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How deep is your well and what volume can you pump.

D

DFZ

Member
It was interesting reading billonthefarm's post about his new well. It is interesting to learn what other farms across this country and the world have to deal with. I was surprised to read that his well was 600+ feet deep and could only pump 30 gal/min.

Our irrigation well was originally hand dug, but years ago had a steel casing installed. It is 47' deep and we can pump 300 gal/min. I'm sure we could pump more, but we would need a bigger pump. We are located in SW Washington state.

How far did the rest of you have to go for water and how much do you have?
 
I had a new well drilled here six years ago.(Dubuque Co.,Ia.) It is 180 feet deep and they tested it to 50 gal per minute. I don"t have that big of pump but the well driller checked it at that minimum flow.

Now just a few miles north west their wells will be over 1000 feet deep many will be 1500 plus. They have sulfur water near the surface so to get good drinkable water you have to go under it.

I noticed that billion had a plastic casing put in on his well. They offered me a plastic one. I chose a 6 inch diameter 1/2 inch thick steel one instead. I was afraid of the casing getting broken if it was plastic. It was "new" cut off oil well casings. The lengths where any where from twenty to forty feet long. They welded them together as they lowered them into the well hole. Then they sealed the out side with bituminous clay. Cost about $12,000

What is the best casing???? I did have to change the filer every few weeks for the first year. Had a lot of rust in it. The well driller said it would do that and then stop. It seems to have done that. I still seem to get a lot of fine sand in the filter. Wife finds real fine sand in the cloths dryer lint trap. I guess that is from the well water????
 
Western ny, we hit water at 14 feet,drilled to 40 feet where it was solid clay. put slots in the well casing at the 14' level.shallow well pump puts out around 5 gals a minute.have let it run three days straight to fill the neighbors inground swimming pool.have been told the the valley we are in has a very wide but shallow aquifer.probably only about 3 foot thick. Bill
 
In Virginia western shore of the Bay, 450 feet deep, flows 50 gal/min, artesan well.
Services the whole place.
 
This is a interesting post. We have three other wells on the farm. None are more than forty feet deep and they are all hand dug. They have provided water to livestock for generations. There is alot of shallow water in this area. These wells were all hand dug and have huge reserve capacity. The only problem with those wells is in extreme stretches of dry weather they can go dry. We do have one that never has. The deep well will not provide as many gpm but it will not run out.
bill
 
Mines around 80 years old, 18 feet deep and about 5 ft in diameter, hand dug about 80 years ago and hand lined with sandstone (no mortar) around the perimeter. I have no idea of its volume. If you wait 30 mins to an hour after a hard rain and look down in it theres water tricklin in all round its surface. We raised 3 kids here and in a hot dry August it went dry now n then and the water hauler dumped a couple thousand gallons down its throat took care of it. However since the kids left home shes never went dry since. Ive never had it tested, feared the County would close it n toss us all in jail but the old gent who lived here before lived n worked hard until age 90 and none of our family has any health issues. We dont get any iron stains anywhere nor lime deposits so Im leavin "well" enough alone. HOWEVER city water is at the road and if I ever wanna sell the place in todays environment Im sure I will have to hook on.

John T
 
My well/spring is 7 feet deep and 5-6 feet in diameter. I just use it for my house and it produced somewhere around 500 gallons a day in 24 hours in the drought year(1988) we dug it. Hard to beat spring water!
 
Different areas have varying amounts of water here in my neck of the woods. My well here in NW Iowa is about150 feet deep with an 8 inch casing and will flow maybe 10 gallons per minute. When I need to fill my nurse tank for spraying I go to a 100 foot well a mile and a half north of me that fills a 1500 gallon tank in 30 minutes while taking care of the needs of 4000 head of hogs at the same time. It's an artesian well so they had to cap it so it won't flow out the top of the casing. My well is in heavy black/clay soil. The well north of me is in sandy soil. Jim
 
My well is 220 ft.(SE La.) Hit water several times on the way down but did not like the quality.
I do not remember how many gal/min it tested but it supplies all my 1 hp pump can draw.

You need to go about 1000 ft in my area to have a free flowing well.

If you go about 50 miles south of me you can dig a hole to plant a tree one day and if you do not fill it in right away it will be full of water the next day.
 
Timely topic. Hoping to drill mine in the next year so I've been researching well records of my neighbors. Pretty much all the same:
3 ft of sand, 100 ft of clay then sand and gravel.
Wells all around 120-150 ft deep with static water levels at about 60 ft down.
Test pumping is done at about 75 ft with flows of between 7-12 gpm.

We're in the Michigan "Thumb" area about 2 miles from 20% of the world's fresh water supply (Great Lakes). What's interesting is that farther north of us along the tip of the "Thumb" there are beach-front properties that can't hit water at all by drilling. They've got to truck in potable water. I've seen them run pipes into Lake Huron for their non-drinking use. My FIL bought a Lake Huron home that has a shallow (25'?) well point on the beach itself. It gets the cleanest, best tasting water I've ever had for well water here in Michigan. It's grandfathered in, but illegal to put one in today.
 
57' and 85', both artesian. The one up on the Canadian border does not flow when it is real dry, like now, but the level does not change when a 15gpm pump starts. I have never seen it down more than 4' below grade. The one here in Bemidji is higher pressure, the well has a packer above the pitless. With the pump shut off you can hold a hose up 10' and water still comes out. pump only pumps about 10gpm. Both wells have pretty bad water, iron and calcium, have filters and softeners.
 
We"re in the Mississippi River valley of
Western Wisconsin. We put in the well in 1968,
and hit water at 60 feet, the driller said that
it was in "Flour Sand" and the pump wouldn"t last
We kept going till, at 180 feet, it was in pea gravel. That pump lasted until 2010, 42 years,
until hit by lightning. Others in the area are
shallower and replacing pumps every 8-10 years.
We"re pumping 15 gallons per minute, but the well
driller says we could "pump anything" as the 180
foot level is below river level. the Mississippi
is only 1-1/2 miles away.
 
Shallow wells are frowned upon here in Minnesota, had several in years past on this farm, about 30 foot deep, windmill powered.

Current well put in in early 70's, 260 feet deep, in fine sand, screen on the bottom casing. Second pump, 1st one was hit by lightening.

Get 20 gal/minute because of the size of the pump/pipe, when the screen needed to be acid cleaned a couple years ago (much minerals in otherwise good water around here, iron & mag) the well man said he was slucing 50 gallons a minute & well kept up fine with that at least.

--->Paul
 
We are 120 ft deep and have a good strong 5 gal/min. When they stress tested it, it started out at 8 gal but dropped to 5 after 3 hrs and never went below that.

If you go 3 miles west of us, you can get a minimum 30 gallons, up to and beyond 300 gal of good water, pretty much anyplace you punch a 100' hole. Right around here it's hit or miss with a chance of hitting sulpher.

We hit this one first try in '04 and called it good. The neighbor up the road went 130' and hit 45 gal. Just south of him, they drilled 3 holes and settled on 3 gal/min that goes dry if their toilet runs all night.

All I know is, it was sure a good feeling when I found out they hit good water on the first try. Those holes get pretty expensive when they have to keep poking them in the ground.

Tim
 
Here in central wi various types of undergroud formationd effect the well.Where I live near mosinee we whet 400 ft and got 1 gpm.it worked 10 years for house use only.Then last year it went dry,So we called a well driller to hydrofrac it they add water to the well off a large truck till its filled then lower a hose with a sealer then apply up tp 3000lbs preasure wich cracks the rock.They got the rock to crack at three diferent locations took up tp 1800 lbs psi to crack them.Now we are at over 5 gpm pump is rated at 4 gpm and does not draw water down.Cost to crack it was 2800.00.Another drilled well for cattle is same depht and 1 gallon a minute maybe nezt year we will crack it.We have water at less than 40 ft but state regs say you muast be deeper than 40 ft .We have solid rock below 40 ft mark only thing you can hope for is hitting a crack as drilling the well.
 
No wells much here in this part of the state. Springs and such draining out of sinkholes but they can be fine today and vile tomorrow. Most everyone around here used cisterns to collect rain water before we got county wide municipal water.
 
Western Willamette Valley of Oregon. Well is 120 feet deep. I think the static water level is 40 feet. I was told it would produce 100 gpm. I know that my 1 1/2 hp pump has never emptied it.

About 400 yards from my well, my neighbor drilled down 300 feet and hit too much salt to be able to use the water.
 
My well in Central KS is 92' deep. Static water at 30'. Driller said 200 gpm, enough for an irrigation system. Luckily I've never pumped it dry. (no irrigation system) Just 3 miles to the south, on the opposite side of the Saline River, you can barely get water. 3 - 8 gpm at best. Crazy what a couple of miles can do. Bob
 
Here in SE AZ our well is 350' and the pump is set at 290'. Don't remember GPM. Kind of concerned lately cuz we have been getting alot of air out of our faucets. I check the pressure tank when it does that and the tank is always full. Hole in stand pipe maybe???
 
paperwork from the house sez the hole is 720' deep, the pump was at 680' deep, pump was from the mid '80s when we replaced it in november

dad's place is about the same #'s, he's 1/2mile way the crowflyes from me, he has put a pump in every 10years since 1991
 
DFZ, where are you in SW Washington? That well almost sounds like Grand Mound or Violet prairie 30 miles south of Olympia. Wells were limited only by size of casing, and the pump capacity. Started a fish farm in '71, and we were getting 2,500 gallons per minute from two wells, each less than 100 feet deep (and only a few feet apart). My dad irrigated 25 acres with a shallow well pump (well less than 32 feet deep), but it would have to be deeper now.
 
East coast of lake Huron.
3/4HP submersible pump does 14gpm at 60psi hours at a time when watering the tree plantation. 5" casing.
Water level is 22ft from surface and varies less than 12" from static to 14gpm usage.
Water is "soft". Neighbour 1/4 mile west has the pump down 300ft and water leaves everything red with iron.
Neighbour 1/4 mile east is in the same water vein and uses a compressed air water pump. No idea of gpm.
 
NW IN. 170' to good water. Supposedly can pump a bunch, only 1 mile from wabash and below that level. We've pumped A LOT of water from a well put in in '83, new one for shop and my house in '97. Many shallow wells around here with a jet pump. My rental has good water with a shallow pump, I always wonder how deep it really is. It lays in a valley, water table pretty high down there.
 
I have three springs on the place, but the water comes 45 miles from Mark Twain Lake.
 
I'll add some info on a small town, Maple Plain, had a town well, 500 ft down, plug with white sand. This was checked out and was determined to be a pre historic ocean beach sand similar to that found in Florida East coast. This is flat country just 25 miles West of Minneapolis MN. Who would have thunk there was an ocean in that area of North America. Musta been millions of years ago.. So a person can never be sure what they might find when drilling. I have a quart jar full of that Maple Plain white sand. It's about as smooth as "Hour-Glass" sand except it's white.
 
I live in an irrigation distict east of Spokane. I have a 3" meter/valve @ 80 psi. Growing up dryland farming in SD, it makes me smile every time I crank open that valve! Cost is $9 per 3 acre feet per year for ag use.....added to your property taxes whether you use it or not....I use it!
 
Mid-Michigan.

5 inch casing. 150 feet deep. 33gpm @ 50 psi. Water comes up to 5 feet below grade. I pump tons of water (OK gallons) to water all my trees.

5 miles west of me, some people are lucky to get a gallon a minute.

Working on drawing from the pond for the trees, just haven"t drug electric out there yet.

Rick
 
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