What is Acceptable Flow Rate?

[_RaT_]

Thats just the ditch water which is piped in from up above us coming out of Rollins Lake on I-80. While it is non potable, some folks still use it for their domestic water with various filtration methods. My domestic well is whatever the capacity of my pump is which for the 3/4 HP down there is about 20 GPM. I do not know how much capacity the well is. When I bought the place they ran the pump for six hours dumping the water right at the union coming out of the well head. It never slowed. I do feel fortunate having the ditch water for irrigation.

 

[MMILLER]

When we drilled our well 2 years ago in the middle of the summer we hit 32 gallons a minute at 400'. Well driller said I should never have a problem with water. Pump can only pump 8 gallons a minute. If we would have stopped at 300' we would have only had 2 1/2 gallon per minute. We had an older gentleman come out and witch for water. Really interesting. He did 3 locations on 3 different lots and all hit 20 plus.

 

[LarryD]

<font color="blue"> We had an older gentleman come out and witch for water </font>

Several years ago I was renting a place east of Seattle jsut a short drive from the Microsoft campus. It seems a local developer paid a local geologist a large sum of money to point out the best place to sink a well with enough gpm to support several families.

After punching four holes and getting no more than 11gpm, the plan was off. My neighbor convinces his dad to by a 5 acre parcel, stick a drag-a-home on it for a little investment.

Since he's friends with the geologist, he asks him for the best place to put a well on the property. The geologist points across the creek (can you say salmon spawning stream) and says about 50 up the hill.

Did I mention that the drill rig <font color="red"> CAN'T </font> drive across the salmon spawning stream and a bridge $$ is out of the question.

So Andy pulls a tape 101' from the septic (code) and starts drilling. At about 50' the rig starts to shake and then the water starts to flow (gusher) out of the ground. Best guess was the artesian well was flowing at about 200gpm. Bunches of holes later and no one seemed to be able to hit that same aquafer.

Last I heard they were still trying to get the rights to sell the water...very hard to do it seems.