Its sounds pretty clear you have to stay in the upper aquifer. If your last borehole does not yeild desirable results, you can still install the well in the fine sand. I have monitored the drilling of shaft foundations over 8 feet in diameter to 3 inch diameter monitoring wells in really crappy wet silt, which is much worse than fine sand. Your driller has to use casings as they drill down to keep the hole from caving. If your driller is not familiar with the technique, I would suggest calling a geotechnical or soil consulting company. The engineers will know exactly what to do and most have their own drill rigs. I’ve worked with my fair share of drillers and believe me they are not all the same.
Posted by Jennifer Hale on November 29, 2004 at 10:49:21:
Is it possible to share a private water well between 2 houses in PA? If so, what type of legal agreement is needed to protect both the owner of the property the well is located on as well as the person tapping into the water supply?
I’m not familiar with PA law, however, in general, you can make whatever agreements you want with your neighbor.
This can be accomplished by way of an easement to use the well. They can also grant you what is called a “profit,” which is essentially the right to take water from the well. The big question is whether the rights will pass when and if you sell your property. There are far too many variables and important considerations to discuss in this post.
However you decide to label it, you just need to have someone (preferably a lawyer who practices in this area) draft the agreement.
I’m curious about this. Does one house have its own well, but is being serviced by public water supply? For the house that does not have a well, is it being serviced by public water supply. If it is being serviced by public water supply, the water provider may have something to say about this. It could cost you more than its worth. The house that has a well could have had it installed when public water was not available.
A buddy of mine wanted to install a geo-thermal type well for his hot water. The county had a cow. I’m not sure they had a problem with the well or the fact that it was geo-thermal.
If you can tap into the well, the concern would be drawdown of the water supply. This should not be a major issue since the well is only connected to two houses. However, the owner of the original well could claim his water level has dropped significantly and therefore start a law suit. Depending on the size of the well, it may only support one residence. The water level could drop for any reason. There could be mining activity somewhere down gradient causing a significant draw down.
Do your research on the entire area. The county engineer should be able to direct you on the amount of water flowing through the aquifer & well and if you will negatively impact the aquifer or well.
This is not legal advice. However, prior to becoming a full-time investor, I practiced Civil Engineering for a number of years. If you don’t do your research, you could get slapped with an enormous fine/lawsuit.
Posted by Jennifer Hale on November 29, 2004 at 17:05:32:
Both houses are currently serviced by private wells (a public source is not available). The problem is that the water quality of my house is poor and I have drilled 3 additional wells with no luck. My parent’s well is more than sufficient to service both houses (has been looked at by a professional driller) I’m just concerned about the future legal problems if either of us would need to sell our houses.
I’m assuming both houses are adjacent to each other. If this is the case, I’m puzzled as to why your water quality is poor and your parents water quality is fine. It could be one well is being serviced by a deeper (or different) aquifer. I guess you had the depths of each well checked also? What exactly do you mean by poor water quality? Usually if all wells are beaing serviced by the same aquifer, then water quality is pretty much the same unless there is some type of treatment system in the home or for some reason there is something goofy going on under your property like a coal deposit or something.
I’m really curious as to why your water quality is poor and the adjacent home has good water quality. Soil Mechanics was my life and the ground does not change a whole lot within a few hundred feet if things are pretty uniform below ground. Anyway, I would check the elevations of the top of water of both wells and the elevation of the bottom of both wells. Did the drillers find anything weird in the soil samples (odors, color etc.)
You could try drilling sample wells at the far left, right and rear of your property to see if the quality changes. Depending where the good water quality well is located, you could try drilling as close as you can to it.
I’m going through all the possible scenarios because people will be people and later on down the line someone might have a problem with both houses sharing the same well even if one well can support both houses.
Posted by Jennifer Hale on November 30, 2004 at 07:19:26:
Yes, the houses are adjacent, though they are about 400 yards apart, so it will be difficult to drill too close to the good water supply. (We live in rural PA and both have over 2 acre lots.) My current well is over 150 feet deep, where my parent’s is only about 50 feet deep, so obviously we are in different veins of water. Their water doesn’t need any treatment but a small filter. Mine has about every Culligan system on it, but the treated water is still extremely high in TDS and Sodium Chloride. In only 9 months of use, it has rusted and pitted my high quality stainless steel silverware, has rusted the rack in my brand new dishwasher, and has discolored my Delta brilliance finish faucets which are guaranteed not to discolor. In the other drilling attempts we have tried to maintain the same depth as my parents in order to find the same quality of water. The first well yielded water, but the gravel was so tight that it only produced about 2 gallons a minute. The driller then moved and found water that was pumping over 15 gallons a minute and of good quality but it was in extremely fine sand and kept caving in and plugging up. He then drilled several feet deeper hoping to find gravel, but ended up in blue clay which also caved in around the pump. We are going for another attempt today in the last corner of the property to see if we can find the same water in a good gravel. If we don’t find water here, I wanted to be prepared with other options, but my gut feeling and the advice I’ve received here and in other places leads me to beleive that a shared well can be trouble.