Do goats need water overnight?

There WAS running water, that is the confusing part. Worked fine for the first 2 years through the winter. And it was still running through the summer of 2013 when the contractors were rebuilding half the house. They used it to get drinking water. Then in the fall I was getting no water, thought maybe the lifting lever had frozen overnight or something so when it still wasn't working later, I stopped trying and shut it off in the basement. NO idea how far down the plastic pipe is nor what path it takes to get to the barn. It can't be a straight shot because that would mean it had to go underneath the little barn which was built (as were the house and big barn) prior to the US Civil War.

Perhaps one of your animals could be a mule, it could carry water for you But your life, buried water line wise, will hopefully be a lot easier than it is here. You can likely get away with an 18" ditch digger. My options:

• digging under the deck to where it currently comes out (too high for sure) from the basement, going around the propane tank, under the power line from the solar array and behind the little barn to the frost free spigot is in the lower part of the big barn.
• as above but going between the house and small barn, under the propane line, the power line from the array and under the powerline from the house to the small barn
• Drill underground into the crawlspace (new poured concrete foundation) and connect to the water line in there then run under the power line to the big barn and between the little and big barn down to the spigot.

This would have been SO EASY if I had known it was going to be a problem. The excavator could have dug the trench between the barns for the curtain drain on the east side of the big barn down 4' and put in the water line then the curtain drain pipe over that. The water exit could have been installed in/under the crawl space foundation and the pipe installed when the foundation was done.

May be cheaper to just drill a well and build a pump house down in the pasture and run electric down there to power it...

Um, not likely! Drilled wells are expensive. So are the pumps that go down into them. Had a problem with my pump. Turned out that after 35 years one of the wires in the aboveground part of the metal pipe arced. NO idea why. The well guy had just enough slack to splice it back together. Since he was there I asked how much will it cost to replace the pump when it does go. About a grand, unless new wire is also needed, then more.

BTW the well is 125' down.

Gee @Bruce, only 125' down? We've got two wells and both are over 440' and we're lucky with that. Water, got to have it.

Yep, 125' here, the people up the hill are well over 300' even though the actual elevation change is only about 100'. I'm told that when my well was dug (1979) they had to wait 2 days before they could cap it. Knock on wood that wonderful quantity of water will stick around.

I just tossed the 125' in the prior message in case anyone wanted to figure out about what it would cost to drill a new well for the barn. General numbers suggest several thousand $$ not including the pump and wiring. For that I can carry a few gallons of water for the alpacas. At least for a while

Ours is a little over 1300' deep and no idea what it cost to put in. High sulfur content that I won't drink anyway.

1,300'?? And for sulfur water?

Gotta count myself VERY lucky! There are areas in VT with sulphur or nasty amounts of iron that turn the sink rusty red in no time. We have none of that and the water is only minimally hard.