Post by sillygoosegirl on Aug 8, 2014 9:12:01 GMT -5
Can you use an alternate approach to a new well? Growing up, our neighbors were hooked up to creak water for some of their plumbing and a crappy well for other water. If you can get water rights from an alternate source, you don't really need water that is safe to drink in the shower of washing machine. Another option might be a cistern. A grey water system could help a bit too. Are you close enough to any of your neighbors to buy water/water rights off them? No idea what any of those systems might cost to install, but it seems like they'd be lower risk.
Ugh. I'm so, so sorry you have this mountain of crap to deal with. Is the 950 ft hole close enough to your house that you could somehow set up geothermal heat with it? silver lining and all that? (If this idea is so stupid it's laughable, I'm sorry).
I really, really hope you find water this time. Can you find a hydrogeologist or geomorphologist at a local university and ask them to help you estimate the water table from a geologic map? Maybe someone has a cross section of your area?
Ha! I did actually ask DH if we could call Burns Slant-Drilling Co when he told me about the neighbors flow below us And asked if we could just drill deep enough for a pump, ~2 extra feet, then tap into the neighbors well (which is right on their side of the property line, the county told us we just have to be on our side of the property line). Not the neighbors with the 25gpm flow, but the ones next to us.
There are multiple household wells further down the road, but they have to designed for that when set up, it's not something they can retrofit. We're in a rural area (and on top of a small mountain) so no govt provided water/sewer available--we're lucky we have power, phone service, and only got DSL a couple years ago.
DH is going to look into the possibility of putting in a cistern and having water delivered but we aren't sure if the county allows that, if there is anyone around that would do the work, if it is even a viable option at our altitude (we're at ~2100ft above sea level, freezing is a major issue), if a tank/cistern would be large enough to get through the winter if a truck couldn't deliver (we had snow/ice on the ground from Nov to April this year--and the county doesn't even plow our gravel road, our neighbors do), or how much all of that might cost. This seems to be the only non-walking away option left if the second drilling doesn't work.
I know nothing about this stuff so I'm totally talking out of my ass, but since you have a big hole in the ground can you get geothermal heat from that, and maybe use that to keep a cistern above freezing? Or even just to make use of your giant hole in the ground?
Geothermal HVAC systems require... wait for it...
A well. They use groundwater for heat transfer.
Maybe a bigass hole and an underground (under the frost line) bigass tanks?
Man this whole thing sucks.
Off hand, does title insurance cover anything like this?
Apparently, according the the drillers and the county health inspector, dowsing is the best they can do--and that's a crap shoot. Don't know if that is because we're sitting on a mountain of very hard slate that other, more scientific detectors can't read through or what.
DH did just find out that the house directly down the slope from us has a 250ft well that is producing 25 gallons per minute (so it's right on top of the spring). Best we can do it try to drill as close to that as we can on our property line. All the rest of the wells around us are ~400-500ft according the the health dept records. The records also claim our well was measured at 6 gallons per minute when first drilled, DH doubts the accuracy of that and thinks it was yet another "house is being built by a Congressman, look the other way" incident. (The county inspector pointed out a bunch of stuff that was "wrong" when we finished the basement--DH pointed out that they were things that existed when he purchased the house and this inspector was the same one that inspected it when construction was completed.)
In hindsight, we should have just walked away in 2008 when we hit 50% underwater (due to neighbors walking away--for financial reasons not dry wells). We've already spent ~$20k on well issues before the well was declared "dry" (new, better pumps, replacing burnt-out pumps, a huge storage tank, etc.). It would have been the better financial/business decision then, we just didn't have the real need to do it.
Fuck this sucks.
Can you share the well with these people if you pay them a use fee?
I just read your update and I hope your next well drilled is successful.
We have a shared well at our vacation home and at times for me the whole well/septic/(now we are getting a new sewer that is 2 million dollars over budget in town, but no city water though) can be a complete mindfuck. We have our well pit drained in the winter and twice, two different plumbing companies in the spring have total us we need a new well. Complete terror feeling ensues. Guess what? They just didn't know which valve to turn on. Ugh.