I just purchased a home with a hand dug well and its been great and everything has been functioning but….The water line has slowly been going down in the well and does not seem to be refilling at all. The water was nice and high when the house was purchased. I have neve had a well before and we have gotten plenty of rain so I am stumped on why the water level keels decreasing.
The well to the bottom is about 10 feet deepish
by TasteLast31
5 Comments
I’m no expert but our well is 180 feet deep. So my guess is that yours is just way too shallow.
There may be a small trickle that filled it over many months or possibly years of non use before you moved in. Underground water sources also shift around. 10 feet is incredibly shallow and not likely to be reliable. even if it is a reliable source of water, it will likely be high in contaminants because it hasn’t been filtered much by the ground. I recommend you have a proper well drilled, a few hundred feet. It won’t be cheap, but water is life
10ft isn’t so much a well as a spring. The thing about springs is they typically have very low head pressure, so any obstruction will just stop them from flowing. Assuming the black pipe is your pump suction and the steel pipe is your overflow, is there anywhere else for water to come in or is it bottom fill? If it’s bottom fill, you need to vacuum off the bottom and make sure there’s no mud or sediment keeping it from flowing.
Also check around the spring house and make sure it hasn’t found another way out. The water will take the path of least resistance.
Lastly though, it looks like the water is only a few inches down from the high water mark. Have you used more water than that since you’ve been there? If so, it’s refilling, it’s just slower than you’re using it. In that case nothing’s wrong, it just has a slow recharge rate. There’s not much you can do about that other than conserve water or add storage capacity.
You cannot use much water with a well like that.
The previous owners probably used very little water everyday to manage the well