Can you determine how much water is needed? How many gallons per 24 hours?
Is changing the water pump out of the question?
It would take a considerable investment at first but this pump lends itself to upgrades as time and money allow.
http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-water-pump.htmlOf course an elevated storage tank helps in these types of situations. They say this pump delivers 3 gallons per minute by hand from a hundred foot well. 20 minutes of pumping by hand should deliver in the vicinity of 60 gallons. 20 minutes 4 times a day = 240 gallons. Plus who ever is lucky enough to get to pump the water gets a nice little work out.
If pressure is an issue in the home a small low voltage dc pump can be added. Batteries and solar if its needed.
Just throwing out a few ideas. Without specifics such a gallons per day, any required pressure, I can't narrow it down any more than that.
Each foot of tank tower height adds 0.43 pounds per square inch of pressure. Keeping pipes as large as possible right up to the point of use helps with volume at low pressures.
When I started out, I was utilizing a pitcher pump on an 11 foot tower with several plastic 55 gallon corn syrup drums. (recycled from a nearby candy factory) This did allright fro a short while but as our family grew so did the pumping time. (it helps if your ambidextrous)
Now I utilize a 1,000 gallon tank on a 30 foot tower with 3 inch down pipe, reduced to 2 inch underground up to a "manifold" with several cutoffs where its all reduced to 3/4 inch just before going to various uses in our home being reduced at the last possible point to sinks, commodes, and showers. Same on the hot water supply.
I had installed a new shower conversion valve once and it had a water saver feature. the water just dribbled out. Once I removed the plastic reducing disc though I couldn't tell the difference at the shower head from any other shower with a conventional water delivery system. Water is pumped up to the tank tower via Pacer pump with a Briggs&Stratton. Takes less than half a cup of petro to move about 800 gallons in less than 5 minutes.
http://www.pacerpumps.com/econoAg.phpI think if I had it to do all over again I would have went higher with the tower and used bigger main pipes but "beggars can't be choosers." A lot but not all of what was used for the construction of the whole system was reclaimed stuff.
http://www.tank-depot.com/browse.aspx?id=2The tower is constructed similar to the old railroad water towers with four poles and lots of cross bracing.
http://marxtinplatetrains.com/img/water-tower.jpgThis is the closest tower I could find that resembles what I built.
