The Norwesco 5025-gallon underground cistern is a buried polyethylene water storage tank with a riser, molded for high-volume below-grade water storage where surface tanks or pump-and-haul won't fit the site. It lays out at 211 inches long, 102 inches wide, and 96 inches tall - a footprint of 102 in x 211 in (about 8.5 ft x 17.6 ft) - and holds 5,025 gallons below grade, freeing the surface for drives, pads, or landscaping. One note worth resolving up front: Norwesco molds this body for both buried water-cistern and septic service, so confirm the exact port and riser configuration, and any state septic approval, for your intended use before you order.
Will it work for your site?
The wall here carries a 1.9 specific-gravity rating - nearly double the margin plain water requires (about 1.0 SG) - and the tank is rated to 79,626 pounds of contents against just 41,908 pounds when full of water. That headroom is the buy reason on a buried vessel that has to live under soil and hydrostatic load: you are not running the wall to its limit with water. Those weights drive the earthwork, too. A buried 5,025-gallon tank is an excavation project as much as a tank purchase, and the hole, the granular bedding, the uniform backfill, and the anti-flotation provisions all key off that 41,908-lb full-water weight and the 102 x 211 inch footprint. Run your stored-volume math through the Tank Sizing Calculator and the Tank Sizing Guide before you dig, so the cistern matches your real daily draw and recharge - household water supply, irrigation reserve, or a rural water-storage cache.
The mistake to avoid on a buried cistern
The most expensive error on an underground tank is treating it like an above-ground one. This is a buried vessel: it has to sit on the bedding the manufacturer specifies, be backfilled evenly so one-sided soil pressure doesn't ovalize it, and be protected against flotation when the water table rises and the tank runs low or empty. Confirm your burial depth, groundwater conditions, and the anti-flotation detail against the installation requirements and the technical drawing on this page before the excavator shows up - the drawing gives you the riser location, the inlet and outlet positions, and the overall geometry to lay the dig out from. The pack carries no published fitting or gasket dimensions for this body, so treat the drawing as your source for inlet, outlet, and riser sizing, and call 866-418-1777 to confirm the configuration before you plumb it. Because Norwesco also lists this body as a septic tank, our notes on Norwesco IAPMO and CSA B66 septic approvals walk through where those listings apply if your use isn't straight water cistern duty.
Design and reuse context
If you're aggregating supply rather than just storing it, the same buried-train thinking applies to greywater, rainwater, and condensate capture - our piece on industrial water-reuse tank topology covers how to band stored water by quality across multiple tanks. For remote and rural sites where this cistern doubles as a fire-water reservoir, the fire-water reservoir design guide covers NFPA 22 sizing discipline and cold-climate freeze protection for buried storage.
This cistern ships LTL freight, quoted live to your ZIP from the nearest of three Norwesco plants - Fairfield, TX; Hanford, CA; or St. Bonifacius, MN - so a buyer in California, Texas, or the Upper Midwest ships from close by on a tank this size. Get your number with the Freight Cost Estimator, or call 866-418-1777 to confirm the burial configuration, riser detail, and delivery before you order.
