Well dilemma

[DonL]

When the average person uses 75-80 gallons a day, and there is a family of five with a 1/4 gpm, it's hard to make those numbers work.

Forget trying to sell the place with a big, sweaty tank in the basement or garage.

I'd much rather see the customer spend their money on fixing the problem, not putting a band aid on it.

I agree.

But I know nothing.

 

[Craigpump]

Have you stopped to consider the cost of the tank, excavation, booster pump and electrical work?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[LLigetfa]

Have you considered the cost of the options? Frac the 300 foot deep well and hope it increases yield? Trench a line to the well that has iron and install an iron filter? Drill a new well and hope it is free of iron and has good recovery?

In my area, most of the mud wells (cased to bedrock) have lots of hardness, iron, and manganese that need remediation with equipment that require constant maintenance. Most of the deep (rock bore) wells produce better water albeit, sometimes not as plentiful. My neighbor paid $48 per foot to drill 300 feet and then had to frac to get enough yield. It is a crapshoot. Drillers are willing to go as deep as your bank account can afford and offer no guarantee.

You say try to sell a place that has a storage tank. I say try to sell a place that has poor quality water with perhaps a crapload of water conditioning equipment.

 

[Craigpump]

We do a TON of well inspections for mortgages and I can assure you that buyers don't walk, they run from houses with static storage tanks.

 

[LLigetfa]

Here I needed a well with a minimum 5 GPM to get a mortgage. For the OP the other well may meet that requirement.

I don't recall you proposing a solution. I thought valveman had a good solution to pipe in the second well and set it a few PSI below the first so it only drew from it when the first one couldn't meet demand but I guess the OP doesn't want to trench in 500 feet of pipe.

The OP wants to simply put in a larger pressure tank but as you said, if the well cannot fill a small tank it won't fill a bigger one. A 120 gallon tank will provide less than 37 gallons of water. It could take over an hour to fill it back up.

 

[Texas Wellman]

Forgive me for not seeing it but the OP did not post his location. We know nothing about the geology of where he is located. I'm with Craig, he should talk to several drillers in his area and find out the probability of drilling and getting a good well rather than spending money to band-aid the old.

In these parts anything that made less than 10 GPM would be considered a dry hole. We just drilled a 500' 4" well that makes 100 GPM for about $16 per foot. Drilling prices vary from location to location so it is not wise to apply that line of thinking to all locations. At least find out how much the drilling would cost before you go off spending money on wells that don't work.

Have you considered the cost of the options? Frac the 300 foot deep well and hope it increases yield? Trench a line to the well that has iron and install an iron filter? Drill a new well and hope it is free of iron and has good recovery?

In my area, most of the mud wells (cased to bedrock) have lots of hardness, iron, and manganese that need remediation with equipment that require constant maintenance. Most of the deep (rock bore) wells produce better water albeit, sometimes not as plentiful. My neighbor paid $48 per foot to drill 300 feet and then had to frac to get enough yield. It is a crapshoot. Drillers are willing to go as deep as your bank account can afford and offer no guarantee.

You say try to sell a place that has a storage tank. I say try to sell a place that has poor quality water with perhaps a crapload of water conditioning equipment.

 

[Craigpump]

I can sell all the "10 gpm dry wells" you can give me!

 

[DonL]

I can sell all the "10 gpm dry wells" you can give me!

Texas is Gods country. One reason I moved here.

We are Blessed in many ways.

Running Water is only one of them.

 

[LLigetfa]

Texas is Gods country...

Yet the bedrock is soft and all cracked up. No wonder it's hard to hit a dry hole. Up here in our God's country the bedrock is precambrian tough-as-nails granite. Maybe that's why it cost $48 per foot since it eats drill bits. I've done my share of rock drilling albeit not for wells, but for pipelines. Had a lot of Texans come up here to show us how pipelining is done and they could not believe what they saw.

 

[Craigpump]

$48 a foot....does that include the mud job and casing?

Do they drill year round, or do drillers have to make enough in good weather to survive the winter?

If we could get 1/2 that here in Ct, I'd order a new T4 tomorrow.

 

[Texas Wellman]

LLigetfa in our area we do not have have bedrock at our normal drilling depths. None whatsoever. You can make a well here at 80' (extremely hard), 200' (hard water), 300-400' (sometimes better), and 500' (best). Deeper than that you can get into salt water. Head upcountry 2-3 hours around Austin and they have rock and get into the low water producers. Some places will not even issue a permit to drill due to groundwater shortages I'm told. The geology varies so much from place to place I do not see how anybody on a forum can get decent advice without first talking to 2-3 drillers in his area that know their stuff.

Craig I've seen those big concrete tanks up around Austin on slow-producing wells so I'm sure that there are plenty of people up there who would also like the 10 GPM wells.

Yet the bedrock is soft and all cracked up. No wonder it's hard to hit a dry hole. Up here in our God's country the bedrock is precambrian tough-as-nails granite. Maybe that's why it cost $48 per foot since it eats drill bits. I've done my share of rock drilling albeit not for wells, but for pipelines. Had a lot of Texans come up here to show us how pipelining is done and they could not believe what they saw.