Some kind of Well on my property What is it?

[Equipmentpro99]

Im a licensed water well driller, and it sounds to me like an old irrigation well converted to a residential well. The air you hear is probably just because of atmosphere pressure pushing down on the water in the larger pipe and forcing it partially up the smaller pipe. Find a list of water well contractors in your state and let them check it out before you try to do anything much with it. If something breaks and falls into the well you really dont want to pay them to come fish it out.

 

[Tractor Seabee]

Decomposing organic material generates Hydrogen Sulfide gas along with the methane. Natural gas is a methane product and has no odor. They hydrogen sulfide smells like burning sulphur. In large doses it is lethal. Shallow wells are notorious for that situation. My well is 160' and we have sulphur tasting water. It is common around here as the area is all glacial deposits. It can be filtered out with the right cartridge in a whole house type filter unit. There may be a pump at the bottom end of that pipe. Do you see any electrical wires or evidence of an old pump house?

Ron

 

[Fossil Farm]

I thought natural gas was odorless and the odor you smell in consumer gas is added by the gas company for safety (so you can detect leaks with your nose)

Crude oil and natural gas from the ground has many contaminates in it and typically has an odor. Crude natural gas is "cleaned" of contaminates and then the "odor" is added by the gas company. Have had wells on our place since the 1980's and have helped the well tender fix many gathering line leaks over the years.

Might want to check old county recorder records or with your state oil and gas or water division. There should be a record of the well being drilled if it is not too old. Most wells from the 1950's and newer usually have been recorded. Not always, but usually. Ohio has a program to cap old oil and gas wells from the small tax on current well drilling. Plugging a well can be in the thousands of dollars.

 

[teejk]

Possible your property once contained an old land-fill site? I recall an incident years ago about such a site creating a huge explosion, leading to the need to drop vent pipes into the pits when they were capped. Apparently the garbage in the old town dumps takes a long time to decompose once covered. Not so funny story is my fathers grocery store was across the street from what was the village dump 50 years before he built the store. The village decided enough time had passed so they started a senior citizen housing complex on the property. We had rats (Boris and Natasha) in the store within a week of them starting to dig the foundation. Not a good thing in a food store. Poison laced ground beef did the trick but they died inside the walls and the odor was pretty bad. A lot of chlorine bleach was used where the smell seemed to be coming from.

 

[Egon]

Some land fills are having their gas used for commercial purposes.

 

[nc redneck]

Sounds like a cased water well to me. They are used a lot around here to get sediment out of the water. Pull some of the PVC up if possible and see if it has a lot of cuts or holes about every inch or so.