# The well went dry?????



## Guest (Jun 11, 2009)

We've been living here for 6 weeks and our routine is that the littles get one bath together at night and the 3 older boys get showers. The boys are 11, 10 and 8, so you can imagine how little water they use! I plan an hour for showers, knowing full well that the total time the water is on is about 15 minutes tops. 

Yesterday the kids got baths and showers. An hour after that I took a 10 minute shower. About a half an hour after the shower I noticed the water was coming out of the kitchen faucet really slow. The longer I left the water on the slower it got. This morning when I tested it there was no water at all. No air gushing out, either. 

We have a well and a cistern. There are 2 pumps in the basement. A friend (the guy who grew up here) said he thought one pump was from the cistern and the other pump sent the water through the house. The pump he thought was to the cistern wasn't working so I pulled the fuse and looked at it. It was fine. When I put the fuse in the pump worked again. We still didn't have water. 

My friend showed me the cistern and there is water in there. He looked down the well and said that while he couldn't tell if there was water in there he sure didn't see any pipes. He thought there was water in the well, but he turned the hose on to fill it anyways. (We have another well for just the barns.) He had the hose on for just a half an hour or so. 

The plumber said that the well went dry due to too many showers and that we had a bad bladder in one of the pumps=the pump that was working fine. He replaced the bladder and we had water to the house.

Until I took a shower. After about 5 minutes the water pressure seemed to decline. I don't think it's the well as we've had rain all night and it's still raining. 

We're getting on city water in 2-3 weeks, but in the meantime I'm wondering if we're going to all be able to shower through the day or what. There's 8 of us here, but the 3 littles can triple up and take a bath! The city dug under the road in front of our house (we live in town but on 4.5 acres). They didn't get near the house. We had power work done last week and the power was out for 3 hours, but that was last week. Things worked fine after the power came on.

Can a well go dry like that almost overnight? There's no soft spots in the yard indicating a broken pipe. What other things should I be looking for?

THANKS!
Tonya


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## Ninn (Oct 28, 2006)

I'd look for a broken pipe along the road where the city dug. They may have inadvertently cracked one and it's leaking into the drainage ditch along the road?


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Some wells recharge very slowly. The casings for these types of wells are sized to store a few hundred gallons of water. Once the water stored in the well casing is used up, the well goes "dry"....temporarily. The homeowner then has to wait for the well to recharge (ie, wait for the casing to slowly fill with water) before he can use more water. In these situations, conservation is the key. Wash dishes once a day, shower with 3 gallons of water per person, follow the addage "If its yellow, let it mellow....if it's brown flush it down."


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## Guest (Jun 11, 2009)

We're on well water and the only pipes we have that go to the street are sewage pipes. 


Why would the well go dry when it's been too muddy to get into the garden? It's been a moist year, so it going dry all of a sudden stumps me.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Tonya said:


> ...Why would the well go dry when it's been too muddy to get into the garden? It's been a moist year, so it going dry all of a sudden stumps me.


Because it's not a matter of "quantity" of water than makes some wells run dry. It's a matter of aquifer permeability (ie, hydraulic conductivity). Wells finished in materials that have low permeability recharge very slowly, even though there might be plenty of water in the aquifer.

Of course there can be many other reasons why your well is "dry" including pump problems, delievery problems and possibly a plugged well screen. 

You can do a test to determine whether the problem is likely due to a slow well recharge rate. Once the well is "dry" let it sit for 24 hours without using any water. Then turn the well on. If you have water, the problem is likely a slow recharge rate or a plugged well screen.


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## ErinP (Aug 23, 2007)

Where do you live, Tonya? 

We live in Center Pivot Land. 
Why this is relevant: When we first moved here, we arrived in winter. After we were done calving and branding in spring, DH started turning windmills on so he could take cows to summer grass. They all worked just fine. 

By early June, two of them were no longer pumping. DH was baffled. He checked all the usual suspects and finally called the well company. 
They had to drop his pipes in both cases because the water table had dropped.
Everyone in the neighborhood had started their pivots up.


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## Harry Chickpea (Dec 19, 2008)

"My friend showed me the cistern and there is water in there. He looked down the well and said that while he couldn't tell if there was water in there he sure didn't see any pipes. He thought there was water in the well, but he turned the hose on to fill it anyways. (We have another well for just the barns.) He had the hose on for just a half an hour or so."

This doesn't make sense. A well that is being used has at least one pipe coming out of it. He didn't see pipes??? If you have a well, running a hose into it can erode the sides and dump the eroded dirt in the bottom of the well.


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## fordy (Sep 13, 2003)

..................pump water from the well into the cistern , use it as a water savings account . Pump water from cistern into the house for limited daily usage . Ascertain how long it takes for the well too recharge itself then pump it's volume into the cistern , this then will tell you how much daily volume you have available for your daily needs . , fordy


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## wyld thang (Nov 16, 2005)

most likely, aside from broken pump works, you do use more water than the well can recharge, like Cabin Fever says. You're just going to have to ration. Kids dont' need showers every night anyways.


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## agmantoo (May 23, 2003)

The discussion is not making sense. If you have water in the cistern then you should have water in the house provided the pump is functioning. Obviously the well is a low output unit because you have a cistern. Cisterns are used to augment intermittent or low quantities from the water source. When you have a problem with a well, a well man is whom you need and not a plumber.


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## johng (Feb 14, 2009)

A quick easy fix to get you by until you get on city water would be to hook up a hose from the well you said was at the barn. Just take a washing machine hose and hook it to the hose coming from the barn and then hook the other end into one of your outside faucets open the faucet and turn the hose on and it will back feed your house. This will get you by until you have a more permenat solution.


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## rambler (Jan 20, 2004)

As usual, Agman & Cabin Fever took my ideas.

You have a well for the house; a second well someplace for the rest of the place; and a cistern in the house.

Correct?

I'm not at all following how this is plumbed together.

You would need _three_ pumps then; one at each well, and a pressure pump in the basement to feed the house from the cistern.

Typically a slow well will put water into the cistern about as fast as the well produces water. Perhaps 1 gallon per minute, or even less.

The cistern stores the water. When you turn on a faucett, you often are 'asking' for 4-5 gallons per minute. You draw your water out of the cistern at 5 gallons per minute for an hour or 3 per day; while the well pump puts water back into the cistern at 1 gallon per minute but 24 hours a day.

I bet you are ovlerlooking a _big_ draw on the well - you didn't mention how you do laundry for 8 people???? That can use far more than the showers!

Sounds like you have a new system coming on 2-3 weeks with all the water you want, so nothing to do but ration what you have.

I still don't quite understand how your system works from your explination of it, there could be something mechanical wrong. But even so, won't pay to fix it if you are getting a new setup in less than a month.

I have a sand-screen in my deep well (how deep is your well, and is it a surface pump or a submersable pump?) which plugged up on me with magneesium after 40 years. I had all the water I wanted at 80 gallons at a time. But the screen got so plugged, it would only dribble back inonce the 80 gallons was used up. Basically turned my 50 gal per minute plus well into a low-volume well. Fortunately the $1400 acid treatment cleaned the screen off & things are working well again.

Many old farm houses like mine have the toilets & drinking water fed from the well, presurized by the deep well pump.

There is a second setup of water coming from the cistern that is 'soft water', and it is collected in the cistern from the roof & downspouts. It would be very easy for a house of 8 to empty such a cistern in 6 weeks. Are you sure your cistern is filled from the well normally, and not from a valve on the downspouts of your house? Perhaps your cistern was converted to use well water, and you need to turn on a valve from the well periodically to fill the cistern with well water. Is there some sort of float or thing to keep your cistern full without overflowing from the well?

There is a lot of this picture we are not seeing, way too many possibilities.....

--->Paul


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## kohburn (May 21, 2009)

the water coming out slower and slower is typical of losing pressure, with well pumps and pressure tanks this usually means that you are getting the flow from the pressure tank but no flow from the pump.

before thinking dry well, first make sure your pressure switch that turns the pump on isn't sticking or going bad, its an 8$ part and easy to replace. it could cause symtopms exactly like yours

i would check that before thinking anything expensive.

think horses not zebras


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