New water well ran dry??

Mike_C

Hi
We bored a new water well last week, pump was set up yesterday.The pump installer told us to run the water to help clear the water as it was muddy. After 1 1/2 hours the well ran dry. we estimate it pumped only 200 -250 gallons . after 30 min tried pump again this time we got only 40 gallons before it went dry.The well is 260 feet which is about average for our area. should I be worried, do I need to get the guy that bored the well back?

Mr Magnolia

Yup, get him back, did he not guarantee his well? My uncle got a well drilled and the guy guaranteed it for 15 yrs approx

Mike_C

I got a gaurantee, but what is an acceptable volume of water from a well? and what refill speed should i expect

Mr Magnolia

Mike_C wrote:

what is an acceptable volume of water from a well? and what refill speed should i expect

How long is a piece of string? Honest answer is, I don't know.

What does your gaurantee specify, hope you covered yourself.

davidoco

Before you get him back, give the well a chance, the water needs to run for a couple of days or even weeks for the flow to be established and all the drill dust and muck has been cleared from the well.

Also you are unlikely to use more than 300 gallons over a full day in the average house. It is likely he hit water at between 30 to 50 feet and that fills the hole he drilled to 260 feet so you only have the water in that 200 feet 5" cylinder to pump away. If I am correct in my calculations there is only about 200 gallons of water in that much pipe so your pumping it faster than it fills. There are very few people who are lucky enough on their own wells to be able to run the garden hose for any more than 30 to 45 minutes (ON FULL) before the use all the water and have to wait a bit.

About the guarantee - I doubt that it says you are guaranteed x number of gallons a day.

quattfa3

Have a read of your guarantee, talk to your neighbours and see what their story is and give the driller a bell and sound him out.

If the driller goes deeper he is likely to encounter more waterstrikes (zones of fractured bedrock which act as water conduits). As davidoco said the well should act as a reservoir. So the deeper it is, the more you have in there, the longer it will last...

davidoco volume estimate sounds reasonable but the driller should be able to provide you with a log showing waterstrikes, the type of sediment/bedrock encountered and other salient info. From this, assuming you trust the info, and perhaps with the driller's assistance, you should be able to calculate the volume of the reservoir. You can also use your pumping data to get an idea of the recharge.

The EPA use a wastewater figure of 180l per person per day in their guidance documents, although this figure has been found to be closer to 100l per person per day in some research. According to davidoco's reservoir estimate of 200 gal (~900l) and taking a usage of 150l per person per day, you have enough water for a 6-person household. This does not include any auxiliary water use.

Drillers usually charge by the meter, but their biggest cost is often mobilisation of the rig. They may agree to come but try to charge you a higher rate per m!

Best of luck

Salmon

Just out of interest mike, How much did yer well cost? Did you get a filtration system?

Mike_C

Thanks for all the replies, the well appears to be improving we got 200gallons this morning, after an hour we got about 100gallons so I'm not as worried now. 260 feet bore cost 3k well was lined with plastic and some steel at the top.

Salmon

Good Price Mike!

I've heard reports that a well might cost me around 7K with a filtration plant (Not sure what that is!!!) Anyone else put in a well lately?

Pocari Sweat

A good filtration system should only cost between 1,800 and 2,500 to cover various things most likely to be in the water.

First on the list is bacteria. Private wells do not have sanitised or chlorinated water so you often get e.coli and coliforms as well as faecal strep and other nasties, so you more than likely need an Ultra Violet steriliser and put it in anyway as bacterial levels vary wildy from season to season.

Next is lime. Most wells have lime variations from 100 ppm to over 400 ppm of lime causing hard water lime scaling in households, fecking up everything in yer household, cheap on the long term to put in lime removal equipment. Soft water is 0 - 50 ppm, but anything over 200 ppm defo needs softener based system.

Iron and manganese are very widespread in private wells. Just a tenth of 1 ppm of iron will cause your house feckin misery and 2 tenths is listed as the limit for drinking water quality requirements. Over 1 ppm of iron is a real shyster and you can get up to 50 ppm and over, monster problems. Manganese similar barstard of a problem.

Ammonia and sulphide. Both smelly gases often found in wells and need removing. Not a problem to remove in low doses, but sulphide is an ultra fecker in higher doses over 3 to 5 ppm and hard to measure and adds BIG cost to usual well filtration system range of pricing.

pH, or hydrogen ion or acidity/alkalinty, needs to be measured before accurately working out what system is needed and too low a pH - high acidity will feck up any copper pipes.

Nitrates and Nitrites, bad for the health, and can be sorted with additional filtration and reverse osmosis filter under the sink.

Heavy metals including arsenic, can be sorted totally by reverse osmosis.

Odd stuff like turbidity - fine suspended paticles will feck up UV operation and needs to be addressed if bacteria is to be sorted by UV.

Other odd stuff like chlorides, need looking at if your well is near the sea and THM's - trihalomethanes are rare things that can be requested to be checked on top of usual lab test parameters if you are near a lake and have water chlorinated.

Tannins are usually from bog water sourced supplies and are generally harmless although the water looks browny, yellow, often mistaken for iron, but tannins are drank in tea so aint so bad just looks awful.

Get a health board chemical and bacterial water test done immediately after drilling a well and check for any parameters that have exceeded the EPA drinking water recommendations.

Mike_C

oh yummy! I never thought of all those extras nature would add, but I bet most wells provide cleaner water that is more drinkable than the chemical infused crap that the local council provides in my area, anyone i know on the pipe line are buying bottled drinking water! Some are even drilling their own wells even though they are connected to the system cos of the number of "accidental" surges in chemical levels in the past few months

kikel

Check with your council. There is an allowance for water filtration system. Can't remember the details. Will ask my mate that got it installed.

Pocari Sweat

75% grant available to well drilling and purification combined with an upper limit of 2,031 euros per installation for a property that is over 7 years or older.

Remember, well water is the shytist of the shyte and will most likely have an extreme degree of hardness and bacteria that needs to be sorted.

Municipal mains water for both domestic use and health use is as near to perfection you can get in terms of household use and health use, with minor filtering needs to remove chlorine or reduce lime content, due to stringent EPA, EU drinking water directives and health board lab testing.

This genrally only applies to big cities that source bulk supplies from the softest water supplies and then put the water through extensive filtration, flocculation and treatment systems to supply and monitor extremely usable water.

Bottled water is expensive, shyte and dangerous, keep away.