Well Drilling

[rmurray]

...that is a better question to ask local well drillers..this varies a lot from place to place...In our area...half the area is fine with 4 inch sand wells at about 120 feet....the other half require 6 inch rock wells..sometimes to 500 feet....of course the costs of these 2 wells are dramatically different...

[Teri]

I have heard of wells going dry up here in Washington, but that was because people drilled too shallow. Often they are older wells from around World War II (big housing boom up here then). The owners just redrill deeper. And if you do have no water due to electric outage, you just go to a friends house to use their shower and get a hot meal, or sit at home and wash with washclothes and cook on camp-stoves and bar-b-cue's. A lot of people have generators for their freezer and stove and referigerator, but I don't know if anyone hooks one to a well. Might be a waste of money since water is easy to get from other sources (store, friends).

By the way, a friend said a friend of his has his well hookups under the house instead of a separate well-house, and he was under the house this weekend cursing it all because he had to replace a solenoid. He said if I do get a well to make sure it's in a seperate well house.

[Mac]

We're near a mountaintop in NW Oregon. Our well is 180' deep, though others in the neighborhood go down 400'. I believe our cost was $8K when all was said and done. Apparently, there's nicer water down deeper; the folks who placed the well weren't wealthy. But it meets minimum state flow standards, and hasn't run dry - I suppose we'd go deeper if we needed to.
Our water is full of iron, which we remove with a water softener tank/ timer setup full of charcoal. Works much better than the two whole-house filters we found hooked up.

[chris]

I live in central florida which was having a drought a couple years ago. There were about 5 wells that went dry. These were shallow wells and cost about $350 to be replaced. Unfortunately, we live by orange groves which is called an EDB area beacause of the chemicals used in the groves. Actually our land is one old feilds. To get a legal, legitimate well it has to be a deep well made with EDB specs. I think they went down about 250" to hit water. The price on this is $6000. We have just gotten whichever well we could afford. I was lucky and got a state grant that paid for the well and sent thier own people to do it. Other neighbors are on shallow wells still because of the price. Another thing, if the well goes dry they can dig another. Mine were only about 10 feet apart and acually hooked up to the pipes from the old well. The other thing that may help if the electric goes out or while you are waiting for pump to get done, if you are close enough to a neighbor maybe they can hook you up to them. There is a thing? that goes on the outside spigot which allows the water to go into your house from the outside spigot. Hook up the neighbors hose, turn it on and you are good to go. Quite a few of us were doing that 2 summers ago. One well would get fixed and another would go.
Good Luck
Chris

[jane t]

Thats a damn expensive well you are going to drill. I live in Calif. and my well is going to cost me $8,000. Thats a lot of money but not even close to what you were quoted. Check elsewhere