Old well for water storage

Piwoslaw · 04-27-11, 03:59 AM

There is an old well behind our house. It was built a long time ago, and the last time it was used was 40 years ago when the house was being built. I uncovered it yesterday and saw that for the first 2 meters (6.6ft) down it's just an empty cavity, lined with concrete rings 1 meter (3.3ft) across. There is also a pipe going up on one side. I asked Dad-in-law and he said that the rings go down a little bit deeper, but it's all sand below that. The pipe goes down to 18 meters (59ft). The ground water here supposedly had a lot of iron in it and the pipe and water filter at the bottom rusted over pretty quickly.

So we have 3 ideas for what to do:
1) Dig/drill who-knows-how-deep and use ground water for watering the lawn. I'm not sure what state the ground water is in (a few neighbors still have septic tanks, and many of them wouldn't be happy if their tanks were water-tight), or how deep it is. Dad-in-law said that when he started building the house in the 1960's, the waterline was around where the foundation started (1.5m/5ft), but soon dropped below 2.5m (8ft). Since then many other building have been built nearby, so there would be quite a bit of digging. Plus the waterline in our sandy soil drops during droughts when water for the garden would be needed the most.

2) Dig until to bottom of the concrete rings and use the cavity for storing rainwater (the well is only 5m/16ft from our rain gutter). Having 1500-2000 liters (400-520 USgal) of underground storage is unquestionably better than three 220 liter (55 USgal) barrels standing under the gutter. Of course, anything poured in at the moment would just sink into the sand, so the well would somehow have to be made watertight. Any ideas? And would the water freeze in the winter?

3) Use the well as a good starting point and dig/drill some more to have a ground source for future heat pump use. Knowing that the pipe extends down to 18 meters is tempting, but it's worthless at the moment.

Any other ideas? Maybe there could be more than one use of this old well?

04-27-11, 03:59 AM	#1
Piwoslaw Super Moderator Join Date: May 2009 Location: Warsaw, Poland Posts: 961 Thanks: 188 Thanked 110 Times in 86 Posts	Old well for water storage There is an old well behind our house. It was built a long time ago, and the last time it was used was 40 years ago when the house was being built. I uncovered it yesterday and saw that for the first 2 meters (6.6ft) down it's just an empty cavity, lined with concrete rings 1 meter (3.3ft) across. There is also a pipe going up on one side. I asked Dad-in-law and he said that the rings go down a little bit deeper, but it's all sand below that. The pipe goes down to 18 meters (59ft). The ground water here supposedly had a lot of iron in it and the pipe and water filter at the bottom rusted over pretty quickly. So we have 3 ideas for what to do: 1) Dig/drill who-knows-how-deep and use ground water for watering the lawn. I'm not sure what state the ground water is in (a few neighbors still have septic tanks, and many of them wouldn't be happy if their tanks were water-tight), or how deep it is. Dad-in-law said that when he started building the house in the 1960's, the waterline was around where the foundation started (1.5m/5ft), but soon dropped below 2.5m (8ft). Since then many other building have been built nearby, so there would be quite a bit of digging. Plus the waterline in our sandy soil drops during droughts when water for the garden would be needed the most. 2) Dig until to bottom of the concrete rings and use the cavity for storing rainwater (the well is only 5m/16ft from our rain gutter). Having 1500-2000 liters (400-520 USgal) of underground storage is unquestionably better than three 220 liter (55 USgal) barrels standing under the gutter. Of course, anything poured in at the moment would just sink into the sand, so the well would somehow have to be made watertight. Any ideas? And would the water freeze in the winter? 3) Use the well as a good starting point and dig/drill some more to have a ground source for future heat pump use. Knowing that the pipe extends down to 18 meters is tempting, but it's worthless at the moment. Any other ideas? Maybe there could be more than one use of this old well? Attached Thumbnails __________________ Ecorenovation - the bottomless piggy bank that tries to tame the energy hog.