Time to "frac" the well.
Ever since we moved up here to NH, we have been having trouble with the well.
Not a water quality issue, but a water quantity problem. Sometimes the well just plain runs out of water.
Being from the city, I never had to think about water much. For the past year, we have had to plan our water use to make sure we didn't draw too much without giving the well a chance to recover. For instance, we can't take a shower if we just ran the dishwasher or washing machine. That we could live with. Sometimes, however, the well just runs out of water for no apparent reason.
When that happens, I need to shut off the breaker to the electric water heater because it can overheat and ruin the heating elements to have it powered up with no water in it.
On the control box for the well pump, there is a green light and a red light. The green ligth tells us that the relay to the pump motor is on, the red ligth tells us that it is tripped out. The controller senses the current draw of the motor, which lowers when there is no water for it to pump and it cuts off power to it so the pump won't overheat and burn out it's windings.
Over the next day or two, there will be a well company "hydrofracking" our well. What they do is remove our pump and pressurize the well up to 3000psi to fracture the bedrock and open up the channels that bring water to the well. Pretty cool idea if it works!
The well guy told me that it is very, very rare to not have some improvement when fracking a well. When it was originally drilled 16 years ago, it was making 5 gallons of water per minute. Now it makes less than 1/2 gallon per minute. Even getting flow up to 2gpm would be a big improvement to us!
The downside to this plan is that it will cost around $1800 and is not guaranteed to work. But like I said, even getting 2gpm would be better than what we have now. If fracking doesn't work, we will have to drill the well deeper, which runs into another $2000-$3000 and come with it's own set of inconviniences.
We considered a rainwater capture system to get water for the non-potable uses like watering the animals, washing clothes, flushing toilets etc. but figured by the time it was set up and I got the plumbing divided, I will have spent just as much as fixing the well. I already capture some rainwater for the animals, but that won't work in the winter when the rainwater gets delivered to us frozen!
Not a water quality issue, but a water quantity problem. Sometimes the well just plain runs out of water.
Being from the city, I never had to think about water much. For the past year, we have had to plan our water use to make sure we didn't draw too much without giving the well a chance to recover. For instance, we can't take a shower if we just ran the dishwasher or washing machine. That we could live with. Sometimes, however, the well just runs out of water for no apparent reason.
When that happens, I need to shut off the breaker to the electric water heater because it can overheat and ruin the heating elements to have it powered up with no water in it.
On the control box for the well pump, there is a green light and a red light. The green ligth tells us that the relay to the pump motor is on, the red ligth tells us that it is tripped out. The controller senses the current draw of the motor, which lowers when there is no water for it to pump and it cuts off power to it so the pump won't overheat and burn out it's windings.
Over the next day or two, there will be a well company "hydrofracking" our well. What they do is remove our pump and pressurize the well up to 3000psi to fracture the bedrock and open up the channels that bring water to the well. Pretty cool idea if it works!
The well guy told me that it is very, very rare to not have some improvement when fracking a well. When it was originally drilled 16 years ago, it was making 5 gallons of water per minute. Now it makes less than 1/2 gallon per minute. Even getting flow up to 2gpm would be a big improvement to us!
The downside to this plan is that it will cost around $1800 and is not guaranteed to work. But like I said, even getting 2gpm would be better than what we have now. If fracking doesn't work, we will have to drill the well deeper, which runs into another $2000-$3000 and come with it's own set of inconviniences.
We considered a rainwater capture system to get water for the non-potable uses like watering the animals, washing clothes, flushing toilets etc. but figured by the time it was set up and I got the plumbing divided, I will have spent just as much as fixing the well. I already capture some rainwater for the animals, but that won't work in the winter when the rainwater gets delivered to us frozen!
posted by MVTCoPete | 11:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home