Drilling A New Well

Water is Life

As my mom always says, the last great wars will be over water. When we were purchasing our home we quickly realized via our well inspection that the water was going to be an issue. When testing a well they test the quality and production rate. Both of ours proved to be bad. We were concerned for our own water use at our new home but also for the resale ability if we did not address the well issues and chose to sell down the road.

Our well began as a stock well in the 1960’s and has done a great job for over 55 years. However, we are battling both an old steel well which is deteriorating and low volume of water in the aquifer. We knew if we wanted a better solution we needed a new well and to go to a deeper aquifer. I have helped buyers purchase homes with wells before, which have needed improvements such as a new pump or a shock to eliminate bacteria. However, I never envisioned the experience of drilling a new well.

It’s no surprise that the water levels have gone down in Douglas County. In the last 20 years Castle Rock which is located in Douglas County has tripled in size. Douglas County receives most of its water from aquifers. Most of the Denver area is on reservoir water from mountain run off. There is a constant push to come up with sustainable solutions for water across Colorado. However, rural neighborhoods, like ours, still rely on the aquifers and wells.

We researched well companies and the process has been lengthy. It took us two months with the division of water resources to get a permit issued. It has taken 5 months to have a company drill our well. If you are looking for a business to invest in well drilling would be it. There is more work than drillers can handle, due to new construction and replacement wells. The work however, is grueling and tough. There are drillers who focus on “mud” drilling or “fracking” granite drilling. The mountains and foothill areas drill into rock and end up getting water from cracks in the rocks and sometimes some pools in the fracked areas. On the plains we take water from underground aquifers.. thus “mud” drillers.

I thought it might be helpful to record our experience with getting a well. So here it goes:

 Day 1- The drillers arrive and drop off their equipment. Our large pasture looks not so large with a tractor, tender, drill rig, mud and two utility trucks.

 Day 2- The drillers spent a half day setting their rig and equipment where they needed it. They set the drill in the ground and did some initial drilling. Additionally, they dug 2 huge holes for the discarded drilling water, clay and fluid in our pasture. The holes were at least 10 feet deep by 15 feet wide!

 Day 3-6- It snowed a foot and a half and the high was 19 degrees. Needless to say we were at a standstill.

Day 7-10- The drilling began! They reached 820 ft in 1 LONG day. The logging process was so interesting. They test the clippings from the drilling every 20 ft or so to see what the soil is. This is how they can tell they have water and what its quality may be. The drillers then had to lay the pipe and drop our new pump.

It was such a leap of faith choosing to drill a new well. It’s not like when you purchase an appliance and you know what you are getting. Drilling is like gambling. You are not guaranteed you will get your desired result. As they were replacing pipe and hooking up our new well they shared that they were very surprised we will still getting water pressure due to their findings and that our water was VERY dirty. We knew our quality was poor mostly due to lots of iron build up and old steel pipe deteriorating. However, we did not know how bad it was until this process was complete. One of our pipes had ¾ of the pipe full of mineral/iron build up which was humbling.

 In the end our flow rate was strong and a huge improvement. The water quality thus far has seemed much better although we will be testing it soon to double check. The area we are drawing water from is quartz/ sand rock which, according to the drillers, results in good quality water. One big surprise was that our increased flow rate of water coming into the home was now cleaning out our pipes which had iron build up. So we had to flush our water for a while to clean out our pipes. The joys of well water. We still choose to have a reverse osmosis filter at our kitchen for the most optimal drinking water. Drilling the well despite its messy and complicated nature was a great move for our family and we are enjoying not triaging our water use in our home and abundant flow!