Anybody have a well?

[bluedog225]

I found the water well drilling report from a neighbor’s property along with the county resource for all wells drilled in the area.

Generally 350-450 deep with medium good water quality. A little salty in places.

I don’t understand this part of the neighbor’s report. Is it telling me that there is water 25’ down?

This would be for keeping the small pond watered for wildlife, not for drinking.

A couple of years ago, I managed to get about 20’ down with a hand auger. I might be able to manage another 20 with some difficulty.

010E9250-D748-4C9D-8C74-1BCBB96DCCFF.jpg

[Boatbum]

My father had a similar issue. He had to drill over 200', but once he did the water seeped up to about 15'. The well still only produced a little over 3 gallons per minute, so it would not take too long fer the water level to recede back down to 220 with heavy water usage.

[JayInOz]

Down here a well is a hole you drop a bucket down. A bore is a cased drill hole with a submersible pump or a windmill. In American, mine can potentially produce about a hundred and fifty gallons per minute with no drawdown of the underground water-it's pumping from an underground stream. There was a highly productive gold seam just south of my boundary on the same underground system. There was a lot more gold supposedly there but they couldn't pump enough water out to allow mining to go deeper. Without the bore we wouldn't be able to keep our gardens going for more than a couple of weeks in the summer. JayInOz

[skuthorp]

We had one at a previous residence near here almost on the shore line. Strongly coloured by buried peat at 3-5ft, clear but very minerally at 15-20 (grew great veggies), clear and sweet at 35. There are layers of aquifers here down to at least 250ft with varying water qualities.

[John Smith]

We drilled (?) a well in our back yard. We used the towertower.jpg to support a large pulley. We jacked up the drive wheel of a '51 Plymouth.

We'd 'snug' the line on the wheel, and the car would lift the weight. Then we'd release, and the weight for fall and drive the pipe down a bit. We found water at 15 feet. Our dog loved it. Town tested it and said it was okay for the dog, but not the people.

My brother found a gas powered pump and hooked it up to one of those back and forth sprinklers. That proved to be a sight, as it sent streams of water many feet into the air, water our roof, the road, and two neighbors' lawns.

[Fitz]

Yes, the report says water was 25 ft below grade. At one point (2/20/2019) there was artesian flow, which means it was flowing out of the well at ground surface at 35 GPM. Actually, before you go digging, it would be good to know if they hit water at 25 ft. on the way down, or if that was the level the water reached at the completion of the well. As Peerie Maa points out in his sketch, a confining layer can mean depth to water is substantially deeper.

Fitz.

[Peerie Maa]

I found the water well drilling report from a neighbor’s property along with the county resource for all wells drilled in the area.

Generally 350-450 deep with medium good water quality. A little salty in places.

I don’t understand this part of the neighbor’s report. Is it telling me that there is water 25’ down?

This would be for keeping the small pond watered for wildlife, not for drinking.

A couple of years ago, I managed to get about 20’ down with a hand auger. I might be able to manage another 20 with some difficulty.

010E9250-D748-4C9D-8C74-1BCBB96DCCFF.jpg

Artesian tells us that 390 feet down there is an impermeable cap stone over water bearing rock. The water in that strata is under pressure, which pushed the water up the borehole to within 25 feet of your ground level.

[Breakaway]

I have a well. Chemicals from agriculture created the need for municipal water years ago. That well is 60 feet deep. That said, one will hit groundwater in less than six feet in many places around here.

Tax dollars at work, the USGS offers depth to water info.

https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/tx/nwis/gwlevels

Kevin


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[bluedog225]

6685757[/URL]]Artesian tells us that 390 feet down there is an impermeable cap stone over water bearing rock. The water in that strata is under pressure, which pushed the water up the borehole to within 25 feet of your ground level.

Very helpful. Thanks!

[hawkeye54]

Tom, my last house in Minnesota had a cased well 200 feet deep to good water. The next door neighbor (100 yards away) had to drill down 400 feet to get to good water, and his neighbor (again 100 yards further along ) had to drill down 800 feet to get good water. The river was less than 1/2 mile away.


Rick

[S.V. Airlie]

I have a well. Great water, clear and very cold. High up among the hills. Don't know how deep it is though.

[Jimmy W]

The well here is somewhere over 300 feet deep. It hasn't been used in a while as house is on county water. There is/was a well down the road on property that used to belong to my grandmother that was only about 30 feet. That water was used by horses, but contained a lot of iron and tasted funny. I think that shallow aquifer is also the one used for irrigation around here. It is fed from the nearby Mississippi River, but farmers are drawing it down.

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So, we encourage you to drink the brown water and benefit from its mythical powers.

[Andrew2]

Back when I was Rose farming in the Algarve, the big Nora ran dry ( that is a proper well, about 10ft across, with a bucket chain turned by a an old Lister at 600rpm)
Eventually the the drill team turned up, and drilled a bore hole another 25 mtrs in the bottom of the nora, which was 30 mtrs deep, so 55 mtrs. A shaft drive pump was dropped down to about 40 mtrs and run by a Lister twin . No electric start, so one hand cranked the Lister, turning the whole caboodle down to the pump. Def needed a good breakfast before trying that... But, it knocked out 75 cu mtrs an hour, with little drop on the level down there. (I did climb down the old chain to check while it was running. That's 100ft on dubious ancient iron..)

[woodpile]

Built the house in 1980, well was 200' deep, average for the area for a "code" well which at the time was 1/2 gpm recovery. Several other houses built in area, I'm on 10 acres no houses close, well went dry.
After $10k the well is now 750' deep with plenty of great water, apparently one of the other housed tapped out my vein according to the well driller. a friend about 1/4 mile away, same elevation hit over 80. GPM recovery and his well is registered as an emergency water supply. The thing with drilled wells is they can always be a crap shoot regardless of location but what is your property worth with no water?

[Rich Jones]

My well is 400' deep and the water level is about 30' below the surface.
Submersible pump is placed at 250'.
Beautiful, clear icy cold water.

[bluedog225]

Three things my water will never be.

[Garret]

Yep. I drilled (had it drilled) a well that found next to nothing until 425'. At that point they estimated 50 GPM - enough to supply an apartment building. The level settled at about 150' & we put the pump at 275'. As Nick's diagram shows, water pressure can & will raise the level once you tap into the vein. As a kid we had a well that was 1/3 gpm. My dad just put in a 500 gallon tank & let the pump run. Unless you got stupid with the hose, it wasn't a problem at all. Of course 15 YO me got stupid with it & got in real trouble. Only time I ever did!

A proper drilled well will have casing down to bedrock to prevent surface water getting in - as ground water will not be potable.

My current house has one drilled to 300' with the pump @ 225. Not sure what the top level is, but it sure is good water. I can't stand municipal water anymore unless it's been through serious filtration including activated charcoal.

[Fitz]

A proper drilled well will have casing down to bedrock to prevent surface water getting in - as ground water will not be potable

This may be true in some cases, but the many people, including many municipalities often depend on the high yield glacial gravel deposits throughout New England for their water.

[Garret]

This may be true in some cases, but the many people, including many municipalities often depend on the high yield glacial gravel deposits throughout New England for their water.

Not sure I understand. They're using surface wells & then treating the water?

[Fitz]

Sand and gravel is a great filter/purifier, plus it has the benefit of producing a lot of water. Often little if any treatment is necessary - think Poland Spring.

Many times the casing is installed in bedrock simply to keep the overburden from collapsing on the hole. Plus you need to get your pump down etc. Unless there is an aquitard like a layer of clay sitting on top of the bedrock surface, overburden water is going to seep into bedrock fractures anyway despite a sealed well casing. That is what replenishes the bedrock aquifer.

There are many myths associated with groundwater and wells and many ways to construct wells.

[Todd D]

Our well is about 250' deep. It produces all the water we need. The water is quite hard and we treat it with an ion exchange system. We run the ion exchange system with KCl resulting in our water having about 10-20 ppm K. The only issue we have is the need to change the particulate filter every month or so. Without the particulate filter the water is quite cloudy. After filtration with a 5 micron filter the water is crystal clear. I run the well pump from a 1 Kw solar array connected to a 10 Kwh battery bank using a 4 Kw split phase output inverter. The pump consumes about 1,500 watts when it is running, but it runs less than 5 minutes a day unless my wife is watering her flowers. So typical power consumption to run the well is around 125 watt-hours per day when my wife isn't watering and it can go as high as 500 Wh per day when she waters the flowers. I use very little water outside since I only wash our cars 2-3 times a year. My only other water use outside is to pressure wash the dinghy every fall. I never water the lawn since I prefer it when it doesn't grow enough to need mowing. I would let it go wild except that when it gets longer it is filled with deer ticks and they carry Lyme disease here.

[bluedog225]

Thanks for the solar analysis!

I’m finding out the prices are crazy. I was impressed 10 years ago when I got a bid that it would cost $10,000. Wish I’d done it then.

[Dave Hadfield]

A good well, of soft water with a high rate of flow, is like a winning lottery ticket. That's what we have now, but I've lived on properties with sour water, where we drank filtered cistern water -- or milk!

I dislike most city water. Once you get used to good well water you can smell the chlorine/bromine/whatever in city water from across the room.