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| The well-drilling machine |
💧 "Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge 💧
Hello Friends 👀👀
I am here to recite to you a tale, a tale so chilling, so tormenting - that survival seemed a dubious prospect; where rationality was fading and soundness of mind was perilously hanging by the thread of madness.....okay, I'm just plagiarizing old novels in an imaginary Vincent Price voice 😏...but the saga of our water situation was really harrowing and here it is! Grab a snack and get comfy, this is a long one.
From June 29th to July 4th: we gradually ran out of water. When we bought the place, we were told it was a drilled well and that it was plentiful and up to code. This would mean that it was a 6" diameter casing (basically the hole) and drilled to about 80 feet deep. Since we bought the house in winter, the well cap was buried in snow.
When the snow melted, we saw that it was only a 4" casing. I think the only reason we had a steady supply of water for the first 6 weeks being here was due to the snow melt and early spring rainfall. Legal battle will follow - I have to contact my lawyer regarding the wrongful disclosure of the well size, depth and functionality.
We happened upon Dave Muir. He works for a company called Sussex Farm Supplies. They work with the local dairy farms to make sure the farms and critters have their water needs. He's one of those guys who wants to help, doesn't want to sell you what you don't need and seems to know everything! (Like Bill our realtor).
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| Submersible Pump |
Thursday July 2nd: Dave dropped by, measured our well and checked out our pump. He confirmed that we had a 54 foot well with a 4" casing and a jet pump that couldn't pull water up more than 25 feet. Dave suggested a submersible pump that would sit at the bottom of the well and pull up more water.
Saturday July 4th: We ran out of water completely.
Sunday July 5th: Dave came back to check out the piping and take some notes for the new pump installation. He brought us 3 large jugs of water to hold us over.
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| Gif I made from photos Alex took of me wielding the ax!! |
Our job that afternoon was to dig a trench from the old well to the house, so that Dave could hook up the electricity the next day. Alex and I took turns with the ax!!
The ground here is a mix of clay, rocks and gravel...very difficult to dig by hand. It took Alex and I an hour and a half to dig that small trench! We picked some fresh mint from the garden and relaxed with some mint juleps after that job. Oh...and cold showers using my watering can lol!
Monday July 6th: Dave came with his crew and installed the submersible pump. Logically we should have had lots of water, after all our old jet pump could only pull up water from 25 feet; Dave installed a pump that hit the bottom of the well at 54 feet. Everything was hooked up, Dave turned on the pump...after 14 seconds, we ran out of water. After another hour or so of testing things, he concluded our well was dry. (Friends, if you click on the "You Tube" link, bottom right of the above video, it'll be bigger; and btw, for some reason, the videos don't always appear if you read my posts on your phone).
Dave confirmed what we feared. This was the scariest part...knowing that a drilled well could cost upwards of $15,000. We were already tapped out financially from the $3700 car repair and the appliances purchase. Dave called around and said he found a well driller who could be here in the morning - which was a blessing because most well drillers this time of year were only giving new appointments a month away because they were so busy.
I called the 1-800 number of my bank and got flatly refused for financing; so I called a legal-loan-shark, "second-chance" financing company and secured a loan at 39% interest. 😭
Friends, I didn't eat for days last week. The stress of not having enough water to drink, cook, shower, do dishes and flush the toilet...plus there was the knowledge that we'd be paying back an insanely high-interest loan, leaving me and Alex basically house-poor again for the next 8 years. We were so ready to just give up.
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| Hitting The Ledge |
Tuesday July 7th: Mike Steeves and his crew arrived and started to drill. They hit "the ledge" (the bedrock) at 5 feet. He kept drilling and testing over and over. Every foot is $28. Each of those pipes is 25 feet. Every time we watched Mike add another pipe to the drill, we saw $700 plus taxes melting away...Alex and I stayed outside watching nervously the entire 6 hours it took for him to reach water at 300 feet. When we saw the water, we both had tears in our eyes! Out of relief and out of the pain of knowing that the drilling cost was $8400, the 20-foot casing (steel pipe) was $520, the well cap was $100, the drive-shoe (a coupling to prevent the casing from splitting) was $175, plus taxes...a grand total of $10,603.00. GULP. Here's the You Tube Link to the video I posted on Thursday showing the water gushing out of our new well. The cost of digging the well didn't include the cost of setting up the pump - another $2900.
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| My Poor Green Onions...Covered In Wet Rock Dust |
All of this goopy stuff is rock dust. Because of the rain we had, it soaked through and looks like cement - it really is like quick sand. But as soon as it has a day in the sun, it should dry up and we can shovel it out easily. Surprisingly my raised beds all survived the well drilling. Alex and I dusted them off with a paintbrush and hand broom, though we weren't sure if my green onion bed would survive with all of that wet rock dust all over it.
Thursday evening, I drove an hour each way to town to do the "first signing" of the home equity loan, or second mortgage, from that second-chance financing company. I had the second signing planned for Thursday morning and the money would be deposited into my account Friday. The idea of having a second mortgage on my home, after only having my FIRST mortgage for 3 months was depressing to me.
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| Our $100 Blue Well Cap |
Wednesday July 8th: Alex and I managed to get the goop off the green onion bed, fingers crossed they'll grow okay. Mike and his crew came back to test the level of the water in the well. He confirmed to us at this time that 4" casings were made illegal over 50 years ago and that our original well had likely been drilled (possibly by hand) in the 1950's. He also suggested that a hand pump was likely used when it was originally dug.
Overnight, the well filled up and we had about 270 feet of water storage; if my calculations are correct, that means we have about 418 gallons of water restored every 24 hours, just sitting in the well, waiting for us to use. Great news! Mike said he was hoping for more but that he always hopes for more! He also told us we had water running at a quarter gallon a minute - if this means anything to anyone! 😕
Mike: "Don't fill up your pool three times a week though!" Pool? Oh I wish lol! He assured us that what he saw meant we had plenty of water for the two of us, our pets and our garden.
That news was AWESOME.
What WAS NOT awesome was this second-chance loan company charging me 39% interest over 8 years and taking a lean on my home...it wasn't sitting well with me. It just feels like these companies profit off people who are desperate and in need, just feels wrong...I'm not self-entitled at all and I understand why banks don't loan money to every person who asks. But honestly, I have a stable respectable income, a small investment account, a great credit rating and a little bit of collateral now in the way of equity in my home. Why must these second-chance finance companies quadruple what the bank charges in the way of interest? Even credit cards only charge up to 29%! It's unethical in my view but they know they have you over a barrel and you have to go along with their fees and interest rate because you have no other choice (end of rant lol).
Anyway, I called the local branch of my bank and happened upon the bank manager, Natasha. I told her I was going to have a significant amount of money deposited into my account Friday and needed to have a bank draft prepared for the well drillers. She asked me about it and I explained the situation to her. She was amazing and said she'd try again to get me financed. She tried a line of credit, declined immediately. She tried a personal loan, declined immediately.
Natasha knew Dave and also Mike from the well drilling company. I think that really worked in my favour. Instead of giving up, she tried again, but this time, the terms were that the bank would pay the well drilling and pump invoices directly and I wouldn't see a penny in my account. I was very okay with that, I told Natasha I felt like she was my mom paying my bills for me and we both laughed. The reason why the bank wanted to do it this way, was to make sure I was financing for home improvement to add value to my home and not for drugs, vacations or frivolity. I had to wait another day to find out if it would be approved or not. We did NOT sleep well Wednesday night!
Thursday July 9th: Bill (our friend and realtor) came over with his backhoe and his buddy Mike to help us out.
He dug a 5-foot deep trench from the well to the house, for the piping and electricity. We are SO LUCKY to have Bill in our lives. He is going to ask us to pay for his gas and that's it. If we had to pay someone to dig a trench that would have been another 3 hours of labour plus transit and gas. Bill saved us a few hundred dollars.
While he was here, Bill also pulled down the eyesore of a staircase we had on the back of the house. The staircase, along with this cement-wall-that-leads-to-nowhere was causing too much pressure on the foundation of the house.
The ground on the other side of this cement-wall-to-nowhere was pushing on the wall, causing a large crack. This crack goes all the way inside to our basement foundation. You can see the vinyl siding is warping due to the pressure.
All of this pressure also made the basement door frame warp and we have to replace that door and frame before winter because it doesn't close properly. Bill is coming back in the next few days to cut down that cement-wall-to-nowhere and to apply compound cement to the inside crack in the foundation. He thinks the house may settle a little over the next few months and there is a possibility the door frame may slightly un-warp itself.
I drove about half an hour away to the closest gas station that had a pizza stand and picked up some pizzas for the guys for dinner. There is a reason why we call our cat "Hobo" Leo. Leo loves to sit on all sorts of items we would consider garbage...like plastic bags, old dirty newspapers and old pizza boxes!
Natasha at my bank called me with good news Thursday morning. I was approved for financing at 9% over 4 years. The bank only needed copies of the invoices and I sent them over promptly. I canceled my appointment with the loan-sharks second-chance financing company and was finally able to take a deep breath.
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| Alex found a little mouse scurrying in the dirt by the new well, the poor thing was terrified! He released it into the woods about a kilometre away. |
Friday July 10th: Dave and his crew came back and hooked up our submersible pump. He said the water might be muddy or cloudy for a while and that we should get it tested for potability. The well-drilling company will be doing a full potability-mineral test for us in about a month's time but I couldn't wait. I drove an hour and a half to a lab that analyzes water for potability for $50. We will have the results on Monday. Until then we are still drinking bottled water, but at least we can do dishes, flush the toilet, shower and water the garden! The water is very clear but bacteria isn't always visible so we just want to be safe.
Nature took care of the garden that night with a HUGE rainfall! I think that my shower Friday night was the best shower I ever had lol! 😄
The well is drilled, the pump installed, the trench dug and the financing in place. Now we just have to wait for Bill to come back and help us bury the trench. I'd like to just scatter some seeds all over this area, not necessarily grass, but something nice that will be green and soft and maybe grow fast. Any thoughts?
Gosh I didn't even mention the new washing machine...in short, it was washing the clothes, but the lights suddenly stopped working. When I started the machine, it was when we had plenty of water still so it had nothing to do with the water supply. In fact, as I type this, the machine still has water in it because I unplugged it at some point, not knowing if the thing would ever shut off! I think that some kind of chip in the computer is faulty. We haven't had a moment to even deal with this yet but we have a 5-year warrantee so I'm not worried about that. Mind you, the laundry is DEFINITELY piling up. It may be hand-washing again for a while once we get the clothesline put back up!
Nature at her best: we discovered we have patches and patches of wild blueberries growing!
I'll end this post with a photo of Charlie sniffing the air. We saw a beautiful deer this morning on our walk and Charlie kept scenting her for about 15 minutes. I got a video of the deer crossing the road, but my phone's video capabilities suck! (Here's the link for the video if you want to practice your squinting!)
If you're not too exhausted after reading this post, please join me on Thursday for our art date, the theme is Two Colours.
I hope that this post was useful, informative and interesting to anyone in this situation or who wants to know more about drilled water well systems! We learned first hand on this one, talk about "baptism by fire"! Knowledge though, as well as water, is priceless!
