# Water well drilling stories (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)



## WilliamsValley (Dec 16, 2011)

First, let me tell you a horror story. My friend had bought a piece of property on a mountain that he had to have drilled 800 feet down... for dust. Imagine the heart ache!! He had to walk away from that property with nothing to show for it. He then bought another piece of property which he is now currently building his house on. He consulted with a hydrogeologist, and also hired a water dowser. He drilled in several different spots until he was finally able to get his current 600 foot well producing 12 GPM. He also has very sandy soil so he had to pay for 400+ feet of screen, casing, etc. Although he's happy that he now has a 12 GPM well, he unfortunately paid over 60k dollars in the process. Painful story.
Now for a better story. We are just about to start building a new home on our dream property, but before we can get financing we need a water well installed on the property. After all, land without water is pretty much near worthless. The well drilling company called me yesterday and told me they had drilled down 100 feet down on our property, and it was pumping 20 gallons per minute. I was very pleased with this news! He called me again today and said they were going to drill another 20 feet because they wanted to make sure that our pump would reach below the water fracture, so the total depth of the well would come out to 120 feet. Well, he just called me a few moments ago and gave me the final specs on our finished well. The depth is 120 feet, static water level is 12 feet, and it's pumping 60 GPM!! I was completely overjoyed at this news! We're planning on having a small farm, including some orchards, so 60 gallons per minute will allow us to do everything we want to do and then some. Also, with the static water level being at only 12 feet, this will allow us to use a simple cast iron pitcher pump to get fresh water if the power ever goes out. Just an added bonus. What a blessed day this has been! I just wanted to share the great news. 
Please feel free to share your Good, Bad, or Ugly well drilling story!


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## arabian knight (Dec 19, 2005)

Yes it is nice to have "water rights" as a great deal of states do.
But in many of the South Western States if you do not have "water rights" you do NOT drill a well.
You HAUL water for as long as you live there. period no ifs, ands, or butts.


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## Calfkeeper (Feb 1, 2006)

Does it have to be a personal story? I'll throw this out and see what you think.

My husband installs the pipes, wires, pumps...etc after the well is drilled. This past Feb the drilling company told him where and when they'd be drilling. He went out to meet them and see the layout of the place.

He got there. It was totally deserted. The drill was sitting there, but no one was around. It was still warm so it HAD been in operation not long before. Hubby waited around for half hour; no one showed up.

He left a note and was leaving when a car came pulling in. It was the owners of the drilling co. (Owners, not the drilling team.) They told hubby one of the workers had, for whatever boneheaded reason, climbed up on the derrick while it was operating. He'd slipped and gotten his foot mangled. When they got to the hospital the big toe wasn't in his boot. Owners had come to find the toe.

Hubby helped them and ended up being the one to find the severed toe.

Not a drilling story my husband will ever forget.


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

There's a very good reason that some places are uninhabited.

I drilled my own well, and 7 others. My well had way too much iron in it, and the first drought year, went dry. I went and built a lake instead...


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## KentuckyDreamer (Jan 20, 2012)

I just wanted to say threads like this are exactly why I joined this site and continue to check in daily. I still live in the suburbs, still search unitedcountry.com, and DREAM. When my homestead comes into my life I will be armed with this invaluable info. 

Have a great day all!


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## Molly Mckee (Jul 8, 2006)

arabian knight said:


> Yes it is nice to have "water rights" as a great deal of states do.
> But in many of the South Western States if you do not have "water rights" you do NOT drill a well.
> You HAUL water for as long as you live there. period no ifs, ands, or butts.[/QUOT
> 
> WA has strict water rights laws as well. You have to have first water rights to use water for other than household use. You can drill a household well, use water to water stock or a garden, but to irrigate crops, orchards, or pasture you need to own the water rights. The water rights are often sold separately from the land so it is something to be aware of if you are buying rural land in WA.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

At $3,000 and dry, looking at limestone coming up as mud, we decided the creek looked better. There is some water in that bore now, haven't bothered to fool with it.


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## meanwhile (Dec 13, 2007)

We have an old 880 foot well that only gets about 1.5 gallon a minute. The awful Well man that drilled it refused to dig where my father asked him to dig.  

Two years ago, we had to dig another well due to property lines and the new Well man dug right where my Dad said to dig and we hit water right away too. We dug to 425 feet just to be sure we had reservoir enough. 

Our best water source is a spring system. It is clean and we catch the water in a new cement septic tank and then pump to a 2nd tank. We also catch rain water. 

Good luck!


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## ryanthomas (Dec 10, 2009)

I rarely dig a posthole without hitting water.


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## Common Tator (Feb 19, 2008)

Years ago they dug a well on our ranch, when it was a Boy Scout camp. The driller had a 300 foot minimum contract. So they started digging and hit water at a depth of 3 feet. But we have a 300 foot well because of the contract. 

We've never used it. It is about a quarter mile below the house. We have a gravity fed system from the creek, and water rights.

What we do know about the water from the well is that some previous owners had the water tested, and the concentration of minerals was too high, and it was thought to be leaching from the metal well casing. They ran a pump for a full week to see if the water quality improved, and it still wasn't drinkable.


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## KentuckyDreamer (Jan 20, 2012)

I started to get info on a place and was told they bring in their own water and store it in a cistern. Not knowing much about things, this concerned me and I stopped thinking about the property. My rationale was I wanted the security of my own well. Was I wrong and should I give this property another look?
Terri


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## WilliamsValley (Dec 16, 2011)

KentuckyDreamer said:


> I started to get info on a place and was told they bring in their own water and store it in a cistern. Not knowing much about things, this concerned me and I stopped thinking about the property. My rationale was I wanted the security of my own well. Was I wrong and should I give this property another look?
> Terri


In my opinion, NO, you're rationale is absolutely right on. If a piece of property did not have water and it required you to haul it in, it would more than concern me, I would NEVER even consider it. Unless it had gold or diamond mines on it.  
When I was hunting for the piece of property that we would eventually build our homestead on, plentiful and abundant water sources were my absolute #1 priority. For all of human history families, commerce, and towns are almost always established around a reliable water source of some sort, be it a port, a river, a spring, creek, etc. Water gives LIFE!! 
Water is absolutely necessary because you need it to live. I think this last century of everyone being able to get water, on demand, right out of their kitchen faucets has made us forget the absolutely crucial, life sustaining importance of water. 

When the well's dry, we know the worth of water.
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Poor Richard's Almanac, 1746


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## goatlady (May 31, 2002)

The above stories show the importance of doing a bit of research when looking for/buying property. Always make your offer to purchase contingent upon potable water and perc test for a septic system. Then contact the local water well driller. Most usually they are extremely knowledgable about the area's geology and availability of water. Check with the county offices about having a perc test to see if the soil will handle a septic system properly.


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## sisterpine (May 9, 2004)

I have my own sad well story from MT. Some of you may remember it from years ago. DH and I bought some land on a mountain top, built our house and then went to drill a well. Every one around us had good wells and springs etc. We saved up every penny we could and came up with the well money after a couple of years of hauling water. Hired a good well man and because I side of the mountain was dryer we also had some company come and do a water survey for us. Some kind of electrical thing that cost us 2500 bucks. Then they came to drill the well. We had enough cash to go about 300 feet which we thought would be plenty since the wells around us were only at 60 feet with good water. At three hundred feet we had nothing and the driller offered to go another hundred feet for free because he felt so bad. At four hundred feet both the driller and I sat in the mud with tears running down our faces, staring at a very deep dry hole. The dig was through solid granite he said. We just left it and continued to haul water. Later the next spring the well driller called and said he had a dream that we should case the well hole because it was filling with good water. He told us how and we did it ourselves come summer. In the mean time we had an earthquake and our 400 foot hole was reduced to 180 feet in depth. We cased it anyway because we measured water at 20 feet. So it got cased and we got a very slow well pump that we put down 150 feet. The water pumped every day into a holding tank at the house. Found that we could get about 200 gal of water a day which came out to be about 4 ounces a minute. We were thrilled and used this water for the rest of our time living on the mountain for gardens, grass, animals and house use. We also prayed every day that it would keep on dripping!


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## texican (Oct 4, 2003)

I drilled a well on my uncles place, and he told me where he wanted it. I hadn't went 20' down, when I hit sugar sand, and water came within six inches of the surface... went ahead drilled down to 50' and hit a hard layer of sandstone... Uncle said, pump it out and see how much it'll produce... Pulled drill stem, set a temporary casing in, and hooked the pump up... my pump was pulling out a barrel (55 gallon) every minute, and did this for an hour, and we figured there was a lot of water there. Blew the well, set casing, and packed gravel, and set a pump in the well. Cold clear water.

My cousin (Uncle's son) came up, and thought a water test might be good, since it was going into a public area fish out operation. Came back a few weeks later with very high levels of coliform bacterias. Uncle wondered if the septic tank and line ten feet away might be a problem? DOH!!! Well, yea.

Went and drilled another one, to 110' deep, 300 yards away... this one tested good.


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## meanwhile (Dec 13, 2007)

All the talk about wells reminded me of a Crazy Well story. It is not really a bad story but it is crazy. 

When we wanted to dig our first well, we first hired a well company from a town nearby. They came well recommended, etc. Man comes out - he was a young man who was the "fiancee" of the owner Man's daughter. Fiancee man picks out the spot to dig which was not where we wanted it but he said that was that.

Day comes to dig the well, truck gets here, big truck gets here, men arrived and all manner of ruckus gets going. 

They had these walkie talkie type things where they could talk to each other and to their home office. When one man was talking on it, the others could hear it and a thing in the truck also boomed out the conversation. 

All of a sudden (and without warning!) one man, who seemed to be in charge, asked me if I had picked out the well spot. I said no, that had been decided by the Fiancee of the owner's daughter. 

Clearly this did not set well with him. He gets on the Walkie Talkie thing, and cussing like to peel paint, he calls to the Home Office to report that Fiancee Man had picked out a bad spot to dig. Next, we all hear the Wife-of-Owner start to shout _"PULL OUT PULL OUT PULL OUT!!!!!"_

They packed up and roared off and said they would not be digging a well there. No matter what I said, they just left. The Wife-of-Owner did not answer my phone calls. I had no idea what happened! 

Days later, a local contractor friend called the Well Man who explained the Fiancee man had put the well too close to a spring head and so they could not dig there and that Wife-of-Owner "had some problems" and so she just up and canceled the whole job.

So. There we had it. No Well got dug till later (by someone else) but we did have a Crazy story to tell.


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## Ozarks Tom (May 27, 2011)

Second hand story, but I know the guy well and believe it.

Lots of limestone bluffs around the Ozark rivers (we live on one), and a man wanted his house built on one. He hired a bulldozer to level off his house spot, and a well driller to put in his well.

The bulldozer had just unloaded as the driller had reached about 30 feet. The drill fell right through the limestone and into a cavern below. They shut everything down, and dropped a rock down the hole. It fell for quite a time before they could hear it hit more rock.

The bulldozer operator didn't say a word, but just loaded back up and left.


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## DJ in WA (Jan 28, 2005)

We moved here in 1996, and the well report showed prior owner had the well deepened to 320 feet just a few years prior.

In 2004, I&#8217;m in the yard and notice the sprinklers stop. Pump man had someone put a video camera down to discover the hole was only 265 feet deep &#8211; with just 3 feet of water for the pump to sit in. Water table had dropped leaving the pump hanging dry.

The video also showed the drillers had dropped the PVC liner which shattered at the bottom and the top of it was down quite a ways. So a pretty botched job and falsified well report. And the company was long out of business.

Couldn&#8217;t drill the hole deeper because it was narrower, and the PVC mess, etc.

We drilled another hole to 340 feet with the top of the water the same 262 feet as the first hole. $10,000 surprise.

Some day I might rig the old hole up for a hand pump or something if I fill most of it in, because there was alittle water seeping in at 80 feet as seen on the video.


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## WilliamsValley (Dec 16, 2011)

A couple of days ago my friend/neighbor began drilling his well on his property. He said the well company told him they were drilling through solid basalt. At 260 feet, still no water. My friend told me he was discouraged because in our area, that is pretty deep to drill and still not hit any water. He was contemplating calling me and asking about sharing our well between the two of us. He then looked over where the well drilling rig was at and was shocked to see water shooting 20 feet in the area where they were drilling!! WATER at last, and lots of it! The well drillers estimate his well to be producing 150 gpm!! Static water level is only 3 feet. Wow. What a weekend of drilling this has been for us. We couldn't have hoped or asked for anything more.


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## SueMc (Jan 10, 2010)

Our well drilling experience last year was blissfully boring! Our well man found water at our first choice site. He only had to do down 118 feet when the average around us was 125+ feet. The water came in at around 25 gpm which is enough to use in an open geothermal system. I love seeing that white well casing sitting out there!


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## NorthCountryWd (Oct 17, 2008)

Hire a dowser. My timber framer did it with a couple of bent hangers. Drilled the spot he said and only had to go down 250 feet and needed only 60 feet of casing got 70gpm. My neighbor down the hill from me went down 500 and need 100+ feet of casing and only got 30gpm.

Well driller said he uses a dowser/water witch as well and she hasn't failed him yet.


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