We bought 25 acres of an old farm last year with hopes of building a house. Thankfully we (see: my dad) discovered an old drilled well that gushes 8gpm of decent water. We use that as the water source for our house. During the building process I found an old hand-dug well that had been cased with a 6" pipe, then filled in around the casing with rubble. It was pretty much open to surface water so I knew I had to do something. My goal was to fix it up and put a hand-crank pump on it for plants and an emergency water supply. Here's the journey-
When I first found it there was sediment at about 3ft. I got on my belly and scraped out the blockage (glass beer bottles, sticks, dirt). I then rented a trash pump, blasted it clean with my garden hose, and sucked up everything I could for about an hour. It's about 15ft but the last bit has a gravel/sediment base so my foot valve is about 12ft down. It pumps about 4.5-5 gallons until sucking air, but then fills in at about 1.5gals/min. We use the water for our front yard plants and almost had to use it for emergency toilet water a few weeks ago haha.
That is an awesome idea! We just learned by accident, when replacing a terra cotta pipe in my leach field, that even at only about 6" down, we kept hitting water! We have an artesian well out back but actually have a surveying friend helping us find a good spot to do exactly what you did, drop a hand pump for emergencies. Thanks for sharing your set up, that looks great!
Sounds like a high water table? It may be mostly surface water but I'd do something with it for sure. There are youtube clips on drilling your own well and casing it with pvc (similar to what I did). Old wells can be a huge issue for contamination, safety, etc. The other option I explored was sealing it up with cement and bentonite clay. We thought it'd be a better idea to restore it using the same 19th century "rough" look that the old house/barn had. I'll be gettin more threads going over the next few months. DIY is fun and is always a learning experience.
Love what you did with the well! My 1st well was only 8' deep and we used it for 20 years with good water.. We do have high water table here and my newer well is 25' deep. I need to replace my 1/2 HP Goulds jet pump in the cellar soon it is getting very noisy after 25+ years of service.. Ray
