Week 2: Our Private Well Drilling

Our property is on a street that doesn’t have a water main from the local utility/water district.  So, that means that everyone has their own private well on their properties.  And since ours hasn’t been installed, that was one of the first orders of work (once preliminary grading was complete).

Johnson Drilling, the well driller arrived at the property on Wednesday and began to drill the well.  They can drill down about 60 feet per day (unless they hit rocks, then the rate/hour is reduced).  At a rate of $40 per foot, I’d like them to spend as little time at our place as they can!  Ultimately, they need to hit an aquifer with a good rate of water flow (gallons per minute) in order to pump enough water for our house.  We want to be above 10 gpm, and ideally more like 20 gpm.

Since the other homes in the neighborhood all have wells too, we’re able to review the well logs for their wells and see how deep those wells are.  Unfortunately they’re all over the map, ranging from 100’ deep to 450’ deep…so we have no idea where ours will end up.  At the end of the day Friday they still were drilling.  And apparently they must have hit some rocks because they’re only 60′ deep now.  Eeekkk.  One good thing is that at 60′ they did hit water, but only at a rate of 6 gpm.  We’ll see next week where they end up!  Drilling will pick back up on Tuesday.

Johnson Drilling arrived on site Wednesday to mobilize for the well drilling.

Johnson Drilling arrived on site Wednesday to mobilize for the well drilling.

Check out the buckets they had..."Let's Do This."  Love that!

Check out the buckets they had…”Let’s Do This.” Love that!

Our well site is located at the tree line in the far northeast corner of the property.

Our well site is located at the tree line in the far northeast corner of the cleared area of our property.

Two trucks were there, one for drilling and the other for hauling the steel casing for the drill.  Vintage trucks though - I think my Uncle Greg needs to sell them some new Mack's!

Two trucks were there, one for drilling and the other for hauling the steel casing for the drill. I can’t believe they showed up with Kenworth’s…apparently they don’t know their clients very well 😉 With those vintage trucks, I think it’s time they invested in a couple new Mack’s!

Here's the drill in action, which is located on the back end of the tan truck.

Here’s the drill in action, which is located on the back end of the tan truck.

The turquoise truck hauled all of the casing pipe.

The turquoise truck hauled all of the casing pipe.

Check out how close they are.  Those are some tight spaces they're working in!

Those are some tight spaces they’re working in!

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