Well Well Well

[smurf355]

So having discovered loads of old underground drains, pipes, voids, pits and a huge underground brick built tank (I think it was in years gone by collecting rainwater from the roof guttering) anywhere any digging or excavation needed to take place at my house, yesterday we found the icing on the cake. An actual well, just under the concrete path leading to my side door. Just where we need to excavate to run a new foul waste drain and very close to where a new footing is supposed to be dug. The guy operating the pneumatic breaker was lucky not to have fallen to his death. The well was covered with what looks like a few slabs of 1" thick slate and then a 3" concrete pour on top. We had no idea it was there, it's only 1.5m from the wall of the house. It's 20 metres deep, 1.1m diameter.
As he was breaking up the path, the point of the breaker just dropped down with no resistance - as they had found load of other old clay pipes and pits, he assumed he had gone into a pipe or an old drainage inspection chamber or something. After carefully removing the rubble, they noticed the big slate slabs. Fortunately the tip of the breaker had gone into the little gap between two of the slate slabs. If he had been a few inches either side and driven the breaker tip into the centre of one of the slabs, it undoubtedly would have broken clean in the middle and everything would have fallen down the 20m to the bottom of the well, including him!
A very close call. Now I have this thing to deal with! It's dry at the bottom, which is very surprising given the depth.... where did the water table go?

I don't know yet where we stand with digging footings and drainage so close to this. Anybody dealt with a well right beside their house before?

 

[Feltwell]

That's a bit of a beastie. It could be that it's dry because the water table has changed due to other drainage changes in the area, or sometimes they had boreholes at the bottom of them - presumably when they got to the stage of the well not hitting water after much digging!

I was worried when I dug out for my garage, I've got a map that showed a well there, but turns out the map was wrong. I've got the remains of an old hand pump at the end of my garden, I *think* it goes to a borehole rather than a well, but I've got to dig in that area and will be doing it very gently!

At least yours was capped with slate, there's been plenty of cases where they were capped with timber, with predictable consequences 100 years on.

Anyhow - it's close to your house but is in good condition with no sign of movement I presume? In which case, it's been like that for over 100 years, so I wouldn't worry overly. If you're going to want to cap it I think I'd go down to sound brick then use concrete lintels across it, then cast a concrete cap on top - you could always write "WARNING - WELL" in the wet concrete, save anyone who digs there in the future! Then you could pave or turf over the top as appropriate.

One advantage of lintels is that if anyone is daft enough to still go at it with a breaker or just doesn't see what's on the concrete, they're only likely to bust through 1 narrow lintel, and even then the reinforcing wire will likely hold the remnants in place.

There may be a building regs spec for capping wells if you look online, they are still very common to come across.

 

[Cubist]

When I were a lad..... of about 15, a distant relative bought a house on a new estate near Biddulph on the Staffordshire/Cheshire Border and was soon to move in when construction started on one of the nearby builds. This was rudely interrupted by the discovery of a mine-shaft, reckoned at the time to be several hundred feet deep. The builders proposal to simply re-site the concrete pad on which the house would be built, thus capping the shaft, was vetoed by the council that insisted instead that the shaft was filled. To mollify those already committed to purchase properties on the site, my distant relative included, the builder eventually agreed and, as I recall the purported figure, dumped 10,000 tons of rubble into the shaft to fill it. Sadly, a few years later it was discovered that the concrete rafts on which a number of homes had been built had begun to sink due to the collapse of tunnels emanating from the shaft.

Speaking as a lad hailing from coal mining country and aware of how damaging subsidence resulting from the collapse of old workings can be I would, insofar that your well is only 20mts deep, advise that you fill it in rather than just cap it.

 

[smurf355]

I was actually looking at the possibility of a flush with ground paving, structural glass top and lights shining down it. If the planned works at the house can be done without having to fill it in. It’s not the most attractive well I have ever seen but it seems almost criminal to fill it given all the effort that it must have taken to dig the thing. Can you imagine digging a 20 metre deep hole by hand with spades and buckets through dense damp clay and chalk?

 

[stuart45]

A friend of mine built a brick lined well in his back garden. He started at the top by digging down a few feet, and then building up the brickwork. He then dug out under the brickwork which allowed the brickwork to drop down, and then built on top.

 

[Cubist]

A friend of mine built a brick lined well in his back garden. He started at the top by digging down a few feet, and then building up the brickwork. He then dug out under the brickwork which allowed the brickwork to drop down, and then built on top.

Hmmmm.... who would I trust to be top-side while I was down the hole - wait while I check the Insurance..... NO ONE!

 

[stuart45]

I must admit it's not something I'd want to build. Don't know why he did one, as they have mains water.
He was a Council building inspector, and did a lot of research into how wells were constructed. Apparently this method was normal in this area.

 

[Cubist]

Re-reading the original post I am wondering why this property has both a well and a rain-water cistern. Any ideas re what the place was used for before?

 

[smurf355]

It was always a house. I have no idea really. Maybe the well never actually hit the water table. It’s certainly bone dry now. The rainwater cistern is directly in front of the kitchen window and sink. There was various clay pipes entering the top (looks like the came from the direction of guttering diwnpipes. Then it looks like a lead pipe went from the cistern through the wall into the kitchen and I guess there would have been a hand pump over the old butler sink drawing up water from the cistern? As for the well, who knows?

 

[stuart45]

20 metres is a fair way down. I've got one outside the kitchen window which goes down about 6 metres. Apparently it used to supply water for a few other houses, although we are on mains now. It used to have a standard manhole cover over it, but my wife wanted it built up in stone with a pitched roof.

 

[Zebra]

Wow that's amazing

 

[Cubist]

It was always a house. I have no idea really. Maybe the well never actually hit the water table. It’s certainly bone dry now. The rainwater cistern is directly in front of the kitchen window and sink. There was various clay pipes entering the top (looks like the came from the direction of guttering diwnpipes. Then it looks like a lead pipe went from the cistern through the wall into the kitchen and I guess there would have been a hand pump over the old butler sink drawing up water from the cistern? As for the well, who knows?

Its likely that the water table in the immediate vicinity will have fallen after the metalling of nearby roads and associated works to increase the effectiveness of the ditches. Our place depended on a well sited across what is now a road and until the 80s also relied on rain-water captured from the roof. No sign of cisterns below ground here but then I haven't been looking.

 

[Feltwell]

In hard water areas, rainwater was valued as it's always soft, so much better for washing the clothes - the posh house round the corner from us, now owned by the National Trust, has a rainwater cistern as well as a well for that purpose.

I guess that also a well was a much more reliable source of water, possibly cleaner as well. When I lived in Norfolk years ago the water came straight out of a borehole, no treatment apart from a bit of chlorine, the chalk rock filtered it enough. Mind you, on a bad day it was so cloudy from all the suspended chalk in it, it looked like milk!

 

[Cubist]

When I lived in Norfolk years ago the water came straight out of a borehole, no treatment apart from a bit of chlorine, the chalk rock filtered it enough. Mind you, on a bad day it was so cloudy from all the suspended chalk in it, it looked like milk!

Dammit Feltwell, now you've got me started. For the last few years I've been avoiding what I know will be an arduous and no doubt frustrating and painful task - one of many that keeps getting shunted to the back of the queue. We have two cold water storage tanks in the loft-space that are filled from our bore hole. Very occasionally we have found some sandy deposits in a sink or bath and I have been vaguely worried that I will find more significant amounts of the same in those tanks. Fortunately/unfortunately, I have never been able to get close enough to the tanks to verify this suspicion because they are located under the lowest section of the roof and there's a roof truss (not Liz thank whomever) between me and them - I swear they must have built the roof around the tanks because there's no other way I can see to get them in place.

Thanks very much for adding/reminding me that: -

• I've got to find a local trainer to provide with the limbo/contortionist lessons I'll need to get anywhere near the darn things.
• I must also find a local supplier of 'dredging' equipment that I can get in there with me once I'm in there.
• I will no doubt be getting another exorbitant bill from The Pig franchise for yet another stay for the First Lady

Have you any conception at all how much it will cost me to have a chiropractor on stand-by as well?

 

[CliffordPope]

"Apparently this method was normal in this area"

I think it was pretty normal everywhere, as far as I've read. How else would you do it - dig a slightly wider hole with timber shoring and build it starting at the bottem from the bottem? How scary would that be!
I think in parts of the world where they still dig wells they use pre-cast concrete sections, and lift each one on top as the well lining sinks.

I read in a DIY guide to 3rd world water supply a method of making your own borehole, using scaffolding pipes. You cut a crude drill bit on one end of a joiner clamp, and clamp a cross piece on the pipe so that it rotates as you walk round and round. You regularly retract the drill to clear accumulated debris, then reinsert and carry on. It sounds very tedious and long-winded, but I suppose might just work for shallow holes.

 

[smurf355]

In hard water areas, rainwater was valued as it's always soft, so much better for washing the clothes - the posh house round the corner from us, now owned by the National Trust, has a rainwater cistern as well as a well for that purpose.

I guess that also a well was a much more reliable source of water, possibly cleaner as well. When I lived in Norfolk years ago the water came straight out of a borehole, no treatment apart from a bit of chlorine, the chalk rock filtered it enough. Mind you, on a bad day it was so cloudy from all the suspended chalk in it, it looked like milk!

This is a hardwater chalk area - Dover. That's why the cliffs are white. So you're probably right that both would be ideal with the harvested rainwater used for washing and washing clothes.

 

[paulc]

I read in a DIY guide to 3rd world water supply a method of making your own borehole, using scaffolding pipes. You cut a crude drill bit on one end of a joiner clamp, and clamp a cross piece on the pipe so that it rotates as you walk round and round. You regularly retract the drill to clear accumulated debris, then reinsert and carry on. It sounds very tedious and long-winded, but I suppose might just work for shallow holes.

I've seen youtube vids aimed at American homesteaders where they use plastic tubing 32-50mm diameter. A hose attached at the top to pump water at a fairly low pressure down to the cutting end seems to clear the debris fairly well. Not really that much difference to a conventional drilling rig, just an awful lot cheaper even if you can't get the same depth of bore hole.

 

[Feltwell]

Have you any conception at all how much it will cost me to have a chiropractor on stand-by as well?

I can recommend a good chiropractor if you need one - she does things to me that no woman has ever done before!!

there's a roof truss (not Liz thank whomever) between me and them -

No, can't be a Liz Truss, they're more wooden, less flexible and don't last very long.

(End of politics I promise! )

 

[LadyArowana]

I was actually looking at the possibility of a flush with ground paving, structural glass top and lights shining down it. If the planned works at the house can be done without having to fill it in. It’s not the most attractive well I have ever seen but it seems almost criminal to fill it given all the effort that it must have taken to dig the thing. Can you imagine digging a 20 metre deep hole by hand with spades and buckets through dense damp clay and chalk?

There really is only one sensible answer. It needs one of these….. Probably a good thing it’s not my house!

 

[smurf355]

There really is only one sensible answer. It needs one of these….. Probably a good thing it’s not my house! View attachment 9569

that does look beautiful but the position of the well would not work with anything much coming up out of the ground, it's in front of my side entrance door and very close to the boundary and my neighbours fence.