Found old well...now what?

[Boondox]

Our classic New England farmhouse is 160 years old, and has cycled thru several springhouses. Rumor had it there was a well in the very early days, but we'd never found any evidence of it...until this morning.

Tuppence the Wonderpup was digging a hole between the slates on our side porch. I noticed the hole was pretty deep, so shined a light and discovered a cavern about 12' deep with standing water at the bottom!!! After moving a few slates and shovels of dirt it was clear I was dealing with a stone-lined well about 3' in diameter and a couple of feet deeper than the adjacent basement.

So now what? Not sure filling it in is the best thing, since the water at the bottom might have been the source of our basement leak this past meltdown, and filling it in might just raise the water level enough to make the leak permanent. Definitely do not want a gaping hole just a few feet off the doorway! Wife wants a little circular stone rim around it with a hand pump installed, but not sure what would happen in the winter months. Besides, I'd have to plow around the obstruction. But someone went to a LOT of trouble to place those big stones so carefully!

What are my options?

Pete

www.GatewayToVermont.com

 

[GlueGuy]

Pete,

Wow. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif I'm not sure what the heck I would do with that. Some of it would depend on your own personal goals. If you are "restoring" the old farmstead, then integrating the original well into it makes some sense. OTOH, the old well is a hazard in several ways. For instance, where is your current well? Does the aquifer from this well connect to your current well? Things that get dropped into the old well can contaminate the aquifer... Likewise, the odds of it flooding the basement is a potential issue, but not likely. The water level should stay where it is.

I guess if it were me, I would probably just fill it with clean drain rock up to the top of the water level, then plain dirt above that.

The GlueGuy

 

[JOR_EL]

Hi Pete, /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Glueguy's points about the old/new well sound worth thinking about, ...but on a different slant;
[[[ Wife wants a little circular stone rim around it with a hand pump installed, but not sure what would happen in the winter months.]]] Could be decorative and "historic", ...just what are your "winter months" concerns?

Larry

 

[Boondox]

Okay, we've dug away a bit more dirt after hanging a bucket in the hole to catch what fell. The well is a hand-dug work of art! Its walls are perfectly straight from ground level clear down to the water. I'm trying to imagine creating something like that by hand and am at a loss. Looking at the water below, which is impossibly clear and sweet, is like gazing into the 19th century, possibly the 18th. We'll have to review family records to see when it was dug.

The Wife feels the same, and has declared that we should never seal it up. Looks like I need to find plans to built a small wellhouse. We'll use the hand pumped water for the garden and the dogs, though I worry that exposing the water to air might pretty much guarantee its freezing every winter.

As for your specifics, we presently get our water from a springhouse about 1/4 mile up the hill. We own the entire hill, so there's no housing or septic or anything but forest above us. The septic for this house exits the basement on the far side and goes sharply downhill, so no contamination there either.

If anyone finds plans for a wellhouse with one of those old hand pumps, please flip me the URL. Thanks.

Pete


www.GatewayToVermont.com

 

[Jag]

BD, at the depth of your well it is very unlikely to freeze unless a very large surface is exposed.. think pond size here...
MHO put a short rock wall around it and enjoy. Os JAG

 

[Boondox]

My Wife likes this response a lot. You may come visit during foliage season. Pete

www.GatewayToVermont.com

 

[GlennT]

Boondox--By any chance did you discover a cistern? If so, you have a water-tight container (more or less after all of these years) and maybe you would find it useful for storing water to water your lawn, plants, bushes, etc. If this is a cistern, there should be some indication that water from gutters and downspouts was routed into it.

 

[OverlyRun]

Boondox,
When my father and I rebuilt his 1760's farmhouse in Massachusetts we found a similar well in the shed. We kept it for reasons you want to, but also for fire dept use (lake is 1/4 mile away and nearest hydrant is in the next town).

But we also built a well-cover out of full-dimension 2X8's, too heavy for kids to move, so that siblings and pets stayed safe. We figured we'd feel like fools if we preserved the pretty well at the cost of an adventerous younger brother.

I fear it got filled several years later when the shed became a garage.

Chas

 

[Boondox]

Chas -- We'll prolly wind up doing something like that. Today while I was out gathering more firewood, the Wife widened the hole significantly with a shovel so it now threatens to consume part of the driveway! The plan was to consider alternatives together before taking action, but obviously she got a little impatient. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

The plan now is to remove the dirt over the stone lining, insert a neat row of hemlock beams over the opening (I still have a *&#$load of 8x8" beams left over from Hurricane Floyd), run a pipe down to the water level, and install one of those hand operated pumps so we can water the dogs and the flowers.

BTW: It's not a cistern, at least not anymore, since once the water level gets so far up (about 4' deep or about 9' below ground level) it leaks into our basement. We have a cistern in the basement that holds 400 gallons from the springhouse up the hill, and a shallow well jet pump to take it from there into the pressure tank.

www.GatewayToVermont.com

 

[skent]

The farmhouse on the property has the same setup- My uncle remembers the well from his earliest memorys. Dates back to 1920's. It was dug by hand (my great grandfather) and is 26 feet deep and 3 feet in diameter at the bottom. Gradually works out to 4.5 feet at the top. (will post picture tomorrow) Completly lined with rock. Typically had 6 to 8 feet of water in it. I remember one summer one of my kids was sent down to water the steers and left the hose running. We found it the next day and when I checked the well (took the manhole cover off) you could see/hear the water trickling in through the rocks. Still had 2 feet of water and completly recovered in a day. Was orgionally covered with oak planks. My grandfather had a gas pump that they would run for two hours each day to fill the cisturn up on the hill. Then the water would feed (gravity) from the cisturn to the barn and house. In 1948, a 6" concrete/rebar pad was poured over. An electric jet pump/storage tank now sits in the summer kitchen (building next to the well)

The Well was origonally dug to replace to older one when a heffer fell into it and died. Water went bad and it was eventually filled in.

All the needs of the farm have been met by this well for over 80 years up untill the summer of 1999. We had a drought that killed the recovery. We had enough for the house, but I was forced to sell my steers and hogs that year. (Trucking in water got to be real old real quick - 150 gallons every other day for a steer, two calves, and 13 hogs.)

It's a true wonder how they were able to engineer such a feat on the local level. Just start digging (by hand) and having it last.

IMHO - try to do everything you can to save it, if you can afford to. If you are able to top it with a ring, carefully placed rebar to keep kids from falling in, and freezing has never been a problem for us. The water is warm enough in the winter to prevent that. Handpump for looks or a sump pump (Northern sells a utility pump-submersable) to water gardens would be cool.

And . . . .if you are getting water in your basement . . . . it's most likely coming from the soil, not the well.

Good Luck!


Steve
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by skent on 05/14/01 10:20 AM (server time).</FONT></P>