We got a dud when we bought our house 10 years ago, at least as far as the well went.
The water was supplied by a 15 year-old drilled 72' deep well (typical for newer wells in our area, north central Ohio) is what the local old-timers call "white lightning" or "white sulpher". I forget the exact numbers but the PPM are so high you have to split the test kit in thirds to be able to get a reading that isn't off the chart.
Funny thing is, the smell isn't so bad. It turns the toilets black, but the worst is the corosiveness of it. Plumbing fixtures have a life of 1.5 years before they literally crumble apart, all of the electronics in the house go bad in 2 years, any hardware on new furniture/cabinets turn black or green in a few months...even the new electric wiring I have installed has the exposed ends completely black with a nasty coating on them.
My point to all this is to say that I want nothing to do with that well anymore. The levels are so high that we have been told that it is a health concern, and treating it is uneconomical.
We buy refills for the 5 gallon drinking water cooler for $1.84 each which is our drinking water, and since this is an old farmhouse with a large cistern we have most all of the water for showering, laundry, toilets etc we need.
Every so often our useage gets ahead of the rainfall, and that is where this story gets interesting.
There is an old brick-lined 38' deep and 36" wide well also on the property, probably the original from the late 1800's. It was in a pit with the remains of a modern pump and pressure tank..........I decided to clean everything up, brick it up above ground level, install a submersible pump with a pitless adapter and reuse the underground line and wires to the house to see if it made any volume, and to see if it was the same nasty sulpher.
Low and behold, it actually made enough water to keep up with our demands. I tested it before hooking it to our house, and it came back clean in all regards, so the big question was volume. It performs as needed.
BUT.....my brickwork is shoddy and failing(I am no mason). And God forbid we ever had to sell the place I am sure the home-inspectors that everyone seems to rely on these days would black-flag us on the old well.
So what I plan to do is put an 8" ABS casing into the 36" well.
20' of it would be ABS screen with a cap on the bottom, and at least 20' of the 38' would be filled with river gravel. Maybe more than 20'?
About 10' down from the surface I plan on 2' of commercial Bentonite for a cap, and filling the remainder with local clay (we have a very high clay content, it is pure enough to be used as modeling clay when wet)
Put my pitless adapter in at 3' deep, leave 2' of casing above surface level, and a commercial style cap on it, and call it done. If I have drastically reduced the volume I can always run the pump on a timer for a few minutes every hour filling the cistern and running the house from there.
Any thoughts? I have been lurking on here and this bunch really has a handle on things!
The water was supplied by a 15 year-old drilled 72' deep well (typical for newer wells in our area, north central Ohio) is what the local old-timers call "white lightning" or "white sulpher". I forget the exact numbers but the PPM are so high you have to split the test kit in thirds to be able to get a reading that isn't off the chart.
Funny thing is, the smell isn't so bad. It turns the toilets black, but the worst is the corosiveness of it. Plumbing fixtures have a life of 1.5 years before they literally crumble apart, all of the electronics in the house go bad in 2 years, any hardware on new furniture/cabinets turn black or green in a few months...even the new electric wiring I have installed has the exposed ends completely black with a nasty coating on them.
My point to all this is to say that I want nothing to do with that well anymore. The levels are so high that we have been told that it is a health concern, and treating it is uneconomical.
We buy refills for the 5 gallon drinking water cooler for $1.84 each which is our drinking water, and since this is an old farmhouse with a large cistern we have most all of the water for showering, laundry, toilets etc we need.
Every so often our useage gets ahead of the rainfall, and that is where this story gets interesting.
There is an old brick-lined 38' deep and 36" wide well also on the property, probably the original from the late 1800's. It was in a pit with the remains of a modern pump and pressure tank..........I decided to clean everything up, brick it up above ground level, install a submersible pump with a pitless adapter and reuse the underground line and wires to the house to see if it made any volume, and to see if it was the same nasty sulpher.
Low and behold, it actually made enough water to keep up with our demands. I tested it before hooking it to our house, and it came back clean in all regards, so the big question was volume. It performs as needed.
BUT.....my brickwork is shoddy and failing(I am no mason). And God forbid we ever had to sell the place I am sure the home-inspectors that everyone seems to rely on these days would black-flag us on the old well.
So what I plan to do is put an 8" ABS casing into the 36" well.
20' of it would be ABS screen with a cap on the bottom, and at least 20' of the 38' would be filled with river gravel. Maybe more than 20'?
About 10' down from the surface I plan on 2' of commercial Bentonite for a cap, and filling the remainder with local clay (we have a very high clay content, it is pure enough to be used as modeling clay when wet)
Put my pitless adapter in at 3' deep, leave 2' of casing above surface level, and a commercial style cap on it, and call it done. If I have drastically reduced the volume I can always run the pump on a timer for a few minutes every hour filling the cistern and running the house from there.
Any thoughts? I have been lurking on here and this bunch really has a handle on things!
