Pros and Cons Well vs City

[Widirtfishing]

I searched via google and on this site and came back with some mixed results. 
I’m in the planning stages of drafting a business plan and doing research. I want to open a “farm distillery” (however state of WI doesn’t recognize that term, anywho) my area has excellent well water if you go deep enough. I want to start soliciting townships and villages about the support for this style of distillery.
2 of the target areas have city water which is rather spendy. I live in one of the Villages now and my residential bill, quarterly is $500 for water and sewer, so I can’t even imagine what the city water bill would be
So it got thinking about more rural, but still in target geographic location. Then we’re talking, septic, and I’d have to find an area that offers Nat Gas as propane pricing is too volatile. 
Any feedback on pros and cons, if you had to pick city vs well would be appreciated. 

[Kindred Spirits]

It all depends on the quality of the water. Not all city water is "good" for our needs.

Some of my clients use city water, but it is so filled with chlorine and chloramine that it has to be thoroughly filtered and treated in order to be usable to ferment.

Others use well water that just need to be softened to take the iron out and its good to go. You will need to have pre-treated water for your boiler, so you will probably end up doing some softening/carbon filtering plus adding chemicals for just that.

Depending on what your production goals are and what spirits you want to produce you should be able to come up with some pretty good estimates of what your total water usage will be. If you need any help with that be sure to reach out, I would definitely be able to help with some of those calcs.

[Southernhighlander]

As far as cooling water for condensers and crash cooling mash, wells are the way to go if the water is below 60F.  I have advised several customers who were in rural areas to dig a well instead of buying a chiller because wells are generally much less expensive to put in place and to operate than the chiller. 

[Widirtfishing]

Thanks for the insight. 
Both would require filtration, as our city is highly treated and we’re in farm country here but perhaps a well would be the best way to go if I can find a rural parcel with Nat Gas at the road. Thanks

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

17 hours ago, Widirtfishing said:

Thanks for the insight. 
Both would require filtration, as our city is highly treated and we’re in farm country here but perhaps a well would be the best way to go if I can find a rural parcel with Nat Gas at the road. Thanks

Recommend propane over nat gas. Burns more efficient and is not a greenhouse gas.  

Not sure why you would need to filter well water for cooling purposes.  We use two 1,800 gallon wine tanks to store our cooling water, chill and recycle.  We treat with an algaecide to keep stuff from growing in it. Alternate tanks between chilling and cycling to our stills and heat exchanger.

For process water for mashing, sediment and charcoal filtering should do.  Boiler water as stated above by @Kindred Spirits

[Widirtfishing]

4 hours ago, Golden Beaver Distillery said:

Recommend propane over nat gas. Burns more efficient and is not a greenhouse gas.  

Not sure why you would need to filter well water for cooling purposes.  We use two 1,800 gallon wine tanks to store our cooling water, chill and recycle.  We treat with an algaecide to keep stuff from growing in it. Alternate tanks between chilling and cycling to our stills and heat exchanger.

For process water for mashing, sediment and charcoal filtering should do.  Boiler water as stated above by @Kindred Spirits

Are there any other logistical advantages to propane?

To be honest, I feel that starting up I’m going to have to make sacrifices of what i WANT to do, to be more fiscally realistic. I wouldn’t exclude any site based in propane as the only source alone but I would give it greater scrutiny. 

My filtration comment was generally speaking , not for just cooling. I think Paul was just mentioning one pro of well vs city. 
 

i’m willing to take any feedback or advice on the topic. 

[38°]

We are on propane. The only drawback is making sure to find a reliable supplier and having the boiler converted cost us a little bit extra.

[SlickFloss]

We are in WI. You need to make sure you don't end up building in a well head preservation area if you want to reserve the right for a well for process water. You will lose that battle on the backside in court, even if you were promised via contract on a dev agreement etc (trust me on that : ( ) In WI where we are at we are seeing a lot of Iron, Manganese, and Biofilm activity in the water. To be fair, we are pulling right from where two aquifers descend into each other and lett out a lot of volatiles. BUT even if you aren't, you will see a lot of run off related events in your data and then and flashes of other really fucked up shit every now and then. We've seen all types of fuel stabilizers, ag chemicals, minerals, etc sporadically flash in water tests that we've taken from our municipal system. We also had a few years of green water with zero cooperation from village for rectification until they got popped with a violation for "failure to operate as instructed" from DNR. We have a lot of very intense water filtration now for everything incoming resulting in multiple options for different uses. If you want to come and see our place sometime holler at me.

[Widirtfishing]

14 hours ago, SlickFloss said:

We are in WI. You need to make sure you don't end up building in a well head preservation area if you want to reserve the right for a well for process water. You will lose that battle on the backside in court, even if you were promised via contract on a dev agreement etc (trust me on that : ( ) In WI where we are at we are seeing a lot of Iron, Manganese, and Biofilm activity in the water. To be fair, we are pulling right from where two aquifers descend into each other and lett out a lot of volatiles. BUT even if you aren't, you will see a lot of run off related events in your data and then and flashes of other really fucked up shit every now and then. We've seen all types of fuel stabilizers, ag chemicals, minerals, etc sporadically flash in water tests that we've taken from our municipal system. We also had a few years of green water with zero cooperation from village for rectification until they got popped with a violation for "failure to operate as instructed" from DNR. We have a lot of very intense water filtration now for everything incoming resulting in multiple options for different uses. If you want to come and see our place sometime holler at me.

Thanks for the heads up. I’ll have to look into these Well Head Preservation areas.

The contaminants due to being in Farm country is a concern, but our village water treatment plant is brand new in the last few years and they haven’t been easy to deal with for residential issues, so I couldn’t imagine trying to do it in a commercial level. Regardless I know some filtration either way will be needed, but given that I’ll be bootstrapping this and soliciting banks I want to keep costs down as much as possible & be realistic with my expectations and numbers. 

I would love to take you up on that this winter! I’ll shoot you a DM. 

[Pofarmer]

On 11/18/2023 at 2:30 PM, Widirtfishing said:

quarterly is $500 for water and sewer, so I can’t even imagine what the city water bill would be
 

Holy crap, that seems like a load for residential water and sewer. Is there such a thing as rural water districts where you're at? I run 60 head of cattle on Rural water in MO and my water bill isn't half that most months. It only gets that high when we're spraying crops. Our well water is really hard so I've just stayed on Rural here so far. But Rural is lake water so no telling what might pop up in it occasionally.

[Widirtfishing]

11 hours ago, Pofarmer said:

Holy crap, that seems like a load for residential water and sewer. Is there such a thing as rural water districts where you're at? I run 60 head of cattle on Rural water in MO and my water bill isn't half that most months. It only gets that high when we're spraying crops. Our well water is really hard so I've just stayed on Rural here so far. But Rural is lake water so no telling what might pop up in it occasionally.

It’s ridiculously high. And i would like to keep my plans in the town I live but I couldn’t imagine how much a distillery would be. Our water treatment plant is only a few years old so thats why it’s so spendy. 
i did just email though for a copy of the latest water tests and asked about usage rates for commercial, if it’s any different than residential. 
no rural water programs that I’m aware of. Its well or city. Just trying to contemplate all this before writing out my whole plan. 

[SlickFloss]

Add deduct meters to your plan for certain areas of your flow, will save you money on sewer for water you're not putting down drain (stillage).

 

Plan now for a solution for stillage. You will not be allowed to put that down the drain long term, and short term they will likely found out very very very fast if you do it without asking and then you're liable. 

 

[Widirtfishing]

10 hours ago, SlickFloss said:

Add deduct meters to your plan for certain areas of your flow, will save you money on sewer for water you're not putting down drain (stillage).

 

Plan now for a solution for stillage. You will not be allowed to put that down the drain long term, and short term they will likely found out very very very fast if you do it without asking and then you're liable. 

 

Thanks for that insight. I plan to be completely upfront and have a conversation with the municipal water plant whatever way we go. 
Discharging into septic really isn’t an option either so either way I’ll need a grain plan. Plenty of farmers around here though and have a contact that works on a pig farm, haven’t reached out yet, as I’m not that far along in my planning stages but I will definitely factor that in.  

[Kindred Spirits]

12 hours ago, Widirtfishing said:

Thanks for that insight. I plan to be completely upfront and have a conversation with the municipal water plant whatever way we go. 
Discharging into septic really isn’t an option either so either way I’ll need a grain plan. Plenty of farmers around here though and have a contact that works on a pig farm, haven’t reached out yet, as I’m not that far along in my planning stages but I will definitely factor that in.  

That's the best way to go about it, be up front and open about what you plan on doing. The worst thing is to try to get away with something and get caught.

Pig farms are the way to go, they love free slop for their animals.