1 GPM In 900 Feet---What To Do?

My driller hit a little over 1 GPM at 200 feet in East Tennessee limestone. We are now down to 900 feet without any improvement. I have three options that I know of.

1. Have him continue. His drill rig limit is 1200 feet.

2. Call it quits and bring in utility water. It's doable, but will be thousands. Exactly how many is an unknown at this point in time, and I really don't want utility water if I can help it.

3. Bring in a different driller who offers hydro fracturing and have him fracture the well. It's the weekend, and I can't get the price until Monday. I have to give my current driller an answer on continuing or not Monday morning.

We are already over budget, so any of the options will just push us further over budget.

There are only two of us, and we can get pond water for irrigation, if need be. This is new construction well off of the road. There aren't very many neighbors. None of them have wells. Any thoughts or advice is welcome.

Thanks.

Thanks. Yes, after carefully making sure I had all the relevant information in the post, I completely missed the well diameter. It is indeed six inches (5.5 actually).

At this time, I have no idea what the static water level is. I assume we will find that out Monday if I tell the driller we aren't going any deeper.

Thanks for the tip on using PVC pipe and setting the pump at 500 feet. I am beginning to think I should have stopped him earlier. I certainly should have posted here sooner. BTW, I never plant anything that needs watering. Ever!

Thanks again. I feel a lot better about the situation now.

Gary said PE pipe not PVC. That is black polyethylene. I dropped my pump to 500 feet with me and another guy. You have to know what you are doing but that can be learned here by researching old posts.
Kent

Thanks. I missed that.

I'm in middle TN and my wife and I get by just fine on a well that is 1.5gpm. I would highly suggest some sort of pump protection for the times you might run dry or have a leak. We have the Franklin Pumptec and it has saved us a few times. For irrigation and washing cars and such we catch rain water and direct it into two tanks we had buried during construction.

Cedar said:

My driller hit a little over 1 GPM at 200 feet in East Tennessee limestone. We are now down to 900 feet without any improvement. I have three options that I know of.

1. Have him continue. His drill rig limit is 1200 feet.

What's the likelihood of getting over 1 gpm within the next 300'?

2. Call it quits and bring in utility water. It's doable, but will be thousands. Exactly how many is an unknown at this point in time, and I really don't want utility water if I can help it.

This option has a 100% certainty you can have all the water you want at a cost of [how many?] kilobucks.

3. Bring in a different driller who offers hydro fracturing and have him fracture the well. It's the weekend, and I can't get the price until Monday. I have to give my current driller an answer on continuing or not Monday morning.

We are already over budget, so any of the options will just push us further over budget.

So now you want to avoid a money sinkhole.

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If city water is $5K or $10K and you can have adequate water with a 20% chance by drilling, then you should spend a maximum of 0.2 x 5 = $1k or 0.2 x 10 = $2K to get that water.
See if the well drillers will give you odds based on their experience.

Install a pump and you're good to go!

Fracking may or may not get you more water but I wouldn't chance it.

It looks like you have over 1000 gallons of storage in the well. That's more than enough.

I would install a pump capable of pumping to 800' or 900' with enough Gallons Per Minute to supply at least 5gpm.

I would recommend that you also install a pump protector like a "Cycle Sensor" from www.cyclestopvalves.com and a constant pressure valve like a "Pside-Kick" from the same company. This will give you plenty of water and city like pressure.

I have a deep well (800’) which is rated at 3 gpm. It is suppose to serve 3 properties but currently I am the only one on it. I have pulled mine dry three times in the past 7 years. Each time it came back after letting it sit idle for a few days. On all occasions it was my fault it went dry because I left a hose on trickle or had a toilet leaking. The point here is I would definitely go with some sort of pump protection gear in case this happens to you. With a low producer even a small leak can over time pull the water level down. I just had the pump replaced ($3,100.00) worth. It was 12 years old and I may have gotten more out of it if it hadn’t of ran dry and with no water to cool the motor it is not good. The motor is what went. As soon as I can get some more money I am going to look into a pump protection device. Until then I monitor the well religiously and shut off the breaker when I go to work all day. I have two 200 gallon hydro tanks and as long as they are full the wife rarely needs the pump to run while I am gone. I have another issue in that lightning wreaks havoc on my control boxes. I am wondering how sensitive the pump protection gear is and if lightning is going to play havoc with it also.

Lightning can get your pump motor too. If you don't have lightning protection on your electrical panel, I highly recommend it. I have three meters at my home and I have protection on all three. You can use surge arrestors on all your electronics and save a bunch of them from power spikes. If you want, you could put MOV's in your control box to protect it and the pump. You can never be too careful.

Water Is 30 Feet Down

I got a chance to measure the height of the water column today. It was only 30 feet down, which I did not expect. It corresponds roughly to the surface height of a pond about 450 feet from the well and a seasonal creek with standing water about 150 feet from the well. The soil is red shale/clay over limestone rock in rolling terrain, mostly treed.

The well is cased to 44 foot. The driller claimed to have hit limestone at 30 feet, if I recall correctly.

We have had heavy rains the last few days. My current plan is to monitor the water level on a weekly basis before making any decisions.

Thoughts?

Sure, if there is no penalty for waiting.

Today I learned something.
"A losing stream is a stream or river that loses water as it flows downstream. The water infiltrates into the ground recharging the local groundwater, because the water table is below the bottom of the stream channel. This is the opposite of a more normal gaining stream which increases in water volume farther down stream as it gains water from the local aquifer.

Losing streams are common in regions of karst topography where the streamwater may be completely captured by an underground cavern system"

Believe it or not , many licensed well drillers don't know that.

Should I mention groundwater movement and flux lines?

Gary Slusser said:

Believe it or not , many licensed well drillers don't know that.

Should I mention groundwater movement and flux lines?

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Now we're getting technical. . .
http://books.google.com/books?id=Hj...er5cAS&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4

You guys aren't talking about Well Drilling, your talking about surface water. Well drillers don't go looking for surface water, they look for deep source water that is clean, free of chemicals, bacteria and other things we would rather not mention.

It really wouldn't concern a Well Driller what goes on in a lake or stream in most cases because they aren't any indication of where the deep water will be.

I hear the phrase "There must be water not very deep cause there is a stream, pond, lake, river etc close by" This means nothing to the Well Driller.

I let y'all off the last time we discussed this subject because the thread was so long, and I thought I'd wait for the next opportunity in a shorter thread, an along comes a question of the static water level in a well and a stream 150' away that drys up. I couldn't resist so forgive me.

Sammy see if you can stay on topic without saying how unprofessional and unknowledgeable you think I am. I do agree with you that "those hydrologic terms don't mean squat to a well driller".

You have no way of knowing what water you get to flow into a rock bore well or where it came from. And I'll venture the same for a fully cased and screened sand and gravel well. You have no way ofknowing IF it is influenced by "surface water" at any distance from the well.

You can not know good water from bad until you get the water up out of the well AND TEST IT.

You can not prevent groundwater from getting down through fissures, cracks, the layers between rock layers etc. etc. in bedrock somewhere say 12" to miles away from your wells.

You guys talk as if the water you get comes UP from somewhere under or through the bedrock from beneath, or the bed rock is making its own water, and it has never been on the earth's surface or in contact with the surface of the earth above the bedrock. Wrong, it has percolated DOWN through the earth and bedrock somewhere.

We can get into flux lines in regards to groundwater movement if need be.

Mr. Slusser you bring alot of knowlege to this forum.But very little is in the drilling department.You bump with the facts then run.Your a water quality Guy,and you are good .STick with it. Upper

Yes Mr. Slusser I am.And I can answer any question you care to google.Sorry for my above post as I am a newby here. Upper

sammyhydro11 said:

He might not be but I am. You come up with these terms that make you sound like you know what your talking about but it doesn't work for me or anyone else that knows better. Sounds like Google search has become very resourceful for you but that does not make you a well driller or even a self proclaimed hydrologist. You are a trouble maker I think I speak for a lot of people when I say move on..

sammy

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I agree that you don't know anything about water well hydrology, and more important, you won't learn anything about it. And YOU are a driller.

I've been studying it for over 20 yrs, long before I ever saw the internet let alone Goggle.

upper said:

Yes Mr. Slusser I am.And I can answer any question you care to google.Sorry for my above post as I am a newby here. Upper

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Any question I care to Google?

I don't know what you mean 'that I care to Google'... Do you mean if I can Google the answer, you can too?

Since you are a driller and answered that question, how about answering the rest of the questions I have asked you already?

1. Here they are again; Is there something wrong in what I've said?

2. Can you answer the questions I asked?