Dug well versus drilled well?

[Gadgetnut]

Hello, all. I have posted here before about the challenges of finding water here at my property. There are now four abandoned wells on my 35 acres ranging in depth from 45 to 605 feet deep.

The well driller began today. About 17 feet deep he found very wet sand. He was hoping to find clay layer beneath that but found not, just more sand and it became dryer as he went deeper. He stopped today at 60 feet.

He is suggesting that a dug well, shallow, say 20 feet or so, might provide enough water to get by. I have a lot of water storage available, and have already installed a water treatment system, so even a gallon or fraction a minute would be useful. This driller feels that by all the fine sand, it would provide adequate filtration for water quality.

This driller does not dig wells and would refer to someone else. He's very conscientious and really doesn't want to see me with another 400 foot dry hole. If this route might work he thinks it's worth pursuing first.

What do you think of dug wells? Are they more likely to dry up seasonally? Thanks.

 

[denmansoft]

On Denman Island we have a low producing drilled well. Our neighbour 2 over has a shallow dug well. The shallow well dries up in the summer. So do some of the drilled wells. Our island is all rock and I can't see how any of us get any water!

I am digging some holes in 'wet' spots around to see if any look like potential for a shallow well.
Like you we are looking at storing water when we can get it. Tanks are cheap compared to drilling dry wells.

 

[CurlyDave]

A dug well is a deathtrap for any small animal which gets into it. Field mice usually crawl all over everything in the woods at night. I would not drink the water from a dug well without a lot of treatment.

Many years ago I bought land with an improperly abandoned drilled well on the property. We rented a generator and a pump and started pumping. For the first several hours, it smelled like we were pumping a sewer.

A properly done drilled well is sealed at the top.

 

[Gadgetnut]

My first thought was I hoped for groundwater out of a deep, conventionally drilled well, but as I said with failed wells here at 185, 300, and 605 feet, it does not pay to argue with where the water is.

My current driller called the digger last night and when the driller told the digger about finding that section of very wet sand at 17 feet, they concur that the hard part is over because we definitely have found water. The digger proposes to dig a 20 foot deep well, which will be lined with 36" diameter concrete rings.

The proposed well site is in a field that gently slopes down towards my lake. My lake never dries up, and when swimming you can feel distinct cold sections, which I imagine are spring water upwellings. The digger feels we may have tapped into an underground flow that feeds the lake.

I understand how susceptible dug wells could be to intrusion, debris, small animals and the like. The digger explained the concrete rings would rise up above the ground and there would be a good seal on top. On the other hand, this property formerly had an inground concrete cistern for water storage and it, too, had a well sealed top but when I peered into it, it was very mucky but I don't think animals could get into it.

The well driller, whose drill rig is still set up here today, seems to suggest stopping now at 60 feet and trying the dug well first. If that doesn't pan out he could set up again on this same location and drill deeper. The digger, who I'm told is the only one in the area, is not available until August. We'll see. I'll report back on how it all works out.

 

[WTA]

Boy, we have good water here normally so I feel for ya. I'm having a bad year for pumps though. My big 30 horse irrigation well went down a couple months ago so I've been irrigating the pastures hard off our house well just to get by and now I'm not building enough pressure out of that one either. It's only getting 40 psi with just one big sprinkler going. It's only a half inch nozzle! This well used to run 4 of them but the little bit of sand it pulls through has probably trashed the impeller now. I hope that's all it is anyway. We have to have the big one redug and I can't afford it now so this one by the house is all I have. This house well is a 5 horse sub pump and it's hurting bad enough. Those things aren't cheap. If he has to pull it I'm upgrading to a 10 horse in that hole.

 

[Tig]

I grew up with a dug well and I have one now. Water is crystal clear all year long and they test clean. I do shock my current well once around this time of year because it's at the country place and it sometimes is not used for a month at a time. dug wells around here must have concrete rings and I think now they also have to be sealed to prevent surface water from seeping in. You mentioned a lake, have you ever thought about a "shore well"

 

[ultrarunner]

A dug well is a deathtrap for any small animal which gets into it. Field mice usually crawl all over everything in the woods at night. I would not drink the water from a dug well without a lot of treatment.

Many years ago I bought land with an improperly abandoned drilled well on the property. We rented a generator and a pump and started pumping. For the first several hours, it smelled like we were pumping a sewer.

A properly done drilled well is sealed at the top.

I learn something everyday here at TBN... thanks Dave!

Parts of the San Francisco Bay Area are now under mandatory rationing...

A lady I work with lives in a tract home built in the 1950's on land that was once a vineyard... She has a 5000 square foot tract lot with a 36" brick lined 65' deep dug well... it was the vineyard water source before prohibition... She is also near the top of a hill... so the well was a good find.

Anyway, they wanted to get rid of it several years ago and I suggested they have the water tested and if OK... get a $65 garden pump... She said the pump is the best $65 she has ever spent and has unlimited good water...

I will let her know that she needs to keep it well sealed in addition to securely covered.

Some folks are just lucky...

 

[Gadgetnut]

Thanks for the input, it's good to hear from people who have had good luck with dug wells. At this point, it seems somewhat reassuring that some water, i.e., wet sand, has been found at a shallow depth. While that is a good indicator, it still does not guarantee suitable water quality or quantity. As I understand it, properly constructed dug wells are (officially) permissible where I live but considered somewhat of an anachronism and are marked as "an alternative source" on your well log.

Alternatively, we're at sixty feet with the drilled well today. The drill rig is over the hole. I've had a water douser out twice and this is the spot he selected. Most of my neighbors have water at 140 to 300 feet. He's just gone through some sand and gravel at this point, but I may have him go further, to my neighbors' depth or until he hits bedrock, whichever comes first.

Someone asked if I have considered a shore well-- do you mean just drawing surface water from the lake? My preference for a number of reasons has been to create a deep groundwater water source for the property, but using and treating the lake water might be a last choice. Not sure what I'd need to do to make it official or if I'd have to replumb the house to use that water for grey water purposes only.

 

[RobJ]

I'd always hear a surface well that shallow isn't good for drinking. Runoff, seepage gets into it real fast. Also warm enough for bacteria.

But if you are treating it enough I guess it's ok.

Bummer on all the dry holes for water.

 

[MrWoodChips]

Someone asked if I have considered a shore well-- do you mean just drawing surface water from the lake? My preference for a number of reasons has been to create a deep groundwater water source for the property, but using and treating the lake water might be a last choice. Not sure what I'd need to do to make it official or if I'd have to replumb the house to use that water for grey water purposes only.

We have used a shore well for years now, at two locations.

It is great. Last year when some of the people on our road had to have water trucked in and dumped in their drilled wells, we could water our lawn.

Our shore well is a cistern at the shore line, about 6 feet deep, plus a trench under the lake bed (Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario.) The trench runs out 40 feet. The trench has a line in the bottom to allow the water to seep in through a very thick bed of back filled gravel above. So the water gets filtered fairly well, except for a few months in late summer it comes in quite clear. We do treat the output of this well as the bay is weedy, although at our previous cottage it came in crystal clear all year round from the shore well. We did nothing to the water there, it just had a wee bit extra manganese. The well is year round, with a good seal on top to keep out animals, although it is vented.

As far as the cost of it all, our shore well was a far lower cost than our neighbor spent just recently on a drilled well with a VERY limited output. This is true even if you include the money spent on our water treatment system. Even worse, if you go down deep enough around here, you can hit salt.

John

 

[Ridgewalker]

After reading all these posts I feel blessed. My well is 260' deep, has water at 100' with a pump at 150'. (I don't know why they drilled so deep, maybe looking for colder/cleaner water???) It puts out a tremendous flow (how do you measure?) and is clean, cold and tastes great.

 

[prowley]

I notice you are in Washington, have you thought about rain water recycling? It may prove more economical given all the trouble you are experiencing.

 

[WayneB]

Not sure if they use them out there, but you might try a sand point. We have used one at our mountain camp for about eight years now and it has worked fine for us.

WDNR - Drinking Water and Groundwater

 

[art]

Our shop in Waterville NY lived off a dug well for twenty plus years with no problems at about 16 foot deep. I have other areas that I can find water at about 10 feet on site but choose to go to a normal well do to the amount of water used where we might have a hose on all day to keep the dyno cool or cleaning. The dug well was silted in a bit and when dry we were short water.

We are down to 55 foot and with only a little extra iron and a little on the hard side but it's a large vein that covers a lot of area. The driller was quite impressed with the supply and quality.

If your water in your lake is spring fed I'd be looking to find the supply!

 

[Tig]

Our shore well is about 10' from the shore of the lake. It is a simple dug well, 8' deep with the cement rings and a lid. Although it has always tested clean I would like to seal the lid better when we move here. I am also considering an ultra violet water purifier just to add an extra degree of safety for those high water years.
As always with shallow wells, pay attention to what may have seeped into the ground up hill from the well.

 

[WTA]

You all are making me want to move back to Arkansas with all this talk of dug wells. We have a really good one there. It was dug almost exactly a hundred years ago. It's 30 feet deep and has the old time cylindrical bucket in it with the pull ring on top. That thing still has great water in it. I pulled the cap off last year and tried it. It's had a concrete cap about 6 feet across over it for the last 50 or so years with a 6 inch steel pipe in the middle that is easy to cover.

That old farm also has hot and cold running water. A warm spring in the south 40 and a cold spring in the North 40. Seriously. We never put plumbing to the house at all and my family last lived there in the 80's. It's about time one of us moved back. It's a lot bigger than the farm I own down here and actually has trees, No pumps to mess with and no neighbors in sight.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Thanks for all the input. We do use rain catchment here and I've been hauling water from the city municipal lot with a 1000 gallon water trailer. I decided to drill a little deeper with the conventional deep drilling, we may go down to the depth most of my neighbors have their wells (175-250) or bedrock, whichever comes first. If we don't succeed with deep well in this location, the dug well is something I may pursue later this summer. My lake is springfed, so tapping in to its source makes sense. I'll report back.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Just following up. Thank you, everyone, for the helpful suggestions along the way. I had spoken with the guy who could dig a shallow well here and I believe that is always an option for the future. But I wanted to try for a deep well. I had the driller continue where he started. At about 240 feet, he found water in the 16 feet or so above bedrock. Not a ton of water but he imagines three gallons a minute or so, which is still several thousand gallons a day-- more than adequate.

Now I have to have the electric wiring to the old well located, and I will dig it up and hopefully find the water line in the same trench. I'll use my Bobcat to trench between the old line and the new well.

Been struggling with water issues here for two years. A reliable well would be an enormous asset and we appear to be the way!

 

[Tig]

I'm glad things seem to be working out.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Thank you, Steve.