The noted 400' well does not "shut off" in a few minutes. What happens is that you a drawing down the standing water in the well casing in a few minutes and then waiting for the well to refill. This is a low yield well being pumped with a high flow pump, if you pumped at the well's actual yield rate it would pump continuously. Per your numbers it is producing ~50 gal in 40 min or about 1.25 gal / min consistently. That equates to 1,800 gal / day which is more than enough when coupled with a
I did go around and speak with 7 or 8 of the closest neighbors, as well as looking at the well drill reports of all of the wells in the area. My findings:
1) None of the other neighbors (several are less than 500 feet away, right across the road) have reported any water issues. The one to the south has lived there over 50 years. The neighbor right across the road that I spoke to mentioned that the farmhouse just to the north of this property had a well that ran dry in summer drought conditions a couple of years back. However, that was a TRULY old and shallow well - only 28 feet deep, so I'm not sure if I would count that. They had to dig a new well of a more standard depth - 80 feet, and struck water at 50 feet with around 7 gallons per minute flow rate. This place is about 1,300 feet north of the house we were looking at.
2) Looking at the actual well reports from all of the neighboring wells, flow rates averaged something like 8 or 9 gallons per minute, with a couple of wells being as low as 5 or 6, and a couple being as high as
The average depth at which they reported hitting water was 45 feet. I'm thinking that the reason they dug down so very far at this place was so that the well bore could act as water storage. I imagine that a cylinder around 240 feet deep and 5" in diameter can hold a decent number of gallons of water!
In any case, the former owner, having sunk nearly $20,000 into those two wells (which were drilled far too close together by the house, in my opinion) was also dealing with a messy divorce, and he ended up giving up on the place and losing it to the bank back in 2013. The place is far out in the country, so there is no chance that it would ever get water service from the nearest town.
What exactly is a bank if not a commercial entity? Maybe others here can report if their mortgage source, either a bank or other lender, required testing a well. The ones I've been involved with never tested a well. A CO was good enough. And around here to get a CO, all that is required for a well is to have a sample of the water tested. There is no min flow requirement and no one checks it.
Is it particularly hard to drill there because of rock or something? Around here, NJ, which ain't cheap, you can put in a well for less than half that, ie 100ft, is ~$3500. It's a half day's work. If it's not hard to drill, you're probably all just getting screwed by everything in silicon valley being expensive.
Regarding the fire issue, I think a small holding pond or cistern capturing the runoff from the house, garage and the (probable) barn that I would build would suffice for that, and also as a water source for watering the garden, etc. (a large garden and small orchard can easily use up as much water as the family does inside)
I've heard that there are low volume "membrane" style pumps that are designed for situations like this, where you need to pump up a very small volume of water over a very long time. Other people have mentioned putting a regular pump on a timer, so that it only pumps for a short period every couple of hours. If I was just filling up a large poly tank, I guess a floater hooked up to a switch would work, coupled with a timer. If the poly tank was full, no pumping would take place. However, if the tank was not full, then the timer could kick on at regular intervals. I wonder if that would work?
Nah they don't. Having worked fire investigation in a rural county (albeit about 30 years ago, but keeping up with my reading), they only care about what the FD can bring with them. They can give discounts if you have a big enough pond, live on a lake, have a deep river nearby, or other very close by water source. That is obviously fairly rare.
I was joking with my Dad - too bad they didn't drill down at an extreme angle - maybe they could have drilled over towards the neighbor to the south who has good water flow, and get some of THAT water.
I am really left wondering, however, why didn't they locate one or both of the wells farther from the house (and each other)? If the goal is to increase the chance of finding good water flow, and each well costs about $10,000 to complete, then I surely would have tried to locate them on different parts of the property, to maximize my chances. I am assuming that they drilled these two wells in 2012 because an old and shallow well failed, similar to the property just to the north that had the ~ 28' old farm well.
With 4 acres, the place has quite a bit of land to the east and south. They could have easily drilled for water 100-500 feet to the east, and anywhere up to about 120 feet to the south along that path as well. Instead, both wells were within about 40 feet of the house. Is it really that expensive to dig a 6 foot trench and lay poly pipe between the well and the house? I can't imagine it is that expensive compared to drilling the $10,000 well in the first place.
I would point to places such as No Name Key in the FL Keys. There are no water utilities there (yet, but that is another thread altogether-grin). You have houses that are bought and sold all the time with cisterns, solar or generators, (I am not sure what they do with waste water). All you would need to do is show that you have an adequate supply. You might lose a few potential buyers who don't want to mess with cisterns and pumps, but I'll lose a few potential buyers when I sell because they don't want to mess with the swimming pool.
SW Ohio. Based on the geology maps of the area, it does NOT make sense to go deeper, unless you are just drilling a deep cylinder to act as a water reservoir. The geology maps show that there does not tend to be water bearing rock down under 80 feet in this area. The porous, water bearing rock/sandy layer tends to be in the first 50 feet around here normally.
While I'll agree that $64k is probably a good price for the place, I certainly don't consider it "free". I consider farmland to be worth about $8,000 an acre.
My grandfather (a farmer who had more than 300 acres) took me aside one day and gave me two pieces of advice when I was becoming a young man, probably back in the mid 1980's:
A) keep your thing in your pants
&
B) don't EVER pay more than $2,000 an acre for good farmland
Well, allowing for inflation and greater farm profits over the past few years, that $2k he mentioned is probably closer to $8k or so now. This is for typical Ohio farmland, not something next to the Interstate that is likely to be turned into restaurants.
Also, I consider property taxes to be designed to bring in 100% of a property's value over 50 years, or pretty much the lifetime of a typical owner. Anything that asks more than 2% of the value of the place per year is highway robbery. So says my other grandfather, who is 92 years old this year. He pays about the same on his ~80 acres as we do on our current TWO TENTHS of an acre.
That still begs the question of why _these_ two wells can't produce anything of any magnitude. If there really were a water table of roughly 50 ft or so and the casing were perforated at that producing zone, _then_ it should fill, yes, and you should have water in abundance. That you have such a trickle means either they didn't perforate there and there isn't water in the hole to anything like that or if they did there just happens to not be water at that level right where these wells happen to be (and stuff like that does happen) or the last possibility is there's just some miniscule little solar-powered pump installed or the like for some reason that is the limiting factor, _not_ a water limitation itself. The latter makes no sense; if that were the case why in the world would they have drilled a second hole?
I still say that with that information you really need to talk to either the former owner directly and find out what/why this is the way it is and I'd still say need to talk to this driller also and find out all the details of "who, why, how?".
It really makes no sense from the pieces heard so far.
BTW, the hole won't fill to some level higher than the producing zone unless there's a hydraulic path by which that pressure level can equalize--even if there is a static water level at 100-ft, say and the hole is 200, as noted unless it's perforated or there's a conduit path for that water to flow from outside the casing to the bottom and then rise to equilibrium, it's not going to be there.
I don't suppose you know the level in either of these at this point, do you? Could, in worst case, get to an area on this property that is in reasonable proximity to one of these other areas that has a known good well? If could do that, it would allay my concern a little, but I'd be holding the cost of a new well and running this line in an escrow fund on the presumption yet another well is in the cards here sooner rather than later unless you can find the magic answer as to the "why" as outlined above.
Again, it's likely one will be able to limp along for a while but I suspect always being limited will become more and more of an issue the longer you're in the location and will make the bargain seem less and less of one the more you run into the lack as you want to do things that it becomes limiting for. And, as another noted, don't forget about the potential resale value unless you're positive this is retirement village kind of place.
$0.02, imo, ymmv, etc., etc., ...
(One whose well started pumping air just this summer as water tables have now dropped...fortunately, at this time we can still just go deeper, but at some point this area is going to be w/o out water and that will be sooner rather than later if all the irrigation isn't scaled back significantly. This operation, btw, is all dryland, not irrigated; this is only domestic and animal use...)
That of course presumes an adequate rainfall which one there normally gets I presume. Excepting of course, in periods of drought when one needs the extra most is when there isn't much refill. How often that occurs where you are I don't know; out here it's often and we're in midst of another severe 3-yr and counting cycle at the moment...
All depends on how the well actually produces...only having more information and conducting actual tests will answer those questions. See more extension comments elsewhere in thread....
Pump controllers are common for exactly this low yield well condition. They work by detecting when the pump runs dry based on current draw and then shutting it off for an adjustable time period (adjust based on well recovery rate), or of course they turn the pump off when the float switch in the cistern indicates it is full. The cistern feeds a second pump that feeds a normal pressure tank and is controlled by a regular pressure switch. Simple system, long tested, works great as long as the well is able to keep up with the total water demands overall.
No, it's not and that's a goodly part of what doesn't make any sense at all from what's been recounted so far...it was simply stupid to drill a second hole (almost) on top of an already (essentially) dry hole.
Certainly there was no reason not to drill the first well a modest distance from the house. For the second it could have been laziness to not fully breakdown the drill truck and instead just move it a short distance to try again.
Forget the place with the questionable water supply, just buy your grandfather's 80ac and never look back. Nobody ever complains about having too much land, and in farm/ranch country you can just lease whatever portion of the property you aren't currently using to someone else for farming or grazing.
Have you actually had occasion for a property that had its own water source in an area that had any issues regarding adequate water, though?
I can't imagine that any COO wouldn't have a check that there is an adequate water source verified in some manner whether it's an actual well test or some other means; it just makes no sense to overlook such a basic requirement/need. OTOH, I've not ever lived in a location that had a specific COO requirement and in TN/VA there were municipal or cooperative water systems and here on the farm in KS where we're on our well there's no COO required and water is plentiful (so far altho it's being depleted rapidly by the excessive irrigation).
The water isn't going to fill the whole casing, it's going to stay at some natural level. With a 240 ft well, I'd suspect that the majority of that is air. And a well driller stops when they find suitable water or reach some depth beyond which they believe going deeper isn't going to result in more usable water. Drilling a well deeper to hold water doesn't compute.
And they would have stopped at 50ft. As I posted previously, the problem could be that there is indeed adequate water at 50ft, but a well that shallow is no longer legal. I know 50ft isn't legal for potable water here in NJ. I think ~100 is the min now.
That you have such a trickle means either they didn't
+1
It's also curious that they drilled the second hole relatively close to the first. If it were me, I'd have gone 100 ft away in the hopes it might be better.
There is always the possibility of inadequate water from a failing well. Just because the guy across the street's well is working, doesn't say anything about my well, it's depth, what acquifer it's in, etc.
They don't look at a lot of stuff. The main things are the obvious visual stuff that they can see walking through. Last house I got a CO for all they were interested in was smoke detectors, making sure bannisters/railings were installed on stairs/decks, and taking that water sample. That consisted of running some water in the bath and putting a sample in the bottle. I guess if you had leaking pipes or faucets that were obvious, they would flag that. If you have a septic system, they require proof that it was pumped out recently. But they don't go climbing into attics, roofs, crawl spaces, etc. They didn't even look at the electric panel.
Here's a current guide for a typical township in NJ. It's a rural area that has wells:
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