All’s well when the well ends...

The same thinking that pushed us to install the septic first - get it done before the footings are in the way - led us to drill the well next. The whole business of well drilling is one part science, three parts magic. Some believe in witching - the mysterious process for locating underground aquifers that often involves a forked stick and a wild-eyed medium with a special gift, but in my case the location was not really up for discussion. I needed to be far enough away from the septic system to avoid contamination, close to the garage where the pressure tank would go, and in a spot that was easily accessible for the well-drilling rig - both now and in the future should we ever need to pull the submersible pump or increase the depth. So there was really only about a 20’ diameter circle where the well could go but I was still anxious to know how deep we’d end up and what the quality of water would be - in other words whether I had enough money in the budget to cover the cost.

The first step in getting a handle on what I might be in for was to talk to my friend Anthony who works as a groundwater resources engineer at the local office of a large engineering firm. I asked Ant to check the well records for properties close to mine, which he kindly did, sending me a list and cautioning that other wells in the area were not necessarily indicative of what I’d get. Sure enough the wells nearby varied wildly - my neighbour Dick for example was at 75 feet with good flow (9 gallons per minute) and no unwelcome contaminants while the house next to his was at 280’ with low-flow and an expensive treatment system for removing sulpher. I realized that there was no predicting my fate so I rolled the dice and called Troy Saunders to come in and start drilling.

There are essentially two styles of drilling rigs commonly used for water wells, a rotary drill and what is called a pounding rig. As its name suggests a pounding rig pounds a drill-bit down into the rock, the benefit of which being that the pounding opens more seams through which water will flow - a real benefit in solid rock. Pounding typically takes much longer, and thus is more expensive, so with an eye squarely on my budget, and feeling lucky, the drilling began early on the morning of Monday July 14.



An experienced well driller like Troy can tell what the gallon per minute flow rate of the well is on the fly by the amount of water bubbling out of the well head. The rule of thumb is that 4- 5 gallons per minute is a comfortable flow rate for a typical house assuming that teenage showers, lawn watering and car washing are kept under control.

Thankfully the water consumption of a typical household is changing. Where once it was assumed that a system should be sized for 100
gallons per person per day, nowadays the 20 litre per flush toilet and the 30 litre per minute shower head have been replaced by "low flow" toilets that use 4 litres per flush and shower heads that keep teenagers squeaky clean with 50% less water. Add to that the move away from manicured lawns and imported plants to indigenous natural landscapes typical water usage can drop comfortably by up to 60%.


50 feet, 75, 100, 150 - still insufficient flow. By the time we got to 200’ Troy decided it was time to try “hydro fracturing” the rock... essentially capping the well head and pressurizing the well casing with water in an attempt to open seams in the rock. By this time we had approximately 2 gallons per minute, far less than I’d hoped and by Troy’s estimation “barely adequate”. According to Troy there was always the option of moving over 20’ and drilling another hole but I had a feeling the magic seam was only a few feet further so we kept going. 225, 250... at 290’ Troy finally turned to me and said there wasn’t much sense in going further.

At this point we had by his rough calculation 2.5 gallons per minute of flow but the good news was that the water had risen to within 10’ of the top of the casing. In other words, Troy explained, the natural static level of water in the well meant that there was over 420 gallons of water in the well casing itself and even if the well was only recovering at something shy of three gallons a minute we had more than enough water to serve the house. “Good enough” said I with more enthusiasm than I felt, adjusting to the reality that we wouldn’t have the well I’d hoped for but one that, while perfectly adequate, would send us stark reminders if we ever lost our water conserving minds.

The low flow rate of the well did change one key feature of the mechanical system I’d been planning, using well water for cooling. There are several days, sometimes extending to a small number of weeks, every summer in our part of the world where cooling keeps life worth living. While this house - with it’s high levels of insulation, large roof overhangs, significant tree shading and oodles of thermal mass - may not require much if any cooling I had been planning on running cold well-water through the fan coils in both house and garage during times of unbearable heat and discharging the water to a fish-pond in the front courtyard. With this rather romantic option now foreclosed the plan will be to live in the house for a year or two to see whether cooling is truly necessary. If it turns out to be, some form of air-source heat-pump technology will likely be brought to bear.

So as required by the Ministry of the Environment the well was “shocked” with chlorine to kill biological contaminants, tagged and registered, but the testing of water quality would have to wait for the plumber to install the submersible pump many weeks hence.
Ten hours or so after he started, Troy began dismantling his rig and I began wondering what part of my budget I’d have to loot to cover his bill.