Anybody ever have a well fracked?

[Valveman]

My well is 360ft deep. When you look down it, it looks like a rifle bore. Smooth granite all the way down. When the well was drilled, they hit water at 260 but kept going to make a reservoir. The well produced 5 gallons per minute.

When we bought the home we had the well tested. The water was very clean, good tasting, but only produced 3 gallons per minute. We had the well tested in April, during the spring, when it rains.

That summer the well went dry on us a few times. We were watering the lawn and using water like we did living in suburbia, on grid water. We would shut off the pump breaker and let it sit for several hours or overnight. That usually let it fill back up, slowly. I got tired of this and decided to call a well/pump company to come take a look. Now, its September, when it doesn't rain.

He ran the well down and used a sounder to measure the recharge rate. 8th-of-a-gallon-per-minute! "That's a dry hole" he said.

He suggested a pump saver, a device that will sense the increase in electrical current when the pump runs dry, and shuts off power for a set amount of time. This way the pump won't burn itself up.

I called a local fracker that my neighbor suggested. When he used the fracker, he got his well up to 9gpm! That's an amazing amount of water! I was envious and called the fracker immediately. The company came out twice, once to assess the well, and a final time to do the fracking. They used Co2 and packers to over pressure the well to some ridiculous amount. Apparently, carbonic acid is produced and will dissolve the minerals blocking the fractures in the granite, allowing more water to flow.

We had carbonated water for several days!

But it worked!! Our water went up to 10GPM!! YAY!! We had water! I loved timing myself filling up a 5 gallon bucket, and feeling the pressure my "dry hole" well was producing. $5,000 well spent!

But it didn't last. Our water turned orange with rust, and went back down to 8thGMP. Sad days. The fracker came back out to assess the well again. He figures they 'tapped into an underground reservoir with some iron ore.' Gosh, really?! At this point though, they said they are complete, and nothing more can be done. I need a new well. Well... that $20,000 just for a hole, not including electrical, and that's not a guarantee of water.

So I was left with high iron content and a low producing well. It is seasonal. And after a $5,000 water filtration system to filter the iron, and a $7,000 - 3,000 gallon cistern, we live pretty comfortably. We can irrigate some, do our laundry, etc. I have a water truck that I use for emergencies, including fire.

Based on my experiences, its a gamble. You could get tons of water for years to come simply by fracking the well, or you could end up like me. No more water, good water turned bad, and had to pay for it.

Sorry for your problems. But anytime you drill a well it is a gamble. Some areas are more of a gamble than others. You can get all the good clean water you want, or you could spend thousands fracking and filtering to just get enough to get by. But water is a fairly important thing. People spend a lot of money of frivolous things, then complain on how much they have to spend to get water. If we keep overpopulating the earth water is going to be the most expensive thing you have to purchase. But it will still be worth it compared to the alternative.

 

[77cruiser]

The farm where I grew up had 4 hand dug wells 18 - 25 ft. deep, one was flowing nonstop for close to 100 years.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

My earliest memory is of looking through the windshield of a pickup and feeling/watching water and debris fly straight up out of a well that was being drilled by my grandfather. Back then you could buy dynamite at the feed store. It was a common thing for my grandfather to use when his old spudder (cable tool) drilling rig hit a rock he couldn't pound through. Couldn't have been much more than three years old. It must have made a big impression because 60 years later I am still in the water well business and still like seeing things blow up. Lol!

One of my early memories is bing out with my uncle, and he had been pounding away at the hole for quite a while, trying to bust through a basalt layer. The well made a strange noise and the cable on the spudder went slack. He grabbed me and we dove under the truck. A moment or two later, things came shooting out of teh well. He had broken through and gotten into a pressurized aquifer. It flowed close to thirty gpm, for three decades before they depleted the aquifer. Aquifer would have lasted decades more, if the ranchers had installed valves and shut things down in the winter when they were’n’t irrigating.

 

[77cruiser]

2-3 GPM flowing well would have been a dream for me.

 

[Hoot Owl]

In Pa. our well was 15' from the barn and only 25' deep. The pump was set at 8'. when you removed the well cap the water would push up about a foot for several hours before I could put the cap back on. I still took a bath at that. Here in Mo. our well is close to 400' and the pump is set at 375'. I won't be pulling it by hand. We had a pipe freeze going to a hunting cabin that share's the well and it ran for a week around Christmas as we were not home. pressure was low but it never ran out.

 

[77cruiser]

The well guy said $3700 to frack, I'll give it a shot I guess. It's not worth much the way it is now.

 

[oosik]

Fracking a potable water well is not normally a recommended thing. Generally it's just too close to somebodies sewerage system.

I've seen where the steel pipe is "sliced" - at a specific depth - with a very special slicing tool. It has four very sharp knives that will spring out and slice thru the well casing as the tool is pulled upward. This is used when the casing has been driven past a layer that contains water. It is an alternate to stopping at the water level and putting a screened section at the bottom of the casing.

Seldom done.........

 

[Captain Dirty]

But water is a fairly important thing. People spend a lot of money of frivolous things, then complain on how much they have to spend to get water. If we keep overpopulating the earth water is going to be the most expensive thing you have to purchase. But it will still be worth it compared to the alternative.

A little off-topic. For a classic, read Frank Herbert's Dune (1965). Don't waste your time on the movies. The endless print sequels as Herbert and his children milked the franchise do not compare with the original.

 

[77cruiser]

Little over a month ago I had the fracking done, & it's a lot better probably about 4 gpm.
I can pump it full flow for 34 minutes & get about 400 gals. before going dry, it will fill back up in a little over an hr.

 

[MF243RedTop]

So glad after reading through more than a few of these threads about wells outside my area...
Yeah it might be 400-500 ft here for water in the limestone ....but drawing out of the limestone of the floridan aquifer is money...never heard of or seen a problem other than having to drop the under ground pump down some more ...after the water tables dropped over the yrs...mines only about 150 down in the casing that's set to 400 ft ..