Dug well versus drilled well?

[Ridgewalker]

After reading all these posts I feel blessed. My well is 260' deep, has water at 100' with a pump at 150'. (I don't know why they drilled so deep, maybe looking for colder/cleaner water???) It puts out a tremendous flow (how do you measure?) and is clean, cold and tastes great.

 

[prowley]

I notice you are in Washington, have you thought about rain water recycling? It may prove more economical given all the trouble you are experiencing.

 

[WayneB]

Not sure if they use them out there, but you might try a sand point. We have used one at our mountain camp for about eight years now and it has worked fine for us.

WDNR - Drinking Water and Groundwater

 

[art]

Our shop in Waterville NY lived off a dug well for twenty plus years with no problems at about 16 foot deep. I have other areas that I can find water at about 10 feet on site but choose to go to a normal well do to the amount of water used where we might have a hose on all day to keep the dyno cool or cleaning. The dug well was silted in a bit and when dry we were short water.

We are down to 55 foot and with only a little extra iron and a little on the hard side but it's a large vein that covers a lot of area. The driller was quite impressed with the supply and quality.

If your water in your lake is spring fed I'd be looking to find the supply!

 

[Tig]

Our shore well is about 10' from the shore of the lake. It is a simple dug well, 8' deep with the cement rings and a lid. Although it has always tested clean I would like to seal the lid better when we move here. I am also considering an ultra violet water purifier just to add an extra degree of safety for those high water years.
As always with shallow wells, pay attention to what may have seeped into the ground up hill from the well.

 

[WTA]

You all are making me want to move back to Arkansas with all this talk of dug wells. We have a really good one there. It was dug almost exactly a hundred years ago. It's 30 feet deep and has the old time cylindrical bucket in it with the pull ring on top. That thing still has great water in it. I pulled the cap off last year and tried it. It's had a concrete cap about 6 feet across over it for the last 50 or so years with a 6 inch steel pipe in the middle that is easy to cover.

That old farm also has hot and cold running water. A warm spring in the south 40 and a cold spring in the North 40. Seriously. We never put plumbing to the house at all and my family last lived there in the 80's. It's about time one of us moved back. It's a lot bigger than the farm I own down here and actually has trees, No pumps to mess with and no neighbors in sight.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Thanks for all the input. We do use rain catchment here and I've been hauling water from the city municipal lot with a 1000 gallon water trailer. I decided to drill a little deeper with the conventional deep drilling, we may go down to the depth most of my neighbors have their wells (175-250) or bedrock, whichever comes first. If we don't succeed with deep well in this location, the dug well is something I may pursue later this summer. My lake is springfed, so tapping in to its source makes sense. I'll report back.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Just following up. Thank you, everyone, for the helpful suggestions along the way. I had spoken with the guy who could dig a shallow well here and I believe that is always an option for the future. But I wanted to try for a deep well. I had the driller continue where he started. At about 240 feet, he found water in the 16 feet or so above bedrock. Not a ton of water but he imagines three gallons a minute or so, which is still several thousand gallons a day-- more than adequate.

Now I have to have the electric wiring to the old well located, and I will dig it up and hopefully find the water line in the same trench. I'll use my Bobcat to trench between the old line and the new well.

Been struggling with water issues here for two years. A reliable well would be an enormous asset and we appear to be the way!

 

[Tig]

I'm glad things seem to be working out.

 

[Gadgetnut]

Thank you, Steve.