[Travis McGee]

Fridges take a LOT of solar to run. Lights (especially LEDs) and tech gadgets are easy to keep running, but heat, A/C and fridges are power hungry. Also, I had a shallow hand pump well installed in my back yard. 35’ down to cool fresh water, no electricity required, cost a thousand bucks installed. Don’t forget that if grid power goes down, most public water systems will fail shortly after. Even electric well pumps that run on grid power will fail. You can’t live without water, period.

[markomalley]

Fridges take a LOT of solar to run.

Well, a fridge generally goes through 1 kwh or so per day. If you can end up using a 1 kw system (and, assuming, you have the equivalent of 8 hours of sun a day to run it), you should have plenty of juice for the fridge plus a reasonable number of lights and your FR machine. But not for a/c or electric heat.

[going hot]

There are some fine 12-24V submersible pumps that will pump up to 230 ft, they are 4 inches diameter, that can be lowered with a rope down to the water line in the same casing as the main pump. Hook up to two car batteries with a solar panel for recharge, good to go.

Won't water the landscape sprinklers, but can shower, shave, cook and poop.