A man is going down our well on Wednesday

[JoceAndChris]

Many of you have been kind enough to wade through my many, indecisive, moaning and complaining, never getting anywhere posts on our private water supply.

I thought some might like to know Chris's decision which is to have the current 7 metre well drained, de-silted and extended. One of the UK's very few well restorers is coming on Wednesday to empty it ( it's very full), clean it, measure the rate of in-flow and try to improve that by various means I don't yet fully understand.

I'm extremely skeptical and would have preferred the £5,000 to have been spent on pretty things. But Chris has been fired up with enthusiasm by this tradesman and believes our well can be made to gush plentifully all year round, enabling us to fulfil all our watery needs and even disconnect the rainwater harvesting system. I think my husband has been manipulated and spun a line, and that no-one can really alter tthe water table, but only time will tell.

It will be very interesting to see the man going down into the well and all the drilling equipment so I will be sure to take some pics.

 

[malcolm]

Sounds perfectly reasonable (apart from the price maybe). The well would have presumably supplied water perfectly well in the past. Modern technology might allow a pump, avoiding the need for a rope and bucket.

Will you need to have the water tested by bureaucrats before you can use it?

 

[LadyArowana]

I really hope this works and that there is an improvement in the water supply, at least it's cheaper than the borehole and they were not making any guarantees as to finding anything. With the well at least you know it works quite a bit of the time, so it's not that much of a stretch to think it might be made better. Will keep fingers crossed for you.

 

[skier-hughes]

However good the well supply, surely you want to keep some rainwater harvesting for some things?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Yes I do - but it would be nice not to have to bathe with bits of wasp and worm as I have been doing for 5 yrs.

Good point LadyA, that's what we thought.

There is a pump and it was tested - we have this well as our sole drinking water. It runs the dishwasher and washing machine, the rain feeds the loos, shower and bath. Both our kitchen sink and bathroom sink have well taps and rain taps, meaning there are rather more taps than is customary.

 

[Flyfisher]

Fingers crossed here for a good result! Sounds like a sensible option compared to the cost and uncertainty of a borehole. Lot's of pictures please. :wink:

 

[JoceAndChris]

It's really nice to read comments that support this, thank you. I just have a horrible feeling that we may have given a sharkster two and a half grand as a deposit and we'll never see him.


Any transaction is a massive leap of faith in the other person, especially when it come to organising works.

The other options seemed so expensive and uncertain. I do believe that a mains water connection would have put value on the house and made it easier to sell, but we plan to be carried out of here in our boxes so we don't really have to worry too much about that.

 

[Moo]

I'm sure that Chris will have investigated the well man's credentials very thoroughly before handing over such a large bundle of cash.
xxx

 

[vicky whitworth]

Men go down well here too especially if they're tall and dark and not too skinny Did I misread something?

Good luck with it, Joce. Maybe he'll find a crock of gold and all your financial woes will be gone.
Vicky

 

[CliffordPope]

We get all our water from a well, supplemented by stored rainwater in an enormous fruit-juice tank in summer when the well usually goes low.
I'd never bothered getting it tested - it tasted lovely and no one was ever ill - but more recently my wife insisted on having a test. It's fine.
Watch out for the test results. They always put in a low but actual result for choliforms, and then give standard advice about treatment. When I phoned up to query this the man said that actually they didn't find any, but are obliged to put it in the lowest classification, 0-5 or something. The standard procedure then cuts in for "suspected low-level contamination".
The tester said, "Don't quote me, but just ignore it".

 

[LadyArowana]

Men go down well here too especially if they're tall and dark and not too skinny Did I misread something?

Good luck with it, Joce. Maybe he'll find a crock of gold and all your financial woes will be gone.
Vicky

:lol: You have mains water don't you?

 

[Zebra]

Depending on the pictures Joce posts of the well-man, I suspect Vicky may soon wish she did not have mains water.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I'm a bit too shattered to post pics tonight but will tomorrow. I honestly think the money would have been better spent on a handbag but I'm never going to get Chris, or Rory, the well engineer, to agree with that.

He's a very nice chap and extremely brave but what is actually going to be achieved is hard to measure. He went down, 7 metres, found the clay bottom and he removed 8 or 9 wheelbarrows of that clay. He said removing that would create an extra foot depth ( by around 3 feet) extra storage space. He said he can't go any deeper because he believes it's clay all the way down, and he did do some trial drilling. He said the water will never come up from the bottom of our well, but will only seep in through the sides. Not great for high yield.

He also said our well was about to cave in on the bottom which could lead to the north side of the house falling in. He's underpinned it with metal rods and is returning tomorrow to create a new bottom. I'm rather skeptical about all that. Hasn't fallen down so far has it.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, one other interesting thing I wanted to mention was that he said it has already been extended. There are two cutting shoes, and the first couple of metres of the well is in brick, reclaimed brick which has lime wash on, or another kind of white paint, and the rest in stone. Will post pics. That suggests someone a long long time ago had Chris's idea of extending the well.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

also said our well was about to cave in on the bottom which could lead to the north side of the house falling in.

For that reason Joce, money well spent----walls can and do suddenly collapse, so have faith in him. You have done the right thing to get somebody down there, so you know what you are dealing with and will not be forever wondering xxx

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks Joss xx

 

[JoceAndChris]

Possibly a complete waste of £5,000 I feel. OK it isn't ideal that rocks would fall down from the top to the bottom but I don't believe it was in danger of collapse, not do I believe the shifting bottom is really a problem unless you want to stand on it. It's not like it was ever really disturbed by human hand, and apparently the water doesn't seep up for the bottom of our well either - more like a giant plug of clay is there and the water trickles in gently down the sides and the well acts as a tank.

So for £5000 he pumped it dry, went down it, removed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of clay from the bottom which he says has created an extra foot of storage space. He assessed it for extension downwards and found it wouldn't yield anything. Then he drilled into the sides to see if holes could be opened up to increase sideways flow, and he drilled into hard, compacted , un-porous clay that won't yield water. Then he came and told me this is the first time he hasn't been able to increase flow in an old well, and he couldn't really understand how we got any water in there at all as it seems to have been sunk in such un-porous clay. But that he had really come in the nick of time as he could shore up the bottom which was in danger of collapse. So he's shoved in a lot of cut down metal road pins, and he's squirted expanding foam where rocks are loose to hold them in. And he's moved the pump to the very bottom of the well - it wasn't quite at the bottom before which meant in drought you could see water below the level of the pump but not get it. What this first water that lies on the bottom is like I don't know, I'd imagine rather muddy. But that's what we'll now be able to access in drought.

The water trickles in very slowly so it will be a long time until I have drinking or cooking water, a washing machine, a dishwasher. This is highly annoying as I'm doing Slimming World, which means constant cooking up of veg and lean meat, so I'll be spending the next few months at the sink washing the dishes in dirty rainwater. When I think of how needed that 5,000 is in other areas I could just weep. Never again will I allow Chris any say in what is done here.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I know what I'll do. Now he's told me the well basically functions as a tank, which completely contradicts how you think a porous well might behave; I'll simply go to my parents and get a couple of Aquarolls of drinking water every time I see them. And pour it down. That will give me the dishwasher back

 

[tobydog]

Joce - remind us again how far you are from the nearest water main. This all sounds one hell of a faff.

 

[Moo]

Joce - some time this week I saw a news item about a system for purifying water somewhere in Africa. They showed a transparent container of the filthy water that the locals had been using, and simply added something from a small sachet. Within minutes the container was full of clear, sparkling water, with some sort of sediment at the bottom.
The presenter lady (an ex-Spice Girl, I think) drank a glass of it, and said it tasted as good, if not better, than UK tap water. Apparently the sachets cost pennies.

If you could get your hands on some of the sachets, do you think it would help in your situation?