Our Well from Hell!

[diane5000]

The only thing close to an appoinment to have a well drilled is an

appointment with the dentist. like a visit to the dentist, you are having a

hole bored, with more drilling, there is the pain ...pain watching your bank

account deplete as the drilling continues!!! and then to be told your well is

dry!!!


How many similar horror stories are there out there?


Diane
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

[BrightBay]

Our well is 550ft with most in the area being around 150. We were almost there. I probably would have pulled up and started over, but I wasn't there. Our well is full of arsenic too. 5 times the limit.

Hope everything goes better on the second attempt.

[diane5000]

I should mention three days later they came back. We do have a trickle...but

is still considered a dry well. What do you do about arsenic?

[EDDIE BUCK]

Originally Posted by diane5000

What do you do about arsenic?

You give whoever said "drill right here"the first glassful thanking them for that knowledge.lol....Just kidding now don't do that.I hope you do find a way around it,how about the other wells in the area,how much arsenic is showing up in those?

[Harry Chickpea]

Ours came in dry at $3000. Fortunately, we had other options.

[agmantoo]

diane5000
Tell me a little more about this expensive hole in the ground. You mention bored and then you mention drilled. To me that is 2 different types of hole in the ground. What is the diameter and depth of this wanna be well? Has the casing been installed? What is the water table of the area you live? How many people are to be supplied from this source of water?

[kabri]

Our well is at 240', 20gpm, and the water has over 6000 ppm of chlorides (salt), plus high turbidity. See, where we live the mountains were formed by tectonic plates, not volcanoes so ancient seabed/water got trapped, just waiting for us. this drilled well was over $10k. We've been running it as often as we can, hoping it would clear up, but it has not, just did another water test last month. The only residential water system company that we could even get to talk to us don't want to touch the job, they say we need an industrial-sized reverse osmosis machine.

The good news for the future is - we won't have to rely on the well with our ample rain water and catchment system we will be installing. Bad news is - won't get an occupancy permit without proven potable water, and rainwater does not count.

Anyone know a R/O company that we might want to talk to?

[oneokie]

kabri,

Is Culligan® in your area?

Just a thought,,check at the grocery stores in your area on their bottled water (gallons), the company that bottles that water should have their information on the label somewhere, and information on what process they use to process before bottling.

[BrightBay]

Originally Posted by EDDIE BUCK

You give whoever said "drill right here"the first glassful thanking them for that knowledge.lol....Just kidding now don't do that.I hope you do find a way around it,how about the other wells in the area,how much arsenic is showing up in those?

Our well was one of many in a state study. It's rising. Reverse osmosis is the only thing that gets rid of it, but I've read that it can get by all but the best ($$) of them. Other wells in the area have some, some have none. Some had none and then it showed up later. There's a school up the road though, it had the same level of arsenic as ours, so they stopped letting them use the water even for washing dishes in the cafeteria. Food had to be brought in, bottled water only, plastic utensils, etc. while they ran potable water. We are in the process of getting that water, but didn't want it. We were kind of bullied into doing it. We're just trading one carcinogen (arsenic) for two others (chlorine and flouride). We only get a gallon a minute on our well, so I'll use the city water to run the kitchen/laundry but that's pretty much it.

[BrightBay]

Originally Posted by diane5000

I should mention three days later they came back. We do have a trickle...but

is still considered a dry well. What do you do about arsenic?

How much is a trickle? We made it 10 years with a gallon a minute with 5 children, gardens, pool, animals, etc. Maybe that trickle will increase a bit more?

[diane5000]

Hi Bright Bay,

Thanks for your question,

Your gallon a minute sounds like Niagra Falls. We get five gallons an hour.

Diane
http://www.frombeyondthegrid.com

[EDDIE BUCK]

Originally Posted by BrightBay

Our well was one of many in a state study. It's rising. Reverse osmosis is the only thing that gets rid of it, but I've read that it can get by all but the best ($$) of them. Other wells in the area have some, some have none. Some had none and then it showed up later. There's a school up the road though, it had the same level of arsenic as ours, so they stopped letting them use the water even for washing dishes in the cafeteria. Food had to be brought in, bottled water only, plastic utensils, etc. while they ran potable water. We are in the process of getting that water, but didn't want it. We were kind of bullied into doing it. We're just trading one carcinogen (arsenic) for two others (chlorine and flouride). We only get a gallon a minute on our well, so I'll use the city water to run the kitchen/laundry but that's pretty much it.

You ain't my next door neighbor is uHow far from the coast are you.I like flowers, but I ain't looking forward to pushing up them dasies right away.Now mowing them down,I can handle that for many years to come. If you lived closer, you could hook up to mine,and not worry about drinking arsenic.

I don't worry about it. Just don't have it checked,what we don't know might hurt us, but at least we won't be worrying about what day will be our last and if this glass of ice cold arsenic, will be the one that breaks the grave diggers back.

[Welshmom]

Our well has atrazine and nitrates in high levels. We got a reverse osmosis system from Kinetico. Works pretty good. We did have the filtered water tested, btw, to make sure.

[diane5000]

[
In answer to your questions... the width is six inches. We went 400 feet down. The term drilled should only of been used (thanks for the correction).

Yes we have had the casing and pump installed. We get a trickle. ..still considered a dry well though.

There are only two of us.

Diane







QUOTE=agmantoo;4110228]diane5000
Tell me a little more about this expensive hole in the ground. You mention bored and then you mention drilled. To me that is 2 different types of hole in the ground. What is the diameter and depth of this wanna be well? Has the casing been installed? What is the water table of the area you live? How many people are to be supplied from this source of water?[/QUOTE]

[francismilker]

Dianne,
The folks in my area that come in with just a trickle set a storage tank and jet pump in there well house or garage and let the well work 24/7 to keep the tank full so you have a volume to pump from when showering, doing laundry, and watering the garden. You do have to be conservative. ie., setting a minimum level float that won't allow you to drain your toilet flushing water and etc. out of the tank if you accidentally leave a garden sprinkler on overnight.

It's kind of an adjustment to get used to, but it is very doable. You just set the downhole pump on a timer causing it to cycle off and on at regular intervals throughout the day to pump your well dry and put it in the storage tank.

[kabri]

Welshmom, thanks for the tip, I've contacted them to see if they have a system that would help us!

[agmantoo]

diane5000
Thanks for the reply. You did not give me the water table answer however. With the depth at 400 ft and a trickle you have far more water than you realize. Additionally, with use, the trickle will probably increase. Modern drill methods tend to glaze over the cracks and crevices that yield water and these openings will often improve over time. My approach and recommendation would be to install a submersible pump at around 375 feet depth and size it off a pump chart to flow around 5 gallons per minute. I would buy the largest bladder tank I could locate and I would also put some type of pump protector on the system in event that I ran short of water it would shut the system down until I manually reset it. With a little additional fine tuning and my knowing the water table dept for your area I can give you an idea of how much water you can consume at any single time. I feel positive you will be fine. I await your reply.

[meanwhile]

We have very slow well too. Our solution was to put in a cement cistern that collects water from a VERY VERY slow spring. We just let it collect as slow as it wants, and we have 2 tanks = 2,400 gallons of water......and we hooked those tanks to our main water lines......so we have the Well Water plus the 2 cisterns.

OR you could consider using rain water as back up too. OR you could get a cement cistern, let it fill up slowly from your well, and use it as main supply....just let the slow well fill it back up each night.

Good luck --

[diane5000]

I'm afraid I have no idea what depth the water table is here. We are on the Canadian Shield...nothing but rock under our feet. When they drilled our well the drill went through 4' of soil and 396' of solid rock. The trickle we got was from a seam about 50' down. The well driller put a camera down there to show us the water trickling out. The rate is about 4 gallons/hour or about 100 gallons/day. I hope you are right about it increasing over time. That would be nice.
We did have a pump installed at about 200 feet and had it connected to a 5 gallon pressure tank. It is a Grundfos and it shuts itself off if it runs dry. It is a `soft start`pump because we are on solar power. Everything is a trade-off with solar so this pump couldn`t go any deeper or it would draw too much power. All of this was just completed and it seems to be working . We ran the pump dry twice to flush the chlorine out and it looked like about 100 gallons each time. We also put a drain back valve at the pressure tank to use so the line won`t freeze in winter. At this point we are just happy to have some water...probably could have bought bottled water for the rest of our lives for what it cost but it`s ours.

Diane
http://frombeyondthegrid.com

Originally Posted by agmantoo

diane5000
Thanks for the reply. You did not give me the water table answer however. With the depth at 400 ft and a trickle you have far more water than you realize. Additionally, with use, the trickle will probably increase. Modern drill methods tend to glaze over the cracks and crevices that yield water and these openings will often improve over time. My approach and recommendation would be to install a submersible pump at around 375 feet depth and size it off a pump chart to flow around 5 gallons per minute. I would buy the largest bladder tank I could locate and I would also put some type of pump protector on the system in event that I ran short of water it would shut the system down until I manually reset it. With a little additional fine tuning and my knowing the water table dept for your area I can give you an idea of how much water you can consume at any single time. I feel positive you will be fine. I await your reply.

[diane5000]

Thanks for the response. We thought about a cistern. We have a 300 gallon tank here we could have used. The reason we decided against it was the problem of keeping the water in the tank from breeding bacteria. We were cautioned that bacteria could grow on the sides of the tank if it were not kept full all the time. We didn't like the idea of chlorinating it and filtration systems require power and we are on solar. Do you have any concerns about bacteria and, if so, how do you deal with that? We have decided to use our 300 gallon tank to collect rainwater which will help stretch the meagre supply from our well.

Diane
http://frombeyondthegrid.com

Originally Posted by meanwhile

We have very slow well too. Our solution was to put in a cement cistern that collects water from a VERY VERY slow spring. We just let it collect as slow as it wants, and we have 2 tanks = 2,400 gallons of water......and we hooked those tanks to our main water lines......so we have the Well Water plus the 2 cisterns.

OR you could consider using rain water as back up too. OR you could get a cement cistern, let it fill up slowly from your well, and use it as main supply....just let the slow well fill it back up each night.

Good luck --