Do you know how far below the surface your home's well is? The closer the well is to the surface, the easier it is to get the water into your home.
Surface pumps are designed to draw water over long distances. They are best suited for out-lying buildings, fields, livestock watering stations, gardens, or even a house on a hill. As long as you are close to an accessible source of fresh water like a stream, lake or river, DC pumps can be run from battery, solar, or wind power!
Do you know how much water your home requires? A three to four bedroom home will need between eight and 12 gallons per minute.
The centrifugal and Savery pumps were both created in the late 1600s. The centrifugal pump, invented by Denis Papin, is a motor-driven system whose internal workings create suction to pull water. The Savery pump, invented by Thomas Savery, the first steam pump, was, an "engine to raise water by fire."
In areas with a lot of hard rock (the mineral, not the music), drillers prefer to use a down-hole air hammer on the end of a drill string to dig the well. The compressed air also blows up the crushed rock fragments.
If you have a water tank that is gravity-driven, then a small pump might be just what you need. An intermittent-use pump operates in an "always-on" way because you only connect it to a power source when you need to move water from the source to the tank.