Wells - $$$, witchers, and pressure tanks vs. tankless systems.

April 28th 2021

On April 28th 2021 we drilled our well. It’s always a scary prospect going into it, Well drilling costs a lot of money and you never know exactly where you’re going to hit water. You might hit water at 40 feet and you might hit water at 600 feet. Keep in mind they charge you per foot. Every foot deeper you go is additional casing and drilling charges. It can be an expensive process and depending on type and depth can cost anywhere from $12,000-$35,000. If you go down 600 feet and do not hit water then you have to pick another spot and drill again. They charge you whether or not you hit water.

This was a big deal to us when we bought the property. We had looked at another piece of land and pulled well reports for that area. Wells in that area were 600 feet deep getting 5 to 8 gallons per minute. We were pretty intimidated by this and did not offer on that piece. When we looked at buying this property we pulled the well reports for the area and were happy to see that the wells were between 60 and 300 feet deep and averaged between 12 and 35 gallons per minute. Looking back now the decent well reports in the area probably played a big role in our decision to buy this land and build. We wouldn’t have offered on bare land if well reports in the area weren’t good. Most wells in our specific region are good, but there are some areas where you can run into issues. Pro Tip: It is always a good idea to have an idea of what neighboring wells are like prior to purchasing land. It is really easy to pull well reports. It's public record, you just need to reach out to your county health department and that information is readily available. I would highly recommend doing that if you were considering buying bare unimproved land.

We luckily were thinking ahead and scheduled the well company in December. We were able to secure a spot in April. When we were making arrangements in February they let us know its good we scheduled when we did as they were already booked through the summer. In preparation for them we had to make sure the road was in good shape for the drilling rigs. The drilling rigs tend to be very top-heavy and can tip over easily. Per the well driller the best way to tell if your road works is to put a cup of coffee on your dashboard and drive up your driveway. If the coffee spills out of the cup the road isn’t going to work. David and I spent quite a bit of time and effort making sure the driveway was what it needed to be.

Next comes whether or not you want to hire a well Witcher. Yes, it is like it sounds, basically witchcraft! The well company recommended a Witcher/water dowser to us and said they have had pretty good luck with him over the years. I personally don't buy into the idea of witcher's, but David does. For those who are unsure as to what a witcher is, to sum it up, essentially it is a person who walks around the property with two sticks. I'm not exactly sure what happens, but the sticks move in certain ways when you get close to underground water. Witchers will usually pick out about two sites where they feel you have the best chance of hitting water and where they believe different veins of underground water come together. I think the whole concept of witching is crazy. I will acknowledge that my beliefs may be highly skewed by my heavily science based education. The more I looked into it, there are quite a few historical texts and religious texts that reference witching. Depending on who you talk to you there is some evidence that it might work. That being said when you’re making a $20,000- $25,000 gamble on where to put your well you might as well spend $100 on a Witcher. So we did that. I wish I could’ve been there as I was pretty curious about the whole thing. I kind of pictured in my head like some ancient witchcraft ritual. I’m pretty sure it was much less exciting than that. David got to watch the process while I was stuck working. He said the whole process was easy and straight forward. The witcher picked two different sites. He acknowledged that in both sites two large underground veins of water merged together. The sites are very specific and are marked with a stake. They don't give you a general area but actually point to an actual spot on the ground. One of the sites was very near some aspen trees, (most everyone knows that aspen trees like water, so part of me wonders if these Witchers aren’t just really good with botany and topography) this site would have required us to cut down a bunch of trees. We went with the other site instead as it was more easily accessible.

The well guys set up pretty quickly and immediately started drilling. We got lucky and hit water at 6 feet and hit good water at 60 feet. Hitting water at 6 feet at the time seemed like a good thing, but as you will read later in my foundation post it ended up being a red flag that I should’ve paid attention to. They tested the water at 60 feet and we were getting 15 gallons per minute. We had a choice on whether to keep drilling or whether to stop where we were at. If you drill through one layer there’s no going back. If you drill past water at 60 feet you might not hit water again until 300 feet or not at all. At that point due to the well being so shallow it was a very cheap well. They recommended keeping it at that and if we ever want more water in the future drilling a second well is always an option. All in all the total cost of our well was $12,207.00. This price was for everything, (drilling, casing, pump, pressure tank system, permit, etc). I don’t think you can find a 15 gallon per minute well cheaper anywhere else. For reference city water is around 5 gallons per minute.

Finally, nowadays you have a choice of new technology which allows the pressure tank to be built into the casing/underground system. Historically it is common for pressure tanks to go outside the system but this requires a building or well house to store the pressure tank in. Now they have an option of using the pump which sits within the system to also act as a pressure tank. This option is more expensive but it allows you to use the well right away and eliminates the need for an exterior pressure tank or well house. We decided to go with the more expensive option of using the tank-less system (I think it added $1200.00). I was able to water my garden all summer and we didn't have to worry about where we were going to put the pressure tank. I’ve included a video of us using our well for the very first time. We powered it with a generator and used it all summer long. It worked beautifully!