taking water from the kitchen sink so it was very smelly and bacteria laden and moisture was being sucked up by the cement walls and rotting the joists and sill. Anyhow I needed to fix the
waste plumbing from my kitchen sink so I had to rip the floor up to get access to old plumbing and that`s when the smell became really bad, so the cistern had to be cleaned. I advertised on Kijiji which is like Craig`s list and only got two responses
so I went with the person who seemed to know the most, not the lowest estimate. It took him 5 hours to scoop out all the sludge by pail and shovel and sweep. In the spring I will pressure wash and disinfect it. Your cistern sounds completely different to mine and possibly whole lot older. If there is water leaking from it I would recommend getting a contractor in to give you advise and a quote. Make sure though that the contractor has references and is licensed and insured and you can actually visit with the references and check out his work first hand. Checking with your local Better Business Association to see if there are any complaints against him would also be good. Some contractors around here give bogus references knowing that if they are far enough away a home owner wont visit or call them.

[Don M]

Catya,
The fact that it leaks only when you have long heavy rains may simply mean that it has become full & is over flowing. Is your cistern used for anything like water for your lawn or plants? Cistern water was soft water & was used for laundry water. These days with acid rain etc it may not be as good. If your cistern is not being used for lawn & plant water you could probably install a pump & use it for that purpose. There is likely some sort of valve setup in your cellar that allowed the water to be tapped. My mother used our cistern water for the laundry back in 1956-57. It was tied into our water system & we could draw water from the well, from the barn spring, or from the cistern simply by opening or closing valves in the cellar.

[lupinfarm]

Hi Catya..... Our cistern had a jet pump but it broke down. The
Jet pump had a hook up for a garden hose in one of the base cabInets.
The cistern is carved out of the ground under the kitchen. That part
Of house is built on a skid on grade so there is no crawl space or
Basement.

[mr Henry]

This is the Cistern I found beneath a trap door in my kitchen floor. I cleaned it out and painted it and now it's the biggest mouse trap I've ever seen, they fall down in there and can't get out!! [url][/url]

[Nettie]

Lol Mr. Henry. We have a wood burning furnace in the basement and so we are trying to open the wall up to the cistern so that we can use it to put the woodpile in in the winter. Holy cow but it's hard work. The darn wall is two feet thick of cemented stones- so far we have a 2 x 2 hole into it. It looks like it's about 2 to 3 feet deeper than our basement floor. It's dry as a bone though and this was a wet year for us so it should be safe for storage.

[lupinfarm]

Mr. Henry...I`m not sure we have spoken before your cistern sure looks spooky, is it a rubble, stone or cement cistern. When
the guy cleaned mine out he found an old wooden ladder down there that had all the attributes of a submerged Spanish galleon and although it was only about 9ft high it weighed about 500lbs. He also found an animal skeleton, dog toys that my puppy had scooted down there and other strange items. The dirt was a chocolate colour and smelled really bad. Yuck!

[mr Henry]

Lupin, my cistern is stone with a nice smooth coat of cement on it. It's 7' deep, 7' wide, round or shaped like a bowl. It's also 10' away from my well so they weren't taking any chances with running out of water. I joke about putting leg irons down there and clawing the walls with red paint on my hands Seriously though, I saw in a magazine where someone had put in a spiral staircase under a trap door, lined the walls with custom cabinetry and made a wine cellar out of theirs! Nice stuff...