Building a house on an artesian well?

[not2old]

You need to hire an engineer for this. There is likely too much money involved for you to gamble on it. In 1996, I spent $320,000.00 building a house on a $280,000.00 lot. About half way through the project I had a few sleepless nights when it suddenly dawned on me that if anything went wrong, I had no contractor to sue. A few thousand dollars now will let you relax and then have some insurance available in the case of a disaster.

 

[Egon]

Florida aquifers - Plant Management in Florida Waters


Information on Florida Aquifers.:thumbsup:

 

[sandman2234]

Well, now that we know where it is, I can probably offer some answers, as I owned a piece of property not far from his location with a 400 foot artesan well.
The well is typically going to be a flowing well, though some don't have quite enough to flow year round, the good ones do.
Ground water (ie water table) has limited impact on this well, as it pulls its water from the aqufer, not surface water.
All land in Florida is deemed swamp land and yes there are many basements in Florida. My last house needed a yard well and I attemped to wash down a shallow well, but got the casing pipe stuck. Being too cheap to just cut it off and leave it, I grabbed a shovel and started digging. Casing broke free when I had the hole 12' 6" and I was standing on dry dirt (yes in Florida)
O/p might consider the purchase of a lot or partial lot adjoining his to move his house, but $$$$$ in that area. I would add or adapt a small room to where the well is and have provisions to pipe the well towards the exterior of the house. There are several reputable well drilling companies in town that can offer the best method of piping it out. Since the age of the casing is unknown, a pvc liner would be easily installed before walls were put up.
Do we need to start a" Save the Wales" bumper sticker?

I can show you a million dollar home over in Mandrin, just south of 295 that was built in 89 and the owner doesn't know it. Cracks in his bricks not evident in his neighbors homes two years later told me a story that he would pay a brick mason to fix.
David from jax

 

[justwater]

this is one of the last artesian wells we drilled on the north side of Jacksonville i just happened to snap a pic of. it was descent, probably 8-12 psi and about 30-40gpm. i've seen some that really rock and roll though. heres one. 6" closer to 250-300gpm.

havent really messed around much south of Jax Beach, but we do have one or two in St. Johns county and some around Southside. i'd think your well is closer to the 450, and maybe deeper.. but dont quote me, this is kind of a nutty area and it can change alot within a short distance.

i wouldnt think building over the open well is even an option, it would never get passed.. you will be required to plug that well (and i would agree), meaning concrete from the limerock to the top of the casing. so long as this is done, i wouldnt think twice about building over it. these wells are cased all the way to the limerock, so no worries as long as its professionally plugged.

yes, you could always move the house somewhere else. but hey, if you're dead set on building on that spot then plug it, i wouldnt blame you either way. you can always drill another artesian well.. just takes $$

 

[TheGoose]

Don't you just love it when a professional who knows what they're talking about settles the issue?

Thanks justwater.

 

[johnrex62]

Reading this thread makes me think back to the winter of 85 when my hometown had record rainfalls and the acquifer levels rose to the highest in living memory. There were quite a few of the historic homes around town that the owners discovered, much to their dismay, had been unknowingly built on artesian wells. It was quite a shock to find their basements and crawlspaces filling with water in the middle of the night. Many of these homes had been continously occupied for a hundred years or more with no notion of the wells presence.

Considering the damage these wells caused in a couple days of flowing, I would be hard pressed to build over such a potential hazard without some serious professional assurance that a well was competently dealt with in a permanent and verifiable manner. Flowing water can undermine a slab quickly under the right circumstances.

 

[clemsonfor]

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Thanks to you all who have given your insight!!!
As to the well, it is a drilled well, apparently 250-450 ft deep. No permits were ever pulled on it, so we don't know why it was drilled (probably irrigation for an old large estate??)
I've been told by various drillers, and the Dept. of River Management, that it's drilled through limestone at the bottom. The land in the area is flat, and about 1/2 mile from the ocean (Just south of Jacksonville Beach, Fl.).
The lot is not very large, that's why we think the footprint'll need to be over the well (unless it's a crazy zig-zag custom design...).
The development has about 16 houses built in 1998. No one knows of any problems w/the lot, or our prop....but the lots abutting ours, 5 in a row, where we are building, are empty....
I would like to actually use the well (irragation only), but don't think our house will fit that way.

Can we channel the well to the back of the prop.? I'm VERY worried about the idea of sealing it, and then have it sprout elsewhere-under our home!!!
Tx.!!

Are these large or small lots. Like .5 acre or 5 acres. My guess is there small as you say you need to have this place to build on. I would not build on a well, but thats me. Why not buy an adjacent lot and sell yours or have a dbl lot then and build right next to you, you said they were vacant.

 

[clemsonfor]

For whatever reason...no one is on the same page around here.
Our builder is not comfortable about building "on the well"...Our drillers see no reason not to build, once filled properly...The county isn't hesitant...But no one is working together!

Builder is shy about it, cause he has a warrenty to put on his work after he finishes. Even if you sign away your warrenty or you have no problems in the yr or 5 yrs that he gives you, what happens in 10 yrs if it settles terrible? You try and sell it or others see what happend, they look at who built it and its a reflection they feel of his skill and work. They say things like "he should have known better than to build on a well (unstable ground)" or look at the shoddy work.

 

[adjusterr]

If the water flowed out after the const. vehicle accident, with no pump in place you have a bonafied artesian well. Like I posted previously, this can be a real asset. However, please build your house as far away as possible from the well. Living up on mountain in Maryland, I'm not real familiar with Florida climate other than to suspect you can have some real dampness problems. The addition of an artesian well close to your foundation could be a source of additional dampness therefore mold and mildew. Good luck.

 

[JB4310]

this is one of the last artesian wells we drilled on the north side of Jacksonville i just happened to snap a pic of. it was descent, probably 8-12 psi and about 30-40gpm. i've seen some that really rock and roll though. heres one. 6" closer to 250-300gpm.

havent really messed around much south of Jax Beach, but we do have one or two in St. Johns county and some around Southside. i'd think your well is closer to the 450, and maybe deeper.. but dont quote me, this is kind of a nutty area and it can change alot within a short distance.

i wouldnt think building over the open well is even an option, it would never get passed.. you will be required to plug that well (and i would agree), meaning concrete from the limerock to the top of the casing. so long as this is done, i wouldnt think twice about building over it. these wells are cased all the way to the limerock, so no worries as long as its professionally plugged.

yes, you could always move the house somewhere else. but hey, if you're dead set on building on that spot then plug it, i wouldnt blame you either way. you can always drill another artesian well.. just takes $$

Nice, mother nature at it's best.

If it's cased so far down, sounds like there is no chance of leaking up around the pipe. Couldn't you go down 10 feet and come off with a 90 or 45 and bring it up out side the homes foot print?

Being in FL, how deep are your footings for slab construction? if any.

JB.

 

[JB4310]

The water table is usually not 2 feet down :laughing: but it is not real deep. My parents well has the pump on the surface not down in the well so I do not think the their well is that deep. But it is deeper than 2 feet.
Later,
Dan

Yeah I guess that was an exaggerasion That comes partly from my 85 year old mother who has a house near Sebastian inlet.

She also thinks that if any more people move to FL, the peninsula is gonna break off the mainland :laughing: I better take her geo observastions with a grain of salt.

JB.

 

[Egon]

Welcome justwater.:thumbsup:

Sounds like reasonable advice you have given.

 

[justwater]

Nice, mother nature at it's best.

If it's cased so far down, sounds like there is no chance of leaking up around the pipe. Couldn't you go down 10 feet and come off with a 90 or 45 and bring it up out side the homes foot print?

Being in FL, how deep are your footings for slab construction? if any.

JB.

thanks for the welcome egon.

sorry if i get carried away and write a book.

jb, i cant speak for depth of the slab footings as i have no clue. as far as "moving the well", technically it is illegal for florida well heads to be buried, so a house over it is out of the question. you have to be able to access an open well.

If several several drillers (groundwater contractors), and the SJRWMD (st. johns river water management district) claimed that it was perfectly fine so long as it was properly abandoned.. .and your contractor is still questioning it for whatever reason, i would likely tell him to go kick rocks. jacksonville has many starving contractors that would love to build that house.

a well like this is fully cased all the way to the limerock, then drilled into the limerock which is where the water and pressure comes from. it aint like jed shot the ground and water came up, these wells are fairly deep. if you pump concrete into the limerock and up to the top of the casing, there is 0 chance that water could ever be a problem later.

i hope the OP doesnt get scared to put the home in a desired location because of misinformation. i would hate for you to move the home and always wish it had been in the original location. no one is of more help in this situation than the local well drillers, and especially SJRWMD. btw, this would not be the first house built over a plugged artesian well in florida.

but if it doesnt bother you one bit and you do choose to move the home, awesome.. you likely saved yourself 8-12k$ between plugging the old well and drilling a new artesian well.

good luck with whatever you decide.

 

[sandman2234]

I just re-read my post, and wanted to edit some left out sentnce parts, where my thought process got ahead of my typing skills on a phone keypad.
I mistaked saying all land in Florida was deemed swampland, but instead meant to say that too many people think that Florida is all swampland, where it isn't and I went on to discribe a hole I dug in my backyard.
As far as the million dollar house, I left out out a major piece of information, in that the house was built on top of a well that was plugged, but in my opinion not the" right way". A bulldozer accidently hit the well head pipe bending it over, and breaking the top. To fix the problem of about a zillion gallons of water flowing and trying to raise the St.Johns to flow stage, the dozer flattened the pipe till it quit spewing waterr, the water was pumped out and fill was brought in to cover the washout and raise the level of the land by a couple of feet (which is probably why the brick mortar is cracking from the house settling). What will happen once the flattened pipe rusts out, if it ever does, only time will tell, but I wouldn't want to bed a million dollars on it. So if you decide that it isn't worth the efforts to save the well (or whale, lol) then proceed but don稚 cut corners in the well capping, and make sure you fully understand what has to be done and be on site to make sure it is done with no compromise. As Justwater said, it is a good chunk of change to cap and later need to redrill it, so I would "fight city hall" with your version of how you want to keep it. Every well needs a pumphouse to protect the pump and well head from freezing, so figure out SJRWM reasons and start there. I built a commercial garage behind a residental house that required ponds, but got them to finally approve it when I showed them their reasons weren't valid in my case. City of jax also became reasonable with the same method of approach.
Good luck,
David from jax

Footers for that garage were 12 deep by 20 wide, but the inspector onsite asked me what I was trying to build, a fortress?