For those of you with a well

[Christa_P]

I grew up on wells. Most had hard water (calcium/iron) with various flow rates. The area I spent most time finally installed water lines when too many people had problems with their wells (quality and volume) so that is a large area where homes over 20 years old will have access to a well (or multiple wells) and public water.

The last place I lived had an awful well, very hard with a bad taste. It was a rental and I never had it tested, but I avoided using it for drinking or cooking. I did use it to wash and for the barn.

My current property has an excellent, artesian well. Sweet, soft spring water and the overflow from the well fills my water trough for the pasture - I estimate around 900 gallons a day goes through that overflow and trough which I can use (and have used) as an emergency water supply. Also, with the constant supply of ground water my trough doesn’t freeze even in extreme cold.

[StormyDay]

Add me to the well water crowd. I’ve been on wells across the eastern seaboard. I can’t imagine ever wanting to be on city water again. Well water just tastes so much better.

Your water quality is really based on your location. Luckily filtration systems can help a lot if your water has too much of something, which is the most common issue anyways.

The most important part of a well is making sure you have enough GPM. The property I’m on now had a well drilled in the 80’s that was only 80 feet deep. It barely produced enough water for a single person, let alone a horse farm. The new well is almost 700 feet deep. It still has a lower GPM (2.5-2.7 range) but we have about 500 gallons in ‘reserve’ because the well is so deep.

People who bemoan wells usually have too shallow of a well. Except for very rare locations, basically if you drill deep enough you hit good water in this country. Even my family in the AZ desert had a great well; but it was 2000 feet deep!

Edited to add: If your water tastes or smells weird, many times it’s actually your filtration system or pressure tank. Bad sulfur smells, rotting smells, copper smells, etc can be a mark of having bacteria living in your pressure tank or filtration system. Dump some bleach into your filtration system right before it goes through a cleaning cycle and see if the smell goes away. This can also happen to your water heater, but it’s a bit harder of a fix.

[eightpondfarm]

we have two wells. One for the barns and one for the house. Today, actually, this evening, around 5:15pm the house well pump quit. Too late to call the well guys. Hope they can get out and put in a new one asap!

[Tarlo_Farm]

I’ve had nothing but wells for over 40 years in four different farms.
Best water I’ve ever had was from a shallow (30’) hand driven well back before there was such a thing as individual bottled water bottles. Friends would drink my water and say, “You should bottle this!”
I should have listened.

[dressagetraks]

I have a well only. Would hate to think of the expense of running “city” (there isn’t one anywhere close) water out here.

My well is over 300 feet deep and is marvelous. Best-tasting water I’ve ever had in my life, the only fault being that it occasionally smells like fish. But given what most people have in their water, I can’t object to fish. I have had it tested, and it tests as good as it tastes.

I’ve lived here 25 years, including several drought summers. The only time ever that there wasn’t water available from it was in 2007 when the pump went out. The company who fixed that and replaced piping and wiring while at it, since the pump was 300 feet down and I really didn’t want to repeat pulling the whole well any time soon, commented, “Good well!”

I also have a small spring, which has never in local memory been known to run dry; I was told this by others, and the history predates my 25 years here. It slows down flow in drier periods, but it never stops. The spring, however, is a tough and rugged hike to the house, so I hopefully will never have to get water from there for general use. But it is down there.

[Sunshine2Me]

I’m on a well. When my water softener stops working for whatever reason (It has several times. I rent mine and the company comes out and replaces the top section of it.) my water comes out an orangy-brown color. Most people on this post say their well water is beautiful. Why is mine brown (without the softener)?

[trubandloki]

@Sunshine2Me

Why is mine brown (without the softener)?

Because you have different minerals in your water than they do.

[gailbyrd]

@Sunshine2Me

I’m on a well. When my water softener stops working for whatever reason (It has several times. I rent mine and the company comes out and replaces the top section of it.) my water comes out an orangy-brown color. Most people on this post say their well water is beautiful. Why is mine brown (without the softener)?

The water from the well at the house where I grew up was orangy-brown. Rust bacteria is what we were told. Water filters helped clear up the water so at least the whites weren’t coming out dingy from the laundry.

[Krose]

I’m in SC and our city water is pretty good. But we have the house hooked to the city water and a well for the barn and irrigation of the bushes, etc.

We planned on both at the beginning, partly because the city water doesn’t cost that much, but mainly because I didn’t want to risk issues of not having water for the horses. If all else fails with power or something breaks with the well pump, etc… I don’t want to be stressed about not having water for them.

But 10 years ago I think it cost about $7500 to have the well drilled…it sounds very expensive in other places!

[Kodidog763]

We have a well, city water is not available for us. We do have a bottled water dispenser that we use for cooking and drinking, everything else comes from the well.

We do have a basic filtration system, but go through filters like crazy, so often bypass the system.

We have lived here for over 15 years and other than the power being out, have only had an issue with the well once. Gophers chewed through wiring and we were without water for several days (it happened over a long 4th of July weekend). Thank goodness that was before we moved the horses home. It was a nightmare hauling water from my mom’s house for the dogs, and to flush the toilets.

[enjoytheride]

We have w wells both only 40 feet deep. We run 2 in line filters and a water softener on the house one plus a reverse osmosis filter for the kitchen for drinking water. Horses are on their own w unfiltered. Our pumps went out a year apart but were 15 years old at least.

[Unfforgettable]

I have two wells here, one for the house and one for the barn. Both are sand points, at 25 feet deep. I’ve got plenty of water and great tasting. This little spot in central WI sits on one of the strongest water tables in the USA…it’s the sandy bottom of prehistoric glacial Lake Wisconsin. I’m surrounded by huge crop farms with high capacity wells and irrigation pivots. One of my clients owns an irrigation company and he told me if they ran every pivot in the county and dropped the water table 3 feet, it would refill overnight. I feel very blessed to live where I do.

[DiamondJubilee]

UPDATE

For anyone who happens to have a slow recovery on their well (like we do!) we have contacted a hydrofracturing company that @Simkie posted about last fall (just after the link was added!) and they thought they could really help us out. We wanted to wait after the winter, and after being so tired of running out of water, we gave them a call and they are coming out today. They think they will help us out a lot and our well should recover a lot faster than it is. We can honestly only get about 100L of water at one time then we run out of water. It does come back on, but we run out of water here and there for the rest of the day. So our fingers and toes are crossed and we hope to finally have water today for the first time in over 10 years.

[DiamondJubilee]

Good and bad news with our well now. They did a draw test and it was 1/4 of a gallon per minute and ran out of water about 5 mins when they were doing their test. Then they did their thing and it was almost 5 gallons per minute and ran it forever it seemed like and it did not run out of water. It didn’t take long at all (maybe 20 mins total) but they never told us that we couldn’t use the water afterwards for the night as it would be all unsettled. They never once mentioned this to us before and we do have horses and a farm here. Luckily my water troughs were ok and buckets filled in stalls all ready. We went out for dinner so no dishes.

The next day we turned the water on and the dirt and silt that was coming out of our taps and hose was unreal!! It clogged our $100 filters in the house and ruined them. We couldn’t get a hold of the company for hours and didn’t know what to do. They finally called back (after texts, voice mails and calls) and said it had to be run every hour for 10 mins. Ok, well they never once mentioned this. They said it could be clear in a day or it could be clear in 3 months. So like what??? We still don’t have water as it looks like chocolate milk, even 2 days afterwards and we have been running the hose for 10 mins every hour for over a day and it still looks no better. At least our town (15 mins away) has water but I’m having to go and fill up 17L containers so I can water the horses. I have to heat buckets of water on the stove so I can shower from a bucket. Brush my teeth by bottled water. Flush the toilet with the chocolate milk water for now. And who is to say once this silt settles, it won’t clog our well again after they have our money. It was $3.500 to do this and I don’t have very high hopes for it. Plus with no information about not being able to use water is BS. Especially when someone has a farm and horses! I do not recommend this being done as of right now. I hope to change my mind in a few months time.

[Bluey]

@DiamondJubilee

Good and bad news with our well now. They did a draw test and it was 1/4 of a gallon per minute and ran out of water about 5 mins when they were doing their test. Then they did their thing and it was almost 5 gallons per minute and ran it forever it seemed like and it did not run out of water. It didn’t take long at all (maybe 20 mins total) but they never told us that we couldn’t use the water afterwards for the night as it would be all unsettled. They never once mentioned this to us before and we do have horses and a farm here. Luckily my water troughs were ok and buckets filled in stalls all ready. We went out for dinner so no dishes.

The next day we turned the water on and the dirt and silt that was coming out of our taps and hose was unreal!! It clogged our $100 filters in the house and ruined them. We couldn’t get a hold of the company for hours and didn’t know what to do. They finally called back (after texts, voice mails and calls) and said it had to be run every hour for 10 mins. Ok, well they never once mentioned this. They said it could be clear in a day or it could be clear in 3 months. So like what??? We still don’t have water as it looks like chocolate milk, even 2 days afterwards and we have been running the hose for 10 mins every hour for over a day and it still looks no better. At least our town (15 mins away) has water but I’m having to go and fill up 17L containers so I can water the horses. I have to heat buckets of water on the stove so I can shower from a bucket. Brush my teeth by bottled water. Flush the toilet with the chocolate milk water for now. And who is to say once this silt settles, it won’t clog our well again after they have our money. It was $3.500 to do this and I don’t have very high hopes for it. Plus with no information about not being able to use water is BS. Especially when someone has a farm and horses! I do not recommend this being done as of right now. I hope to change my mind in a few months time.

I wonder if they dropped the well down and it is stirring the bottom, may be fine sands and that is why your well is bringing up dirty water?
You have a well filter before entering the pressure tank, so the water can be filtered before it?
That may be one solution now, add a filter, until someone can come pull the well and see if raising the depth may help?

[DiamondJubilee]

They said with the “blasting” it did stir up the iron and silt. We have a filter at the pressure tank which clogged it and then no water came out. We already ordered new filters. We are able to hook a hose up to the pressure tank before the filters and are running the hose every 10 mins on the hour (except while we are sleeping of course). So its before the filter so we won’t wreck it anymore and the water can still come out. They told us to do this as it can happen but they failed to mention this before hand. They just said its unsettled and takes a bit of time for the silt and iron to settle back down. I’m not sure why they couldnt just remove it themselves before they left??

[DiamondJubilee]

So we also now have a hose running from the dirt basement and through the house and out our front door. Its been getting to freezing level the past few nights so thats nice too…door slightly open and heat on and a hose running through the kitchen and part of the house. We do roll the hose back up into the house for the night so we can close and lock our door of course.

Its more the lack of communication that we had a problem with. All they said was “oh yeah, we should have mentioned that to you. We are just too busy…”.

[Bluey]

@DiamondJubilee

They said with the “blasting” it did stir up the iron and silt. We have a filter at the pressure tank which clogged it and then no water came out. We already ordered new filters. We are able to hook a hose up to the pressure tank before the filters and are running the hose every 10 mins on the hour (except while we are sleeping of course). So its before the filter so we won’t wreck it anymore and the water can still come out. They told us to do this as it can happen but they failed to mention this before hand. They just said its unsettled and takes a bit of time for the silt and iron to settle back down. I’m not sure why they couldnt just remove it themselves before they left??

Maybe they were in a hurry?
Normally they put the well back in and run it until water comes out clear, that is standard.
What is worrisome is that the water is still stirring silt out every time the pump runs?
It should not do that!

Yes, our filter is after the pressure pump also.
We buy the filters directly from our well man, but at times if short we get them at Home Depot.
They are a bit pricier, but same filters.
We have two wells, one has never needed filters, the other one has from day one and we change it every few months.

Sounds like there was some miscommunication there.
They should come back see what is going on and maybe try raising the well depth a bit and see if that helps?

[Bonnie2]

Well is sole water source. Lucky to have plenty of water. Laundry, dishwasher, horses, gardens no problem. We have filters and a softening system. Also a generator. Back in the early 2000’s there was a power grid failure in the northeast and no one had power. I will never have horses to water and no generator!

[Bonnie2]

Oh no! Just read the rest of your posts! What a nightmare!