Never having had a well, I am mystified as to how they work.
Is there a cover? Is it flush with the ground or is there a stone circle around the top like in a Hollie Hobby drawing?
Is the water clear? I can’t picture anything except rather muddy water, which can’t be true. Is it filtered somehow before it gets to your house? How does it get to your house in the first place? How deep do these things usually go? Is there some switch you can turn on and off to power the pump or does it just work all the time? What happens if the electricity goes out–does that mean no water?
Do frogs and stuff live in there? How do you prevent animals from falling in?
Sorry if these are idiotic. I’ve only ever had a city water system.
Modern wells are not open to the elements. They’re essentially a pipe driven into the ground until they hit water. It’s a closed system, so no need to worry about frogs, birds, or filtering.
We have a well (two, actually), and here’s my understanding of how they work (I’m sure I’m not exactly right on some of these points, but someone will come along and correct me I’m sure):
Picture a big pipe, driven anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred feet into the ground. Eventually they hit a water pocket. On top of the pipe is a pump.
Another pipe leads from the well into the house, where there is a big tank (picture a hot water heater tank, only larger) that gets fed from the outside well via the pump. The water is collected in the tank, and feed the rest of the plumbing in the house. It’s either pressurized or another pump keeps up the water pressure.
There’s no need to filter the water because the water essentially comes from a filter - the rock and sand that the pipe is driven into.
When the electricity goes out, we have water until the tank is empty. After that, we have to worry. That’s never actually happened, though. The only time our tank has emptied is when Mr. Athena forgot and left the garden sprinkler on for about 14 hours.
Pepper Mill’s family had a well water system at their previous house. There was no cute “Stone Cylinder With a Roof and a Bucket on a Rope” arrangement – the well was a completely covered and unexposed hole in the ground. They probably had a pipe going down (or else it’d have closed). There was probably a sort of strainer at the end, but I’ve never seen it or asked about it, so I can’t say.
Inside the house was a recentkly-installed filtering system. Almost certainly they brought the water up by pump (most wells aren’t artesian, and this was nowhere near any highlands) into the filter system, from which it was routed to the house. There was a lot of dissolved iron in the water, which turned the inside of the dishwasher brown. There must have been dissolved copper as well (pretty common in New Jersey), because the bathtub had a lot of green encrustation on it.
With all the development in New Jersey now, I’m not sure how far I’d trust well water from anywhere not out in the sticks.
Oh boy, you are thinking about modern wells as being way more primitive than they really are. The water is usually perfectly clean as is and often doesn’t need to be treated at all. The taste may be a little different than city water but the quality can be superior. Using a well isn’t some hippy-trippy alternative lifestyle thing they are common in many areas of the country. The pump works automatically and you usually don’t have to mess with it. The well will usually be sealed with a heavy lid and there may be a small pump house (more like a very small utility shed) on top of or next to it. The depth can be anything. It depends on the area and exactly where you drill on your property. Some wells are less than 50 feet and some are several hundred feet deep. There are typically no frogs in a residential well.
There are two major issues that I can think of. It is possible to have well water that is excessively hard or soft (mineral content) and the water will need to be treated. This isn’t usually a big deal but it costs money and requires some light maintenance. The second is more serious. Some wells can run dry especially in a drought. Farms and other high water use homes are most prone to this but it could happen anywhere the well water level is just marginal most of the time. Some people drill backup well for this reason but it doesn’t apply to all wells.
My grandparents used a spring. Water would come up out of the ground, and it was fed into a big galvanised tank. There were some screens to keep the debris out, and the excess flowed over the top (carrying the floating debris). The water ran by gravity through a pipe to the house. For watering the field my grandfather would run a firehose across the road (later there was a small culvert instead) to the creek and pump the water with a gas-powered pump.
I had a fairly long reply, but the Colorado Rocky Mountains and Massachusetts might differ in some important aspects.
Covered, no stone circle, clear water, filtered (giardia, etc), electric pump, 30-300 feet, yes there’s a switch, no electricity no water, no frogs, with a cap.
So how does the pump move the water? I assume it can’t just be sucking really hard, since that would limit you to 32’.
I would also assume that there is some component of the pump at the bottom. If it’s nothing more than a skinny pipe, then how are the mechanical details of the pump – does it have a long rod that drives an impeller hundreds of feet down at the bottom? Piston, like an old-school well?
Mine is a 6"pipe running 40’ to bedrock, below this, the bore hole goes to 600’. The pump is suspended at 400’. The well overflows slowly when not in use. The pipe ends about 18" above ground. There is a metal cover, but it is not airtight. The pump runs to fill a 18" X 36" or so tank containing an air bladder which provides the pressure to the house. When the pressure in this tank drops, a pressure switch closes to turn on the pump. No power = no water after the tank runs dry, except that which I can get by leaning a bucket against the well head to catch the overflow. I wired a transfer switch so that I can plug my house into a portable generator, flip some switches, + run the essentials.
If the well has sufficient pressure, the pump is unnecessary, and no elecricity is required. This is called an artesian well. It’s the luck of the draw whether you hit an artesian source or not.
My water is nearly clear, but I use a whole house filter to remove sediment. Whether this filter is necessary depends on what type of deposit the well draws water from.
Growing up we had a spring. Just uphill from where water naturally weeped from the ground was a stack of 4 4’ wide x 2’ high concrete rings. On top was a 4" thich concrete slab. at the bottom of the well was a 8" x 8" x 4" wooden box with a top + bottom made of old door screen, and a hose end inside. Down the hill at the other end of the hose was the house. No tank, just a straight connection into the plumbing.
My house was built 25 years ago and the well dug then. It’s typical of residential houses in my area.
My well is visible in the back yard as a 6 inch pipe that sticks up a couple feet. There’s a cast aluminum cap on the top, and a conduit running down the side.
Underground, this pipe, called the “casing”, goes down 220 feet through earth and gravel. At the bottom, I’m not sure what it looks like, but people tell me there’s usually a few feet that has holes and screen.
I have a submerged pump which is a 3 inch diameter, 3 foot long silver thing. It hangs on its 1 1/2" black plastic semirigid pipe, its power cord, and a rope. I think it’s a few horsepower.
This pump is hanging 150 feet deep, so there’s 70 feet of casing below it. The water fills all but the top 50 feet of the casing pipe, so the pump is in water 100 feet deep.
When I replaced the pump this year, the water was muddy for a few days, and I had to “shock” the well by pouring 2 gallons of Chlorox laundry bleach in at the top and running lots of water till the smell went away in a few days. Also, if I use a huge amount of water, like sprinkle the lawn all day, the water will get muddy for a day or so. I think all the water has to enter the casing at the bottom, and there’s settled mud down there, and if I use enough water - bearing in mind there’s maybe a hundred gallons of water below the pump before any mud I stir up reaches it - then I bring the mud as high as the pump and get dirty water.
Somebody told me that I’m pumping water from the Potomac aquifer, and that it’s water that has been underground for about 10,000 years, but that my neighbors on either side with much shallower wells are drinking newer water in a shallower aquifer.
In all cases, the actual pump is at or near the bottom of the well.
The well is lined by a casing that is several inches in diameter. The pump feeds a smaller diameter pipe inside the casing. Said pipe can be used to pull the pump up the casing for service if the rope that is normally attached to the pump breaks.
A windmill driven well will use a reciprocating piston pump. The blades drive a gear reduction, then a crank which drives a long rod up and down…mentioned because you asked about it, but water pumping mills are enjoying a bit of a comeback due to energy prices.
Residential wells typically have a submersible pump lowered into the well. Due to the small diameter, the impellers must be very small, therefore many stages are required to develop enough head to feed a pressurized system at the surface.
Larger wells (agricultural or municipal) are typically driven by a shaft, with the motor at the top driving via a packing gland.
This is really informative - thank you all very much.
Shagnasty, I was half kidding when I asked if there was a stone circle at the top. I know those are mostly from the olden days, or maybe Hollywood’s vision of what a well looks like.
There is a fascinating account of drilling a well in one of Michener’s novels (Hawaii) and when they finally make it through the last millimeter of cap rock, the water shoots up as though they struck oil and goes 30 feet in the air, and I knew all wells couldn’t be like that! But then they don’t go into much about how they get it anywhere except to say that it’s piped.
Do people who have had both prefer well water over city water? It apparently can taste different; is this the minerals? Or isn’t well water sometimes soft? (Hard = lots of minerals; soft = little, right?)
I almost can’t picture water coming out of the ground being clear. I have “digging a hole in the yard and having water seep through” stuck in my head, even though I know that’s not how it is. I think if I ever had a house with a well, I’d just stand by the sink with the tap running and marvel at it!
Fortunately our little farm has public water by virtue of a 10” main that runs down the road ditch , but we do have a well as well. The well is an 80’ sand point special with a screen on the bottom of the well casing and a submersible pump about half way down, well below the water table. The well supplies all the outside water including hydrants in the barn and loafing shed. When we first got the place there was a surface pump jack – a big noisy affair with an 18” fly wheel, essentially a motorized hand pump. The house had a stone lined dug well in the basement. Apparently the farmer’s wife dragged water up stairs in a bucket. The farm got electricity in the late 1940s. That’s when the sand point was drilled in.
If your drilled well is into bed rock (lime rock around here) you don’t need a screen although you might want to filter out dissolved lime. A sand point well, however, needs a sand screen below the pump and you are going to get murky water during wet periods and the great spring run-off. In an agricultural area you are likely to get alarming levels of nitrates from fertilizer and confinement lot waste in a shallow well. All the better reason to have public water if you can.
Actually the simplest well is just, “digging a hole in the yard and having water seep through” , and there are places where that is exactly where they get their water, although that kind of well has it’s own sanitation problems. Most well water is going to contain significant disolved solids making it “hard” water. I recall, when I was a kid, we had a hand pump and my folks used to put socks over the outlet to filter out some of the iron. The sock would turn reddish after a few days. I doubt this was very effective.
You probably should marvel a bit. I also recall my mom pumping buckets of water and then heating them on the stove, for baths, dishes, laundry, etc. I’m sure she must have marveled a bit when we finally got a house w/ plumbing.
It often won’t be clear in a newly drilled well. As water is drawn out, eventually all the dirt fine enough to be suspended in the water is drawn out, and the well water becomes clear. If the well is unused for a long period, (months at least) then it may have significant turbidity for a while after being returned to service.
Significant seismic events can sometimes lead to turbid well water for a while also.
Re. Well water vs. city water: In many places the only difference is the size of the well and the amount of pipe between the well and your tap. It is very common for water to be pumped from municipal supply wells, chlorinated, and delivered directly to the municipal distribution system.
Note that some places use surface, rather than ground, water for municipal supplies. Surface water typically receives far more treatment than well water. In some areas this is changing as stricter EPA regulations take effect. (which is how I currently earn my living)
Not true. Shallow well and convertible jet pumps both may be located at or near the wellhead, or within the dwelling, depending on seasonal temperature swings and other factors.
I live in Massachusetts too (if I am reading your location line right) and we have an open well on our property that is colonial in origin. It is indeed a bunch of rocks in the circle at the top (and all the way down). It is about three feet across and plenty big enough for a child or even an adult to fall into. I have a large wooden cover over it and it is too heavy for my daughters to move. At some point in my daughter’s development cycle, jackass teenage boys are going to come onto our property and I might have to buy an extremely heavy concrete cover that can only be moved with heavy equipment. Contractors told me not to fill it in because its location is very handy to serve agricultural needs even today and it has historical value as well.
On my farm I have a well (with a nice wellhouse and electric pump) and have recently connected to the city water supply. Before I moved in when I bought my house I had the water tested and it’s very pure. It’s also quite sulphurous and not very palatable to me. The dogs seem to prefer it to city water, though. The lady who owned the house before me was 99 when she died and lived there at least 70 years (brought to the house as a young bride), but they used a different water source before my well was dug around 1960.
I was talking to a neighbor recently and he said that when he had dairy cattle he was pumping 10,000 gals per day from his well. I have no idea what the pumping capacity of mine is (being more residential), but if I accidentally leave the hose on for 24 hours, it’s still drawing at the same fast rate. In fact, I’d guess I could do a minimum of 5 gal/min, which would be 7200 gal per day, based on how fast my water troughs fill up. Middle Tennessee, particularly my little section, has had a horrible drought this year. Although I now have city water, I make sure my well and pump are working well.
