Shallow well

[Josh]

You should be able to talk to either a local well digger or water company to get an idea of the local depth most people are drilling too and what the water normally tests for.

I know our farm has a 40 foot and 70 foot well that are generally dried up. Apparently according to local rumor mill the county had this big irrigation project to build a system of canals that keep the farms running during drought conditions. When the project was completed the water table dropped causing most wells to dry up unless they were 90 feet or lower.

My area unfortunately has contaminated water that isn’t good for anything. Right now we’re on city water and our plan is to use rain catchment systems along with holding ponds to catch water from our roofs along with rain run off from a 40 acre field we have that causes some really bad flooding problems because of how it currently drains. What’s cool is that our state has a bunch of funding and help for people trying to establish wetlands so we got a lot of free help and surveying done to set up our rather elaborate system.

 

[Mattsn]

You should be able to talk to either a local well digger or water company to get an idea of the local depth most people are drilling too and what the water normally tests for.

I know our farm has a 40 foot and 70 foot well that are generally dried up. Apparently according to local rumor mill the county had this big irrigation project to build a system of canals that keep the farms running during drought conditions. When the project was completed the water table dropped causing most wells to dry up unless they were 90 feet or lower.

My area unfortunately has contaminated water that isn’t good for anything. Right now we’re on city water and our plan is to use rain catchment systems along with holding ponds to catch water from our roofs along with rain run off from a 40 acre field we have that causes some really bad flooding problems because of how it currently drains. What’s cool is that our state has a bunch of funding and help for people trying to establish wetlands so we got a lot of free help and surveying done to set up our rather elaborate system.

Josh with alll that rain and run off catchment are you planning to use that as drinking water or just watering gardens? If drinking what would you do for filtration as Im assuming runoff would be picking up a good bit of contaminates.

 

[WhiteWolf]

We're going to pay between $5k and 8k for the Hut well, assuming they got the application and got us on the schedule. There isn't going to be any problem hitting water; location is at the almost very bottom of two very steep ridges. There are numerous springs on the sides of the ridges and a year-round creek in the field at the bottom. They'll probably only go 200 some ft in that location, just to make sure they hit the largest, cleanest pool of water. It's going to have iron in it for SURE. Filtration is a given here. It could also have sulfur or methane in it; it was scouted once upon a time, for oil and gas. I have mineral rights.

 

[Josh]

Josh with alll that rain and run off catchment are you planning to use that as drinking water or just watering gardens? If drinking what would you do for filtration as Im assuming runoff would be picking up a good bit of contaminates.

That’s one of the things we’re trying to figure out. With the rain coming from our field and a culvert that drains into our field we’re getting thousands of gallons of water every time it rains consistently that takes a week or so to actually drain back into the ground. With a lined pond we’re hoping that we’ll be able to hold that volume of water consistently for months at a time as opposed to weeks particularly over the dry season. That pond would be non-potable water to say the least and the primary use for that is to bring in more wild life to our land.

Our second source of water right now comes from my and my parents house, we have metal roofs that even just from the morning dew produces a few gallons of water a day. Right now the down spouts are hooked into a pipe system that diverts water into what will be a small creek of a sort leading to our holding tank. We also divert some of the roof run off from our green house to water the plants we’re growing to plant in a garden next year.

Long term we’d like to have three ponds with the biggest one collecting the culvert and field water and then diverting any overflow to a second pond on the wooded part of our property to ideally draw in more wildlife. The third pond would be closer to the houses and will collect all the roof run off which we’d use for non-potable uses.

We spent most of this year getting the land surveyed and everything in place with the neighbors and such so that we wouldn’t be impacting anything they might be using water run off from our land on to theirs. Over the winter we plan to get the main pond dug along with all the berms and culverts we need to divert run off directly to the pond area and away from the areas it generally runs off too.

It’s a big project once I’ll have to make a thread about it once we’re closer to being done with it all, I’m fairly excited to see it come to fruition, once it’s completed the end result should be really cool.

 

[Mattsn]

So I've decided to not follow through with the well idea. A friend of mine who grew up here told me his grandparents (also on the island) has a dug well and took me there to talk to his grandfather. {94 years old} grandfather told me they used to drink it but haven't in atleast 30 years. He said "it won't test well"

Combine that with the lowest estimate of 6,500k to have one drilled, I've decided to keep my money to put towards the property I'd like to buy one day.

Thanks for all the ideas