Strange well behavior

BoylermanCT · Oct 9, 2016

If it is artesian, it probably won't freeze. My parents have an artesian well and it has never frozen in over 25 Connecticut winters. They dug a pond and piped the artesian well to fill it up and provide year round flow. They have also used it to fill their 24' above ground pool (took 36 hours) and they have a pump in the pond hooked up to 4 different sprinklers for their gardens. An artesian well is good to have, but you probably don't want it as your primary water source, they are usually not deep enough for safety / code. My parent's main well is 280' deep. They just hit the artesian part way down.

Now I had a friend in Ohio who has an artesian natural gas well. Was hand dug in the 1800's. They get free natural gas to power their furnace, fireplace, stove, dryer, grill etc. Now that's a jackpot!

DieselBound · Oct 9, 2016

Any water source is fine as long as it's treatable, economically that is. My well is 38' deep (30 gpm; fish hatchery up the road has a well that puts out 750 gpm!). Very low iron content; but, it has Iron Reducing Bacteria (IRB) and that IRB needs to be killed in order to treat the iron. I inject H2O2 and have a contact tank: I go through less than 1 gallon of H2O2 per year. This takes care of the IRB and any other bacteria that may be there. Then it's a simple catalytic carbon backwash tank and a final cartridge filter and I'm good.

Initially I had a spring feed (it was from off-property and wasn't guaranteed to be a permanent supply). There was no filtration or treatment on that water! It was great water but it tested for bacteria: I put in a simple filtration and UV system and ran that for a couple of years until I rehabbed the well).

After lots of research (and a financial curveball) I decided to rehab the well. Most folks will say that it's better to go with what you know than to drill a new hole and then be exposed to a set of potential new problems: someone just about a mile from me has a well that's about 180' deep and it's only putting out something like 3gpm; that's an expensive hole for such a small output; and who knows what sort of mineral issues they have to deal with).

Pettrix · Oct 10, 2016

The shallower the well, the more prone it is to bacteria and contamination. A deeper well acts like a natural filter since it has to pass the many layers of earth to get to the water well table.

Shallow water wells are advantageous but there are some cons:

1 - More prone to bacteria and contamination
2 - If building a home in an area with a shallow water table, your foundation can experience issues

If you dig down 5-10 feet and hit standing water, that will be problematic with a house foundation. In earthquake prone areas, that can lead to "liquefaction" which is a very bad thing if a quake should strike.

Ideally, having a well that is not too deep but not too shallow, that is best. I would say anything around 100+ feet is good since it gives adequate depth to filter out contamination. Wells in this area that are shallow (20-40 feet below grade), they tend to see e-coli and other bacterial and chemical (fertilizer) contamination.

1965 · Oct 11, 2016

It won't freeze as the water is coming up from below frost line and typically will maintain a temperature of about 67 degrees. If I had such a well I would be running the water through a ground source heat pump in my house and get the benefits of free heat in the winter months and free air conditioning in the summer months a win win.

Pumpmd · Oct 14, 2016

You need to know how many gpm the well is artesian? Artesian wells like to cause problems with the running water above ground for people. Easiest way is to install a pitless adapter below ground to your frost level and divert the water below ground where it won't cause problems but you need to install the right sizes pitless adapter and pipe size to flow your gpm rate.

roadhunter · Oct 14, 2016

This is one of those threads where the OP is no longer around. It would be lovely to know the whole story here as when you read the OP there are many ways to interpret what is going on with everything from the switch is broken and running the pump 24/7 or the fracing in the region has caused some water pressure to build.