Dig a Well or not? Questions re economics too.

Drilling a well too close to a septic is a no-no which is why the HD is involved.

__________________
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

Please keep us updated .

Our septic is no place near the new well location. That should show up on the old septic permits things they keep at the permit place. I am just glad I don't have to deal with permit people since they make me mad. The Well Man said he will handle them and since he wants to drill the well, then I bet he will get the permit pronto!

Yes - I will let you know how it goes.

(smile) the 1000 barrels a day is referring to oil.

Some people put in septics without permits. That's why they can't just look at county records.

Get all your permits and inspections or you will run into problems if you ever decide to sell that place (and no one knows what the future will bring)

Our water source is a spring located about 500 feet away from our house on what is now someone elses property. The rights to the spring however are included in our deed as well as the right to repair the line if necessary.

Our spring is gravity fed to the cistern in the basement. Once or twice a year I have to reverse flush the spring line to clean out the silt. I was told that a good spring brings up silt.

I use a manual 'Silver King Force Pump' to pump out the line and then we are good to go.

I am not sure if a well would supply the volume of water that we get from our spring (4 gallons per minute running through the house 24/7). In the summer when watering our large gardens we can pretty much leave the water on as long as we need to.

If you are concerned about the spring being on land that you may sell in the future consider 'deeded spring rights'.

Windswept Hill:
How do you reverse flush a water line?? And...how would I do that to a well line? The well line is down in the well....how would I flush it out? And if there is a way to force water into it from the other end, how would I keep that water from just flushing silt into the well??

I did think about a deed with "water rights" but people fuss about water, sometimes, and it just seems best for each property to have it's own water that is actually on the piece of land. Since the Well Man has this deal, we don't pay if he does not hit water, then now seems the time to do it.

We have about 8 to 10 inches snow on the ground now and so I am not sure he can come out this week. Will have to wait and see how it warms up on Tuesday.

Oregon Woodsmok:
Oh! 1000 barrels of oil would be handy right now too! Will keep you posted!

Thanks everyone.

If you have a spring you should sanitize it every year. The spring box should be emptied and scrubbed with a bleach solution and then the pipes flushed with a similar. I have seen people tear a sponge and flush it through the pipes also. Wells can be santized also back flushing with a bleach solution.

__________________
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

Our spring house sits across the road. It has a cement reservoir built over the place where the water comes up from the ground. There is a 1 inch diameter black plastic pipe at the bottom of the reservoir that just disappears inth the ground under the reservoir. The end of the pipe has a coarse screen to prevent large stuff from getting in but otherwise it's open.
The other end of the pipe finds it's way across the field, under the road and into the cistern in our basement. I have a shut off valve in line but most of the time it's just fully open and dumping water into the cistern where the Jet Pump puts it into the expansion tank and the house water system.

When the cistern fills up the overflow goes into a drain and out into a field below our house.

To pump the line out out I turn off the flow in the basement, attach the force pump to the end of the line (hose fittings), put the pump into a bucket of water and start pumping. The Silver King force pump is like a bicycle pump except you put the bottom in water and it pumps on both up and down strokes.

I have to put about 20 or 30 gallons into the line to clean it out. I just keep filling the bucket as I am pumping.

If you pump the silt back into the well it will settle to the bottom where there is probably already plenty. How do you draw the water from the well?

I don't know much about wells but I have been living with this setup for 15 years. I see mention of the spring in deeds for this property going back to the 1800's so the spring has been running for a while.....

As well as septic, there are - in my state - setbacks from wet areas (creeks, wetlands, etc.) so it doesn't flood with surface water & put bacteria down the hole. This would create problems for you & all your neighbors - a bad thing. Here if I am within 300 feet of the county ditch, it would need al sorts of special features to have a well dug, very expensive & time consuming to get such permits.

And setbacks from livestock barns and yards. Manure shouldn't be runninging into the well.... I think it's 100 or 150 feet away from any building that housed livestock.

Around here, one has issues if you don't get 4 gal per minute. It's rare to find less than 10 gal per minute if you dig enough, but that is 'here' and different locations can be real short of water and make use of a gallon or less per minute, I understand.

--->Paul

Thanks - I will have to ask the Well Man and his Pump Man about flushing out the old well line. That should get the silt out of the line.

We don't have any "set back" issues since we are on 40 acres and no one has a place near where the well will be drilled. There are not any animals and no septic anywhere near the new well site. There also are not any creeks......just nothing really near the new well site. It is near my Main Gate........maybe 8 truck lengths? It will be up under a clump of trees and the Well Man said he will saw off a few trees limbs before digging. I had to call those Line Locating people so we will have the power and phone lines marked to dig the line to the house. I know where the lines are anyway but the man said I had to get them marked any way.

We have so much snow here today.......I don't know if he will be able to get out here and drill anything this week. Will have to talk to him on Tuesday.

Thanks!

I totally agree that each piece of property should have its individual source of water supply. Deeded rights would scare off many potential buyers (me included). And you having deeded access to a neighboring well means nothing if the new owner (with his 20 head of cattle and 20 acres of pasture) has run the well dry! You will be entitled to 50% of nothing, regardless of who ran the well dry. As an investment, a well is a good selling point. Today, few areas of the country have severe water problems, but as time goes by, and populations grow, water rights/availability will bring added value to a piece of land. Your survival will not be dependent upon the city/county/state, or private company to come running to fix a ruptured water main. Mankind cannot survive without water, and if you can provide your own, you will be 10 steps ahead of the guy who cannot.

When I first bought the place I was a little put off by the 'spring on the other side of the road on the neighbors property' thing but since it was fairly common in 1995 I was still able to get a mortgage.

The spring rights I have are described in our deed as 'First water from certain spring. That is to say that we reserve the right to place our water outlet from said spring and reservoir below any other outlet.'

This means we are entitled to the water before the owner of the land where the spring is located. It was originally part of this place.The previous owners of our farm sold the land to a weekender who built a Log Cabin and drilled a five hundred foot deep well.

Every situation is different. I will certaily have a well drilled if the need arises but probably not before that time. Around here the average well costs between $7,000 and $10,000 by the time they get done with you.

As a side note: The area we live in contains some of the reservoirs and is the watershed that supplys water for a couple of folks in a place we affectionately call 'The City' (NYC). But then that is a whole other story.....

I like a "back up" water supply in addition to a regular water supply. For now it has been the old deep well (850 feet deep) and a spring (2 Cisterns that hold 2000 gallons total) plus rain barrel system (2050 to 2550 gallons) for outside use. The trouble is, the deep well and the spring are both on my "Cabin land" and so I want a well on my Main House land. I think it can only help add value to both pieces of property to have the 2nd well.

I also have an old spring system on the Main House land and it holds about 150 gallons, last time I checked the reservoir for it. I could tap into it too but 150 gallons is not much. I like my rain water collection system and next spring we plan to connect it back up and fine tune the connections. I can then put rain water into one Cistern (1000 gallon capacity) and that will up my storage.

Will keep everyone posted on what happens. Thanks for all the suggestions and conversation.