How to determine well rehab needed?


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Old 05-26-19, 01:40 PM
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How to determine well rehab needed?

Looking for advice about whether rehab of our well might be required and reasonable to undertake.

We have a well our property that has long unused pump, pressure tank, etc inside the house. I believe it’s been 20-30 years since well was last used. (Our primary water supply is municipal). We would like to use the well for yard watering. Depending on quantity and quality of water, we might use it for dedicated supply lines to toilets or washing machine, but it would never become primary water supply. None of the old equipment inside the house is connected and it is probably not functional to reconnect.

To that end, we rented a pump to get the standing water out of the well.

Last year we measured:
- concrete casing 50” interior diameter.
- water line 13.5’ down
- water depth 29.5’ (dropped a line with weight on end)
- (we think the well is 43’ deep)

When we opened cover to pump water out now, the level was down considerably from what we had checked last year.
- we pumped out about 12-14’ standing water.
- there is about a foot or so of water remaining in the well bottom.
- ie. the water line was about 28’ from the top, versus 13.5’ last year.
- we pumped it out 48 hours ago. Check recovery at 24 hours and now. It is UNCHANGED. (ie. zero recovery)

It is VERY dry over a large area of the mid-prairie this spring.
1. Would it be considered reasonable and normal that a well would be dry in such conditions, then fill when moisture levels improve?
2. Or does the lack of recovery most likely indicate that things are plugged up at the bottom due to years of disuse? If yes, is there general remediation a fairly-handy homeowner can undertake?

I’m pretty sure this well has dug in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
 
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Old 05-26-19, 02:28 PM
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Welcome to the forums.

That would be considered a shallow well and there is a very good chance it has dried up. I doubt that it could recover enough to make it a viable option. Typically a well would be drilled deeper to capture water.
 
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Old 05-26-19, 03:42 PM
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I agree, you have a shallow/dug well. Wells of that type don't get down into the aquifer and rely on surface water. That makes them much more suseptible to seasonal weather fluctuations. There isn't anything I'd consider reasonable you can do to "rehab" it. When they go dry it's not because anything is clogged or not working. It's a simple matter of no water.
 
 

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