Life with Well Water

February 2006

The water for our house, here in rural Christian County, KY, comes from an old hand-dug well. It's about 3 feet across and 30 or 35 feet deep, and it is lined with big limestone building stones. It was probably dug in the early 1800s, or maybe even earlier.

When we first moved out here, the well was protected only by a piece of roofing metal laid across it. We were afraid the kids would fall into it! We put a fence around it immediately, and very soon thereafter, built a little house over it, installed a strong metal grid across the mouth of the well, and moved the water pump from our laundry room to the well-house.

To get a good well in this area, it's necessary to hit a water vein in the limestone that underlies the soil. Our Mennonite neighbor Willis brought a pocket watch on a chain one day and used it as a pendulum to dowse the water vein that our well is on. He says it is a minor channel of water but it connects to a larger channel 100 yards away.

Having our own well is an exercise in self-reliance. We don't have a monthly water bill and we don't depend on a public utility. If worse came to worst, we could drop a bucket into our well and get water. However, there are inconveniences. 

• When the electricity goes out, we can't pump water, so we store several 5-gallon containers of water for such emergencies.
• When temperatures fall below freezing and we're worried about ice forming in the pump, we turn on a light in the well-house.
•  Silt seeps into the well when we have heavy rains, so we have a water filter in the well-house that has to be maintained.
•  We usually buy our drinking water, but if we must drink well water, we add 8 drops of chlorine per gallon.
•  In dry weather, we use water conservatively so we don't pump the well dry! 

Today Dennis had trouble changing the water filter. As he tried to loosen and remove the old filter, a pipe joint suddenly popped a leak. That was the first problem. The second problem was that Dennis somehow cracked a section of PVC pipe while attempting to fix the leak. 

We called a plumber and paid him to come out and fix the whole shebang. The way things were going, it seemed the sensible thing to do.