Well Digging

About to get a well dug and curious as to how much water is going to be enough for my house. Planning on using the water for the house (4.5 bathrooms) and some possible irrigation around the house.

One well digger will dig 250 feet, then go on a per foot basis. Another will guarantee water for a little more. However, what has me worried is the amount of guaranteed water...2000 gallons a day (or about 2 gallons per minute). Is 2 gallons a minute good enough? or should I push for more water?

2 gallons per minute is not near enough to run a house and irrigate. Gallons per minute is based on the ability of the well to fill the well head and not run out of water and have to wait for the well to fill. 4.5 gallons per minute is minimum for a house to use water in bathrooms, washing machine and kitchen. If you want to irrigate for 20 minute a day, how much water will you use? The well has to fill back up to provide you with water. The well piping is the actual capacity of the amount of water you will need for a day, unless you use a bladder/pressure bag in addition to well. The idea is to have the pump not run when you turn of the water. As pressure drops in the well, the pump comes on to pressurize the well. If the pump comes on every time the water is turned on, the pump will not last very long at all. I would shoot for anything over 7 gallons per minute and have plenty of capacity of water.

If you go deep and still don't get water, you can live with 2 gallon per minute, but no irrigation. But a large holding tank will be needed so that it fills itself of the daily depletion during the non use time of the night

I just had one drilled in Talbot Co.452 ft for 1 price guaranteed 10 gallon per minute. Didn't say for how many minutes. I got 15 gallon per minute .I quit running the open line after 1 hour.
2000 gallon per day is a lot.
2 gallon per minute for 24 hours isn't.
Measure your current usage per day and see what you use.

I had them put a 3 HP pump rated at 50 -60 gallons per minute when we had ours dug. A 2 HP was rated at 18-20 gallons per minute, this was about 20 years ago - it may or may not calculate the same way now.

Average household usage is about 100 gallons per day per person. Usage is more tied to the number of occupants than number of fixtures.

The wife and I, plus grandkids on the weekends use about 7000 gallons per month.

Now if you are talking pools, irrigation, etc. that is different.

My Dad was a well driller and he would tell people for a normal household if they had 5 gpm they had enough. 5 gpm would produce 7200 gallons a day. He drilled 6" wells. Back in the day around here the people that bored 30" wells would guarantee 1000 gallons a day, which is less than a gpm.

Crakajak said:

I just had one drilled in Talbot Co.452 ft for 1 price guaranteed 10 gallon per minute. Didn't say for how many minutes. I got 15 gallon per minute .I quit running the open line after 1 hour.
2000 gallon per day is a lot.
2 gallon per minute for 24 hours isn't.
Measure your current usage per day and see what you use.

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452 ft is great for Talbot county. Know of two off of 208, one that's 800 ft and another that's claimed to be 1200 ft.

I got by for 30 years with a drilled well 200 ft deep that put out 3 gpm. That was with 6 people living there most of the time. I just had a new one drilled that's 806 ft deep and gets 5 gpm and the water came within 35 ft to the top of the well. That's a lot of water in storage. Around here water is not guaranteed and it cost around 10.00 per ft to drill one. I wound up with about $13,000.00 in mine.

I believe Dad use to say that a 6" well stored 1.5 gallons per foot.

My well was drilled in 1986 at 430 ft deep. It produces around 4.5 gallons per minute. Storage is around 365 gallons in well at the high water mark plus the bladder tank. My submersible pump is rated 1 horsepower at 5+ gallons per minute. No problems for daily use unless we leave something running unknown. It will empty the well around 25 minutes if used continuous.

Stroker said:

452 ft is great for Talbot county. Know of two off of 208, one that's 800 ft and another that's claimed to be 1200 ft.

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I heard about that also.
They actually drilled 30' deeper so I have plenty of reserve.Hit water at 398' ish

My parent's well is only 115ft deep and is rated at 18gpm. Only ran dry a few times in bad droughts and having to water horses. Neighbor across the street had his down to 400ft+- before he got above 5gpm and said he'd add a tank and live with it. So it's really based on your location and luck.

An update on what I learned a week or so ago when we had our well dug.

Ended up calling someone who has experience in servicing wells and putting in well pumps. He actually subbed out the drilling of the well and then will be installing my pump for me.

Decided to pay by the foot, as I felt that 2 gpm wasn't good enough for what we wanted and was worried that the driller would stop at 2 gpm at a shallow depth and I'd be stuck. So...throwing caution to the wind, said some prayers and decided to pay by the foot.

100 feet down, finally hit bedrock. Soooo...100 feet of casing (extra $5 per foot). 200 feet...still no water. 300 feet...still no water. 400 feet...still no water. 500 feet...still no water. By now, getting very discouraged and now starting to discuss other options. Well driller advised to go to 600 feet and then possibly hydro-frack.

550...still no water. 575...still no water. About to pop the 580-600 foot pipe section on and all of the sudden, heard a change in the tone of the drill. 15 seconds later, water was gushing out. @ 585 feet, we hit 100 gpm flow. So, we measured at 400 feet the flow...50gpm. @200 feet, 30gpm. So, my consultant/pump guy decided that we should put the pump in at about 160 feet so we can go with a 1hp pump and still have 15-20 gpm with an acceptable psi.

Through it all, it ended up costing $6350 in just drilling...where as if we had gone guaranteed, we'd have been out around $3500 for drilling. However....when they do guaranteed, they won't drill past 400. If at 400, they still don't have water, they'll start hydro-fracking.

So, at the end of the day, while it ended up costing us about $3k extra, we got an incredible flow rate and a great well that will provide enough water for irrigation in the future if we want it.

I've got a 76 foot well that has never run dry in the last 120 yars

Wow! And I thought 240' wells were deep.

Do yourself a favor and call
Kenny Hamilton (404) 557-4406‬
I’m one exit towards augusta from you. He IMO will do you a great job. He subs the drilling and they are great. They drilled us a new one three years ago and I’m very satisfied with what we got. Went from a CensoredCensoredCensored well to a great well.

You can find maps and records of wells drilled around you and get an idea of what you can get and expect. The keep a record of how deep they drilled, what material they pass through, and how much water they got.

https://gaswcc.georgia.gov/gis-mapping

Jack Ryan said:

You can find maps and records of wells drilled around you and get an idea of what you can get and expect. The keep a record of how deep they drilled, what material they pass through, and how much water they got.

https://gaswcc.georgia.gov/gis-mapping

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The problem with that in NE GA is that the whole area is underlain with solid granite.

If you are lucky, you can get by with a shallow well that just goes down to bedrock -see my post above about a dug well -bottom is bedrock.

For a drill well, you have to find water in "folds" of the granite, it can be 200' or 1000', and only 100 yds or less apart.

We have a section that is less than 1/10 mile from the river, and wells are between 400 and 800 feet deep with minimal flows - some households have had two wells drilled. That whole area has granite right beneath the surface and it's just a total guess as to where you will hit water.

Now going back to my dug well, it is clearly on a "vein" -underground flow- and there are 4 wells in a row across maybe a 1/4 mile.

The maps at that web page give a pretty good idea of the underlying bedrock as well, at least it was pretty accurate in my area. I just had 3 vertical wells drilled around my house trying for geothermal well set up.

It was a no go because of hitting sand and voids/caves, had to go with a horizontal drill but it was all pretty much what the maps said was "probably" under there.