Taking a look down the old Water Well

Still working after 140 years...

I would say so.

Thats pretty neat. A lot of folks have no concept of where their water comes from....just turn on the tap.

how deep is it

At redid a well like that at a house I own last summer. It was 50" inches in diameter, 19 feet to the water and the water was over twenty feet deep. It was lined from the top to below the water line with stacked stones. I would love to know how that work was done. The original house was built around 1900.

City folks know where it comes from, the government. lol

My well is also over 100 years old.When I first bought my property,I was pouring a concrete top for the well.An older guy stops by asking If I was using the old well.I said I was and he said his grandfather had dug that well.He knew just how deep it was,30 feet.
he said it has never gone dry,and neighbors used to stop by to get water from it when they were having trouble with their wells.I have access to city water but never tied into it.I still use the old well.

Our well is 22 feet. Never ran dry. Yet.

Those shallow wells are far more likely to be contaminated . Just because it tastes good and does not have an odor doesn't make it a good well

I had mine tested and just for giggles brought a second sample from the city tap water to compare.My well water is cleaner than the city tap water.

City tap water is gross

Water safety is almost as controversial as how to dye your traps. If you are using public water that comes from lakes or rivers down stream from farming areas then you probably have atrazine in your water. If you drink bottled water that's filled from filtered tap water then you may have atrazine in your water. The only way to get it out is by carbon filtration.

Food for thought is (if you can believe it) that atrazine turns male frogs into females. If your singing a little higher or not croaking as low as you used to well then, I haven't seen the antidote!

Just to show you how on top of things the public utilities are; the water plant that serves a lot of counties in Southern illinois was losing 2.5 million gal a day and took a week to find it after they started noticing a loss.

Neighboring areas have been without water at different times over the years. I've never been without water over 50 yrs. except for occasionally pump problems but I stay ahead on my reserve.

So fill your wells up if you want, wouldn't be first time in history they did it then have to clean them out when their family and live stock got thirsty.

Mine is 25 feet deep.

I have a 21 foot deep dug well on my camp property in Centre County, Pa. It was dug in 1888. I don’t use it for a water source, but rather as a modified root cellar. There is a concrete slab with a metal trap door on top of the well head. I store 50# sacks of potatoes in there....I lower them down with rope and tie them off a few feet above the water level. I still have potatoes in there that I dug last August, they still haven’t sprouted yet. Being below ground, they won’t freeze and the humidity level is good too. I also store my gladiolus and dahlia bulbs there too.

When my nieces were young they wouldn't drink the water at the farm to clear

Since the small shops have closed, the last couple times buying shallow well parts have been a real head ache.
People that work at the chain stores don't know they exist.
Uncle just bought one at farm supply, I'm watching to see how it holds out.
I probably should bite it and buy submersible next time.

Been on shallow well all my life, and I'm far from normal lol.

X2

I find city water hard to drink. The flavor is terrible and it tastes like chemicals to me.

Keith

There are a lot of medicines and hormones in most city water, that cause men to be more feminine and females more masculine. I believe that those chemicals are part of the cause of liberals. The chemicals change human thought.

Keith

My well is 515' deep.

We, and almost all of our neighbors, have springs. I have a small cistern up in the forest about 300 yards from the house and a bigger one just above the house. Great water pressure from the elevation drop and good quality. Maybe a bit too much copper and iron, but very clean.

Pete

I will second that at our old place the well was about the same diameter and 35 feet to the Surface and the water in the well was another 40 feet deep, the lower part was stacked quarried blocks then the top 8 feet was cement, set into the well house was a cement tub for placing milk cans

After seeing it brought new meaning to my Ma’s expression colder then a well diggers a&&

We had one dug 360'. The irrigation wells around us were dug to 400+.

Those are drilled wells.My well was dug by hand over 100 years ago.Line with field stone bottom to top.

I knew an old guy that had a finger missing. His story was that he and another guy was digging a well and was using a mule to pull the dirt up with a rope and pulley system. The mule didn't stop when he was supposed to and the guy got his finger caught and cut off in the pulley. At which time he backed the mule back off into the well on top of the guy in the well, but didn't hurt him. Then it took the neighbors a day to dig a ramp out the side of the well to get the mule out.

6 feet of dirt filters a lot of crap.

In the 1930 era when the WPA was building water cisterns for all the one room country schools around here they also built concrete filters that were huge probably holding at least 500 gal. enough to handle a good rain. In the bottom it had a layer of sand then a layer of charcoal and a layer of lime. The water ran from the roof thru that and into the underground cistern. Now that most of the one room schools are gone many of the filters is all that's left. Many people driving by have no idea what they are.

Just had a well dug yesterday. 100 ft with water at 20 ft. Old well was 170, only 50 feet away. 37 gallon\minute. Mike

My folks dug a shallow well when we built the new house in 1962. It was 5 feet across and 28 feet deep to Marrow clay.

Then there was 3 foot crocks put down and up to the top. Then large stone 2" river stone dumped along the side up to about 10 feet.

It was covered with smaller stone, then a screen and dirt. Always cold.

There wasn't any restrictions or codes either.

I remember back in the 60s drawing water from a well with wooden buckets attached to hemp rope hanging from wooden cranks. Some folks would put a couple trout in their wells to eat worms that might find their way into to water.