County Water vs. Well

here in central ny theres iron water everywhere u drill,we put up with it for 28yrs.iron was so bad-every water treatment ran after testing!.brought in 2 different witchers at diff times.they came within 5ft of each other.a trackhoe dug us a 30ft tile well anchored in blue clay.tile is 3ft i.d. u just can't pump it empty-good clean iron free water.cost=$5,000

They weren't drilling a well, they were digging a well. Drilling is different from what I understand. A dug well is just that, dug. The machine works kind of like a post hole digger in digging the well. They can't dig through rock anymore than a posthole digger would go through a large rock. It just sits there & spins on top of the rock. When they finish, if they hit water, they place cement tiles which are about 4' across. The guys we had do it have been digging wells in this area for 3 generations. Actually, the man's dad & grandad both died digging a well by hand, overtaken by the toxic fumes that can occur. They dug wells for all of my family members so they do know what they are doing.

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Here I never heard of such a thing I think they quit those dug wells better than 40 years ago . Close to the rigs around here .

http://www.welldrilling.com/familypic059.jpg

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Sounds like they had a Pounder, not a rotary drilling rig. Those rotary ones can go through just about anything, but a pounder is a lot harder to go through such things. I know my grandpa, would put hard head stones down the well when they encountered some hard rocky areas. And let that 1500 pound string of tools do there work on the rocky areas.
I know they are still used in my area one drilling company not far from me has a rotary one, but also a couple of the old pounder types they still use.

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Is it county (government) water or a water company?

One of the issues around here is that many of the smaller communities get their water from privately run corporations. They're badly run, to say the least. I've yet to see one that passes the sniff test, and I'm not talking about sulfur in the water ... Some have failed to invest in the needed infrastructure, and therefore are now passing some very expensive bills on to their customers. Plus they don't have sufficient water in all areas, so people have to ration water.

If it's truly county water, run by the government, I'd still take a good hard look at their finances and setup, just to be sure you won't pay the money to hook up only to have big issues down the road.

Given the choice, I'd always choose a well. When it comes to water quality, there's probably nothing nastier than what comes from municipal water in terms of added chemicals. The last municipal water I had to put up with smelled like rubbing alcohol and made your skin burn after a shower.

A hand pump can always be installed in case of power outage. The convenience of modern living really gets inconvenient when it suddenly disappears. Municipal water could stop being available for a lot of reasons.

This is probably not true in your case, but in some areas, if you hook up to the municipal water, sooner or later they force you to hook up to the sewer system as well. If that's the case, they can sock it to you with a big connection charge of $2 - 5K.

Yep, see the greater New Orleans area post Katrina. Municipal water was shut down, Lake Pontchartrain was polluted with petroleum and chemicals from spills. The safest water was from deep private wells if you could pump it by hand or genny.

Hey Jim did you try to open that shallow well back up?
The one down the hill from me is 22 feet and had stopped for the last owner and when the current owner bought the place he dumped acid down it to open it up. It is still pumping water. I know people with shallow wells that have stopped up and most of them have just shot down the well with a .22 rifle.
They said the pressure knocks the crud loose.
My 50' well has a deep well jet pump in an old style well pit.
All of this is in Michigan just grandfathered in.
These folks would rather just keep the old well running than spend so much for a new deep well.

I was off in the army when the sandpoint plugged up so my dad was "swayed" by the for profit well drillers. . . . .and had to go deep.
One of the reasoning's back then was that they were really "down hill" from an orchard and the point was made about all the orchard spraying of nasty stuff........leaching down into the water at only 28'.............
That reasoning made some sense.....................especially to the health dept.

-------Luck to all those who can keep an old well running............

But when it is time to renew/upgrade . . . . . .the health dept is going to force folks to spend big bucks

Only if they talk to the health department about what they are doing on their own property. Apparently you don't know Michigan rednecks like I do.

In Florida the drillers won't drill without a permit from the water mgmt district which of course carries fees. I don't know if they have a similar gov't authority in MI.

Our acquirer is highly controlled. If you are doing most anything that involves managing/directing surface or subsurface water, even if it doesn't need a permit you have to pay a $100 fee that documents that you don't need a permit. How's that for gov't speak? A permit that says you didn't need a permit.

Our county health dept. Has low cost water tests. We had to go get one of their sterile bottles and then the next day fill it up after running the water for 3 minutes. Took it back immediately. We found we had high levels of coliform in it so we dumped a gallon of bleach in the well. The next time the test came back clean. I think the test was about $10 each time. If you have a Farm Bureau they might offer testing, too.

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Here in Missouri Wells are 300+ Feet deep, never heard of any getting a dry hole but will run $10K+ You might still have Iron in the water but most time it is good.

We are on County Water in Laclede County, bill runs $20 a month.

big rockpile

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Water was high on our priority list, as was a private well. County water isn't available where we purchased, so that wasn't a choice. We did, however, choose to purchase a property with an existing well. This way, we could test to know our water quality before we purchased the property. In our case, we have pure spring water and it is excellent. We don't have to filter or treat it. We didn't want a water bill that would always go up. If you don't have a choice, you make the best of it.

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I would say well for sure. If things were to get bad. The town cab shut off your water. Don't rely on anyone. If power goes out for long periods of time you can get a rhino hand pump and stil have water.

Not if you're a valley dweller like myself. I have a pitcher pump about 50' from the house and about 20' lower in elevation that will catch water with a 20' pipe 99% of the time.

I don't know how deep our well is but I can't imagine it being too deep.

When I bought this place it already had a good well and a cistern that the eaves troughs run into so I can't speak to costs but I would definitely recommend the cistern. It's a 1500 gallon underground concrete tank and one good rain fills it up from empty plus the water is soft water so no need for a softener. The well is good clean water and it's never runs out but it is very hard and I just use it for an emergency or for late in the winter when the cistern might run out.

I"m about five large properties from a small town of a few hundred but not hooked up to the water system in town. A few years ago they dug a new well for the town but it turned out to be a poor well for some reason. However, everyone in town hooked up to the water system ended up with many thousands of dollars on their tax bill to pay for a well that turned out bad in the end. Doesn't sound like something I want to be stuck with.

We had our well drilled 3 years ago. When we first looked at the property the realtor said she didn't think a well was possible because of the low water table. We bought our place anyway...we saw other wells so we knew water was possible.

When called the driller he came and did a sight survey and had some type of geological map? of our property. Said it would be about 200' before he hit the aquifer. Our well ended up being 220'.

The county's water head honcho stopped by after the well was done...we were still on city water...and wanted to know what our plan was for the water. Irrigation, livestock, or house. We told him all 3 and then he went into some EPA speech about an airgap from the meter an having it inspected blah, blah, blah. I thought we were in trouble at that point until he started talking about how good the well water is and how he grew up on it and sure wishes he didn't live in town so he could drill a well.

We connected the house and barns to the well ourselves. We could have paid the driller or a plumber but we wanted to save the $ so it took us about a year to get it all done, inspected, tested and off county water. The final bill stamped paid is framed and hanging in the well house.

We bought a water test kit from Home Depot. You can get them on amazon as well for $25 or so. It tests for ecoli, minerals, acidity, etc... about 15 or 20 things it tests for as well as the hardness. The health dept wanted $450 for the same tests.

All total the well cost just under $6K. We run the pump off electricity but have it hooked up to a propane generator in the event of.

I'm glad we did it when we did as in town they ration water every summer...no lawn watering, no car washing, can only hand water plants, etc. Pretty strict and pass out a lot of citations. The town is now in the beginning stages of building a water amusement park. That's a whole 'nother rant by itself but I can't help but wonder who will get the water during the dry months and how that's going to affect the water bills.

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