Another water well situation.

[MDM]

For anyone who thinks their water situation is bad...

I bought a house and 14 acres a few years ago. Here is my well situation:

85' deep
static level 65'
5" casing
pump at 74 ft
2 gpm - supposedly

So, I have 11 feet of useable water. With the 5" casing, I figure I might have 13 gallons at any given time. Well log says 2 gpm, but in summer months it is well below that. In the summer, I can easily pump it dry, doing a couple loads of laudry back to back, sometimes 1 load will do it. If I pump it dry, it takes hours to fill up my 25 gallon pressure tank. I end up hauling water most of the summer for laundry and such.

I'm looking into having another drilled if we can find water somewhere else. We only have about 1.5 acres of drillable area and the rest is leach bed area and woods. I researched other wells in my area and surrounding counties and I have never seen a well over 200' deep and 95% are 125' at the most. It just blows my mind you guys having wells hundreds of feet deep. It must have something to do with the geology in my area (East Central Ohio).

I didn't own the property when the well was drilled. There is an old hand dug well that has since been filled in about 10 ft from my drilled well. I don't know if the driller just figured he would punch the hole near the hand dug well and thats where the water would be or what. I know a 100' well around here will cost somewhere near $2000-$3000 dollars. I'm hoping I get a decent tax return.

 

[Jimbrown]

Well a different perspective on wells. The easy way for you is just to use a storage tank about 1000gallons ought to work fine. But then again your well appears to be less than adequate for your needs. But a new well may not pump any more water than the current one. Personally I think an 85 ft well is terrible. To me that would be simply be surface water right below the ground level. I would never stop that shallow but again you may have to to keep out of salt or sulphur. Mine is 300ft and I was ready to go to 600 if necessary. The water level is 80 ft. My water never fluctuates with season or rains. I have 1500 gal of storage.

 

[tommu56]

MDM

I would look consiter a cistern to hold water if your ares has low yealds for wells check with a couple of well drillers in your area and see. some times the cistern is cheaper than drilling a new well.

Then when and if you have to hall water you can dump it in cistern.

You would pump all the time to cistern like 1500 gallons or so and then pump from cistern to house that way when you arent activly using any water tank is filling.

My well at my cabin is 0.5 gpm I did get them to drill to 450 ft and didnt get any more water and i will be installing a cistern this summer if time premits.

tommu56

 

[MDM]

I have a storage tank in my gargage where I keep the water I haul in the summer. I tried filling it up from my well but after 20 gallons or so, my well is pumped dry. There is coal in this area of the state, maybe that is why the wells are so shallow. Matter of fact, I had never hear of a 300' well until I got on this site. Maybe its an eastern/southeastern Ohio thing. Maybe some other Ohio boys can weigh in.

One of the main problems is no reserve with the 5" casing. An 8" well casing and anther 20' deep would help immensely.

 

[EddieWalker]

Why drill a new well? If you want to drill, pull you pump and casing and drill the existing one deeper? If you make it bigger too, you will increase your storage capacity in the ground at the very least.

If that doesn't help, then you'll have to put in a large storage tank of some kind. If you do that, you might want to consider a low preasure type pump that wont out pump your well. If you have so many gallons per minute, put in a pump that is rated for less then that amount and let it run until the tank is full. If you had 1,000 gallons of water in storage, you would never run out of water.

Eddie

 

[Jimbrown]

You need a smart pump controller. One that pumps for a certain period of time and then waits for an hour or two and then pumps again automatically. Or one like mine. It pumps utill the well goes dry and then waits for 20 minutes and pumps again. it does that three times and then waits two hours.

 

[MDM]

Why drill a new well? If you want to drill, pull you pump and casing and drill the existing one deeper? If you make it bigger too, you will increase your storage capacity in the ground at the very least.

If that doesn't help, then you'll have to put in a large storage tank of some kind. If you do that, you might want to consider a low preasure type pump that wont out pump your well. If you have so many gallons per minute, put in a pump that is rated for less then that amount and let it run until the tank is full. If you had 1,000 gallons of water in storage, you would never run out of water.

Eddie

Yes. I'm going to check into something like that. I'm going to get with a couple of drillers and see what my options are. I didn't know if it was possible or even cheaper to pull an existing casing and redrill.

Is it possible that the original driller missed the water?

Around here, most people have someone "witch" there well for the location. I know of a couple guys who have sopposedly never missed. My brother in law has an uncle that is very good at it. He used to have his own rig. He found water at my sister in law's property. He found an area where he said there were 3 stream coming together. The actual well driller wanted to drill in a different area, but my sister in law went with what my brother in law's uncle said. Sure enough, they had water at 3 different depths and they can't pump their well dry. My plan is to get a couple opinions of where to actually drill, if I decide to go that route.

 

[CurlyDave]

I have a storage tank in my gargage where I keep the water I haul in the summer. I tried filling it up from my well but after 20 gallons or so, my well is pumped dry. There is coal in this area of the state, maybe that is why the wells are so shallow. Matter of fact, I had never hear of a 300' well until I got on this site. Maybe its an eastern/southeastern Ohio thing. Maybe some other Ohio boys can weigh in.

One of the main problems is no reserve with the 5" casing. An 8" well casing and anther 20' deep would help immensely.

Not an Ohio boy, but I think you need a timer which only allows your pump to pump into the holding tank for 10 minutes or so every hour. This would keep your pump from running dry, and would also fill your tank eventually. This would be called a "time delay relay". Of course you also need a level switch which shuts off the pump completely when the tank is full.

For a really quick & dirty test, put a valve in the line from the well to the tank, and throttle the flow rate down to about 0.25 gpm. If the well can produce this flow indefinitely, then you know the timer idea would work and would be easier on your pump than constant running at very low flow.

Probably the least costly thing to try right now. A hose bib would work for the valve and can be had for under $5.

If you do end up with a second well, do not destroy the one you have. If the second one is far enough away from the first, they should have nearly independent flows. If the new one is high enough to live with fine, but if worse comes to worse, two low flow wells could be better than one.

 

[MDM]

You need a smart pump controller. One that pumps for a certain period of time and then waits for an hour or two and then pumps again automatically. Or one like mine. It pumps utill the well goes dry and then waits for 20 minutes and pumps again. it does that three times and then waits two hours.

I tried that. I let my water run at a slow trickle to my holding tank - a stream about the size of a pencil. It eventually ran the well dry after afew hours. This was during a bad drought we had a couple of years ago though.

 

[SteelDust]

I'd install a 1500 gallon poly tank, in this situation. To gain 1500 gallons of storage capacity, you'd have to dig to 1050 feet. The entire poly tank set up can be purchased for cheaper than it would cost you to dig another 100 foot well. Even your 1 gpm well yields 1440 gpd.

Drilling deeper doesn't mean you'll get more water. I'm at 80 feet and 2.5 gpm. Neighbor went to 375 feet and got 0.75 gpm. And, that 0.75 came at 60 feet. Not a drop of water out of the next 315 feet. He punched another 100 foot well on the uphill side of his property and got 3 gpm @ 100 feet.