Water Quality

Traditional Farmer · Oct 20, 2014

I was really surprised in the post about the shallow well how bad the water is in many places, in my area springs have great water I have several on the farm and pure clean water can be hit around 300ft drilling a well.Is water bad in most places?

JDemaris · Oct 20, 2014

I worked for a well driller, off and one when I lived in central NY. Water from dug wells was often fine but low yield. Same goes with springs. Water from shallow wells was often the best quality. Wells got drilled to get more gallons per minute. The deeper they go, the harder the water and the more iron in in. At the house I still have in NY, the original 30 foot dug well has the best water but will run dry if you pump it too fast. The 120 foot drilled well has higher yield but is harder. Also have a 220 foot well and that has very hard water with iron. Also have springs all over the place and from them - the water is great.

Seems somewhat the same here in northern Michigan although the ground is a lot different. More sand and clay and less rock. Shallow water seems to be least hard and with the lowest amount of iron.

JDemaris · Oct 20, 2014

On a side-note I just read a Federal study on domestic water in the USA. Those like us who are accustomed to having ample good water all over the place might be surprised (I was) at how scarce good water, or sometimes any water is in other parts of the country. And it's getting scarcer over time. Ironically, the areas of the USA that are growing the most have the biggest water problems.

johnlobb · Oct 20, 2014

One of the main reasons I bought my home 14 years ago was the great water from the well. Its a 100 foot well and the next door neighbors on either side of me have wells that are about the same depth as mine and both have wretched very hard water with a lot of iron. Mine is moderately hard with almost no iron and tastes great. Our homes are built on very sandy soil and I have never had any standing water on my property no matter how hard it rains.

Geo-TH,In · Oct 20, 2014

My place in the center of the corn fields in
Terre Haute, good water is 30 ft during the driest summer and most of the farms have irrigation.

Texasmark1 · Oct 20, 2014

Down here we have a lot of surface storage especially around the metropolitan areas. Where I am we are on a FHA financed (initially) since paid off, deep well system. The sand that we use is the Woodbine which covers a large area of N. Central, TX. and is reliable for high volume use. In our area to get into it you have to go 1800' on the West side of the service area to 2000' on the East side. What's funny is that if you go a couple hundred miles to the East, as the sand continues it's downward slope, they drill and get oil from it.

The 2000' well on the East side (don't know the specs on the West), has enough hydrostatic pressure to force the water up to a depth of 400' in the well casing. The submersible well pump is set to 500'. Water is tested by the state and always get high marks. It is alkaline however, no iron and it causes some plumbing corrosion. But it is very soft, makes for a nice bath.

Individual wells that were prevalent before the system arrived were under 300' and usually seasonal. Cisterns from roof guttering was common. Gotta remember this was back in the days of a ringer washer, no indoor plumbing, a bath consisted of 55* well water in a #10 wash tub, the ice man came by and put a cube or two in your "ice box" (refrigerator for those that weren't here at the time) and so on.

Mark

paul · Oct 20, 2014

Too much clay here, hard to pull enough water from a shallow well. If you go into shallow sand you can get a lot of nitrates from the wetlands decomposing around here.

Lots of hard but good water 160-200 feet down; hard to find course enough sand to pull it from, all very fine sugar sand down there.

Paul

MarkB_MI · Oct 20, 2014

Poor quality well water is the rule rather than the exception. In our area (Oakland County, Michigan), most wells have arsenic in addition to the usual hard water and iron.

Don-Wi · Oct 20, 2014

My well I was told is 50' deep by the previous owners. Tastes alright if it's ice cold, otherwise has a kinda funny taste. My parents well 13 miles away is around 300' deep, and the county they live in I think now requires new wells to be 400' deep.

Donovan from Wisconsin

2underage · Oct 20, 2014

Having drilled a few hundred water wells I feel that I should reply.
First, water well depth can vary all over the place in any location with some exceptions.
Drilling in rock formations will lead to the widest variation of depth because ground water in rock is stored in cracks that often run from near the surface to much greater depths and this is why one well will be very deep and another quite shallow. To picture this I draw a line from the top of a sheet of paper and angle it [45degree or so] toward the bottom. If this pictures the water-bearing crack one can see that a well drilled at the top will be much shallower that one drilled into the water bearing crack at the bottom.

Exceptions are when the water source is in a sand or gravel aquifer . All wells drilled in this water source will be about the same depth.

Hand dug wells or surface wells were the original water sources for homes and businesses in the early days and even today in many third world countries. Because they are often recharged by surface water run-off they can be highly polluted and not safe to drink. I say this in general terms because this pollution problem does not always exist or the water can be treated to be safe.

I find it to be generally true that deeper wells will have the hardest water. Most likely do to more exposure to mineral sources.

David G · Oct 20, 2014

I live in Eastern Iowa, we have an issue with nitrates and farm chemicals in shallow wells. Most wells have to be down below the rock layer to get past this.

Our rivers are very polluted.

in-too-deep · Oct 20, 2014

My well used to be concrete culverts stacked vertically to about 30 feet. Pump was about 28 feet deep. Had a couple dry years and it quit. Couldn't quite believe what we saw. Health dept would've flipped their lids. Had a new well drilled about 20 feet away. They had to go down 300 ft but got 80 gpm and the static water level came up to 3 feet from grade. (Made it interesting cutting the hold for the pitless adapter 8 ft down) Absolutely delicious water with no iron. Cold, too. Kinda expensive, though!

David G · Oct 20, 2014

Here is a map of nitrate contamination

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/nitrogen.html

Huge issue that no one is willing to do anything about.

John T · Oct 20, 2014

I posted this the other day but a good place to repeat it: The shallow well on this farm is 18 ft deep and 6 ft in diameter lined with hand laid no mortar sand and fieldstone. Its within 20 feet of the county blacktop road and downstream of pasture and some farm land and our front lawn. Septic field is fairly far upstream. The farmer who lived here before drank it and was healthy up until death in his nineties. We raised 3 kids here all healthy as a horse. Wife and I drank it 30 + years and were in good health. It didn't leave iron or rust or calcium or lime stains and tasted great, we used a sediment followed by a charcoal filter... I never had it tested for fear the County would condemn it and throw us all in jail lol

John T

Jeff NWOH · Oct 20, 2014

I live in nw ohio, just west of Toledo. We are on yellow sand here with a pretty high water table. Our well is a 20' deep sand point. We do have some calcium in the water, but not too bad. It tastes good, has passed health dept inspection, and there is no end to the water.

Just for kicks, I put in a 2 2" points glued on top of one another to make about 6' tall and hooked up to a 3 hp sprinkler pump. I am able to pull about 33 gpm with it.

On the other hand, we are putting an addition on the house with a basement. New part is about 8" deeper than the old. We were about 2" above the water table last June when digging footers. Will be interesting to see how much water we pump next spring.

Smalltowner · Oct 20, 2014

I think the shortage of pure water will become one of our greatest problem in the future, resulting from population growth and pollution of the waterways. I have always thought desalting seawater would be the solution but a new technology will be required to do it in adequate volume at an acceptable cost.
But, as a nation we spend billions on space program research and social engineering, and ignore our most basic problem until it becomes a crisis.

old · Oct 20, 2014

When I had my well drilled the guy hit water at 15 feet. He then pumped my small lake back wards since he hit the spring that feeds it. He kept going and hit 2 caves and at 75 feet hit good water. I had him keep going to 100 foot. Water came up to 19 foot from the surface and pretty much stay there ever since

David G · Oct 20, 2014

Old,

I have the visual of some spelunker clunking his head on your well casing.

Good to hear from you.

old · Oct 20, 2014

Well since I was once a spelunker no way they could with out scuba gear on both caves where full of water. By the way have you ever been in Bridle cave which is here at the Lake of the Ozarks?? If not you should go see it. I was with the ones who found the extra passage ways and carrying scuba tanks back and up and over was not a fun day. There is also another cave I have been in but it is a wild cave. Spent a whole week end under ground in it. Went in on a Friday and came out on Sunday. When we went in it was a cool winter day and no snow but when we came out there was 4 inches of snow on the ground

David G · Oct 20, 2014

Been to bridal cave.

howdy1960 · Oct 20, 2014

Last place we lived the field next door a farmer would spread his liquid manure. A few days after spreading the nitrates in water would spike. Only thing water people would do is tell water supply folks to drill a new DEEP well and put in lots of chemicals to clean up water before it was used.
It seems they couldn't figure out the manure was contaminating the water supply.

old · Oct 20, 2014

Have you been there since they have cut open to new area back to hidden lake??

teddy52food · Oct 20, 2014

Here in mid Mn. if the water came up that close to the top, it would freeze & break the casing.

farmerwithmutt · Oct 20, 2014

Or area they are doing better testing and they are finding arsenic put my dad drank it all his life and lived to be 100 I'm not trusting on the test

NNP · Oct 20, 2014

(quoted from post at 05:08:17 10/20/14) I was really surprised in the post about the shallow well how bad the water is in many places, in my area springs have great water I have several on the farm and pure clean water can be hit around 300ft drilling a well.Is water bad in most places?

depends on who is saying it's bad....
most of us here are old, so hand dug, stacked stone shallow wells, in later years drilled down the middle are normal things.
(Hey Dad, the water stinks. Dad, critter must have got in the well and drowned, go get it out...)
Buying or selling a house would State mandate a filter and chlorinator....which would be promptly dis-connected.....
Springs are/were always good, but I have noticed lately they are all labeled 'not for human consumption' now.(pretty funny...I know that pollution here used to be much worse back when it was ok and common to fill jugs at the springs)
Nope, I don't live in pristine wilderness.
Actually, I think we used to have the highest density of chemical plants in the world in this area.
Who cares, we drank it, we lived. I never get sick, bugs won't come near me, I'd probably catch fire if a match got too close

fixerupper · Oct 20, 2014

In my neighborhood here in northwest Iowa good water in large enough quantities to support livestock is at 300 feet and it's pretty good quality water to boot. The well on my farm is 150, is moderately hard and has never run dry but I wouldn't trust it to support much livestock. A mile and a half north of me they have a gravel vein that has all the water they want at 150 feet and its artesian. They have to cap the wells or water will run out the top.

Leroy · Oct 21, 2014

Can hardly believe that 400'. Normal well around here is 75 to 150' with the deep ones to 250'.Mine is 106 ' and older than I am at 71. Years ago at great grandparantes place approximatly 15 mile away use a sand point on pipe and sledge hammer, if it quit pull pipe and drive someplace else. Across the road now is played out gravel pit.

David G · Oct 21, 2014

Was there 3 years ago, did not go to the lake last 2 years.

Water Quality

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