Question on water well, aquifers, etc.

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I'm buying a new house in NH, and the house has a well that is 250 feet deep.

My current well experience involves a cabin in Maine where water is reached after only 8 feet. So, I'm wondering about this 250 feet depth... is this called an artesian well? Does it tap limited fossil water, or is this something that replenishes over time like water near the surface does? I am pondering the long term sustainability of such a well given that the fossil water out in farm land is going to be depleted over time due to unsustainable agricultural practices. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

If the submerged pump ever failed, I assume I'm out of luck for getting water out of that until it is replaced? I can't imagine lowering one of those narrow well buckets that far down.
 
First I'm not a well expert, and it's a deep subject.

If the water flows out of the well under its own pressure, it an artesian well. So this one is not.

It's likely that it's a replenishable aquifer, but if you're worried, ask around town. The old timers shoudl know. Or the State or USGS should be able to tall you.

The fossil water that you refer to is being depleted due to the high level of consumption; your location, not being a farm, is not likely to use that much.

If the pump breaks, you're SOL until it's replaced. You're also depnedant upon power- make sure you have a gererator with enough capacity to run the pump.

a bucket woudl be a PITA.
 
Go get the name of the maintenance company on the well pump/tank. There should be a maintenance card or some other type of placard identifying them. Once you know who it is, give them a call and have them tell you everything they know about it, and ask your questions.

I did this, in addition to well test... saved me thousands on my purchase. We have a shallow well, but it had tiles falling apart and tested positive for ecoli. Was able to have the seller make some expensive repairs as part of the offer.
 
The well is 250 ft deep but where is the water level. It could be as high as 20-30 ft or it could be a couple of hundred feet. Our well is about 160 ft but the water level is 30-50 ft below the surface.
 
Those are all good questions, none of which I know the answers yet. I'm surprised they need to go that deep since there's a brook along the border. So, water is in the area. It tested positive for radon in the water (not the air) so I'm having the sellers install a remediation system. They are $3800.
 
As mentioned before find out as much info on it as you can and also find out what type and size motor it uses and pick up a spare. Its not to hard to change out your self. And the hand pump is a good back up option.
 
I thought hand pumps only go about 20-ish feet? Or is this some other type of hand pump?
 
My well pump is set at 280', but the static water level is only 12' below ground and the hand pump is rated for 25'.

More details on my hand pump starts: here

This will fill a 5-gallon water can in about three minutes:

PC140699.jpg
 
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I thought hand pumps only go about 20-ish feet? Or is this some other type of hand pump?

A pump that works on "suction" (actually, it's using atmospheric pressure to push the water into the pipe, from which the air has been evacuated) are only good to about 30 feet (One Atmosphere of pressure)

The deep well hand pumps are cool - the handle's at the top the "works" at the bottom, so you push the water up as opposed to "pulling" it. Must be a fair amount of effort, though.....lifting the weight of a column of water howmanyever feet high, with each cycle of the lever. Beats being thirsty, though.....
 
The deep well hand pumps are cool - the handle's at the top the "works" at the bottom, so you push the water up as opposed to "pulling" it. Must be a fair amount of effort, though.....lifting the weight of a column of water howmanyever feet high, with each cycle of the lever. Beats being thirsty, though.....

They're not all that difficult to operate - lots of leverage designed-in on the pump handle. Expensive buggers though. They can be rigged to work with a solar panel & motor - or I was thinking to knock together some sort of pedal powered contraption for mine.
 
When a well is drilled, the drilling company has to put in some research into the area including geology, numbers of wells in proximity to the proposed well, type of well (community, private, transient, etc..). All of this information plays into the depth. While you may find the water table at 20 ft, it could be related to a known perched water table elevation or have slow recharge due to the soil porosity. The shallow depth may also be adequate for a few users ( other wells) at an acceptable flowrate but possibly not and require dditional depth. Mineral content can also steer well depth... if you have soil with a high iron content in the shallow soils, most people will opt to drill deeper to avoid staining, hard water, etc.... The other big item here is look at the DES website for any known contaminated sites in the area or upgradient of you and see what aquifers were affected.... we've drilled deep and through confining layers to find a clean aquifer.

As the others have said, deep wells need a submersible pump and also have infrastructure (pressure tank, pressure switch, dedicated breaker, etc...) within the house. Pulling a pump isn't a big deal but that 1" line off the pump holds a lot of water over that length. I've seen people pull up a short section and clamp it off above the well casing with vice grips... nothing wrong with it as you usually change the tubing when you do the work anyway. On that note, effluent line from most pumps pass through the well casing via a pitless adapter (google it for a visual) but this can be pulled with a simple t-bar made of 1 or 1.25 inch pipe.

I like the hand pump in Andy NH's pics. Others can be had from FloJak and places like that. We have a 12V self venting submersible pump as a backup to the handpump at our camp. The 12V pump is from Whale pumps and was designed for environmental work but pumps at upto 4-5 gpm and can be mated to a booster for depths of over 60 ft. It was ~ $100 with the booster and can be found an many well supply shops or online... got mine at Groundwater Supply just off I-190 in Sterling, MA. I can run the pump off the 12V batteries for the solar or via a Booster pac for jump starting a car. Duty cycles are ~15 minutes or so (they say ~30 minutes in the literature) but I've not witnessed that performance.

Over the years, I've known a few people who had to have their well hydrofractured to get a good flowrate over time. I'd recommend that you test the well associated with any new purchase for flow, mineral content, coliforms, and VOCs.
 
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