[Darby49]

Any ideas on how to fix this?

We live on a lot cut out of a large hillside. The snow accumulates all winter, and then each spring everything melts and thaws. Of course there are ice dams everywhere, and everything floods.

Our house is on posts, so it's fine. The well house however is built right on the ground on a concrete pad. Every year it floods with a few feet of water.

The actual well is protected by its own high concrete box, so it's doing okay (so far anyway). The well pump is in there too.

We bought the property a few years ago and we're almost done fixing up the main house. Now we've got our sights set on the well house. It's been driving us crazy.

We don't know where to start! Any suggestions or advice on how to build a well house in an area that floods every year? Anything you really like about your well house, or anything you wish you could change?

 

[Bearfootfarm]

I'd work on some berms or swales to redirect the flow, and ditches or drain pipe to move the standing water.

Otherwise you may need to elevate everything.

 

[wy_white_wolf]

I'd work on getting the area to drain.

 

[Cabin Fever]

How does your outdoor well house not freeze solid in Nome, Alaska.

 

[rambler]

I hadn’t noticed the location.

so, how deep does the water get. 2 feet or, a few maybe more....

if I understand right, you have a concrete tube built above grade to keep water out of the well itself, but there is a well house over/ around the tube to keep everything from freezing. You want to keep the water off that structure?

even for us in Minnesota, you are dealing with more extreme cold, deeper frost, and no sun, so you might need to explain the situation of what you need protected from the water better.

I would think an earth dam and rebuild the well house on that, but you have some serious frost creeping in on your well, a skinny earth berm might let winter frost in. So we need to know the details, or have people familiar with those conditions advise.

Paul

 

[Zoomyn]

Check there are no structure or pavement snow loads melting first and pre-charging the surface water/ice levels, is there something throwing Xhundred sqft of sun melted roof snow moisture onto the ground uphill of the pump house?

As spring finally arrives that daily 30-minute of melt starts increasing to 60, 90, 120 minutes with the sun getting higher BUT it'll be weeks before liquid water can actually get away, I've seen a foot of slush turned concrete then listened to neighbors wondering why there was white water rapids coursing through their garage... when everything uphill of the garage had filled up w/ melt then frozen and made a half-acre ice rink.

And I think* it's lower the ground not raise the well/pump house : ) A nice drainage swale with a clear view of the Southern sky that chutes off running water onto some other problem, err, place...

 

[Darby49]

Thanks so much for the replies everyone!

Yes, the main goal for us is to keep the well (and well pump!) warm and dry. The pressure tank is in the house. The concrete box holding the well and the well pump is lined with foam board above ground level, and it's wired, with a ceramic reptile bulb to keep everything warm. We also have remote thermometer wired in there, so we can keep an eye on it in winter.

Right now I'd say there's less than a foot of water at the well house - not too bad. We've had not much snow this year. We had a whole lot of rain in the last week, so there's water everywhere, but thankfully because we had so little snow the water is not too high.

The last two years we had way more snow and the water level in the well house hit 3 feet - that was almost high enough to go over the top of the concrete box around the well. That's one of the main reasons we want to change something!

I'm wondering, is there a hard and fast reason we need an actual shed around the well? Could we raise the walls of the inner concrete box, raise the ground around it, and then build a much smaller cover for the whole thing? Our main concern is keeping it warm, especially in high winds. (Not crazy-high, but maybe sustained 20 to 40 mph winds almost all winter).

We tried building channels around the well house two years ago, and that worked great once we were our snow was gone and we were dealing with snow melt from the mountain - but I don't know if that would solve the problem of the initial, biggest flood, when the snow is still high around the well house.

Thanks everyone for the input!

 

[Darby49]

Check there are no structure or pavement snow loads melting first and pre-charging the surface water/ice levels, is there something throwing Xhundred sqft of sun melted roof snow moisture onto the ground uphill of the pump house?

As spring finally arrives that daily 30-minute of melt starts increasing to 60, 90, 120 minutes with the sun getting higher BUT it'll be weeks before liquid water can actually get away, I've seen a foot of slush turned concrete then listened to neighbors wondering why there was white water rapids coursing through their garage... when everything uphill of the garage had filled up w/ melt then frozen and made a half-acre ice rink.

And I think* it's lower the ground not raise the well/pump house : ) A nice drainage swale with a clear view of the Southern sky that chutes off running water onto some other problem, err, place...

Ha, yes, that sounds like our situation! The sun hits the mountain and the ice/sun combination makes its own little weather system. And we definitely get underground river beneath lots of totally solid ice!

It is a strange animal, right? And different every year!