Doug--
At my other hot water properties I've had great water. Here there is some sulfur and the water is notably 'soft'. I told some people today that washing hair in this water feels like massaging egg whites.
I'm drinking spring water with a dash of pool chemical from five gallon jugs. One reason I'm here is to rebuild the old wooden spring boxes and get the 'wildlife' to a manageable level. It's scary to see what clogged the pump, sometimes. I drink more out of the gravity spring that I don't have to look into as often.
Natural hot water grows things most folks have never seen......including Center for Desease Control, probably.
I have a very limited resource here compared with the prior two hot water places. At Kanaka Rapids I had up to 900 gallons a minutes of 92 degree artesian water @ 60psi. At Magic Hot Springs (see stories at utterpower.com) I had 139 gpm @115 with no pressure and all the hot water below the building. Here, at 'Warm Springs', south of Oakley, Idaho, I have 26 gpm @113 with a building falling down close to the springs and 160 acres downhill to build 'the boss' place' on. I'm going to rebuild the old building into house and shop (using PEX and insulation), but will have to run a small circ. pump for heat. The builders of the place didn't have a pipe friction chart and built the building only 22 inches below the springs with too much piping for the pressure and the pipes have since rusted out. It'll be cheaper to run a pump than move the building.
The new place will be a sheltered picnic area with a small kitchen, two dressing rooms, some storage and a control room..... and three pools. One is a cooler, bigger, kids, summertime pool, outside. The other two are soaking pools. One is the bashful ladies totally indoor pool and the other will be my "masterpiece of indoor-outdoor, cave entrance and zero edge view of the lights hundreds of feet below and spreading (along section lines) across the Snake River Plain pool" of about 1500 gallons. My other places have been in canyons with limited view, this place has snowcaps at 140 miles away shining on clear days and lights on velvet at night.
AND, just because you're a Canuck-semi-commie, union thug with a good sense of humor, I'll throw this in for free-
I've worked 23 jobs, never been a union member, have never USED what health insurance they gave me, and spent the retirement money they gave me back......on tools and stuff.
So, now I'm nearly social securiety age (with tendencies toward neither), with less income than most, more freedom that most, and pretty damn happy the way things have turned out.
My current 'position has been negotiated over the last three months with a large family that owns these springs and the surrounding ranch land. I am the designer, general contractor, architech, caretaker, security guard, historian, cannon range operator and host to the family once a year when they have their family reunion here (and 48 hour warnings other times). In return, they buy all the materials and rent the equipment and hire the grunt labor for first, my place, then theirs, and the job of improvements and upkeep is mine for life. It has grid power, but only because they ran it in for the commercial operation...it's at the dead end of several miles. There is one neighbor in cannon range but no road between us.
The first (proposed) contract treated me like a potted plant to be moved cheaply. The final contract treats me more as a rock outcropping with a big tree on it. Its more a combination of contract, marriage, adoption and surgical implantation.
Today I broke through the snow drifts and went to town for the first time in three weeks. I love it here.
Just ONE hermit model American talking here, but I like that better than the securiety of some business paying me to please go away after XX number of years, with a 'pension'.
The GOOD thing is this: either of us are free to choose which we prefer and what best works for us. Compared to the patrimony (I think that's what they call the eldest son the only inheritor.) systems of Europe, we've come a long way in personal freedom and security.....and freedom to make a damn fool of ourselves if the plans for the future turn into picking a better grocery cart and sleeping bridge because nobody would 'give us a break'.
Only those that work their way upstream see the mountains.
Did I tell you there's a stone quarry on the property? My next ton of concrete Lister foundations will LOOK better!