It's Done: The Well That Is.

The guys showed up at the Aerie early this morning and did all the work necessary to connect the new well to the old pipe, dropped the new pump (and pipe and electric wires) down the new well, back filled the trench and then packed up and left just before 4 PM.

Now comes the period of slowly purging the well and then refilling the cistern. On the guys' advice, I'm running the pump for 10 minutes every hour or so. At first the water was really red but it's getting better. By tomorrow morning...after it's been sitting overnight...things should be even better.

Some particulars about the well:

• They drilled down 320 feet.
• The pump is five feet above the bottom.
• The static level of the water (the top of the column when it's not being drawn down) is 80 feet below the surface. (That leaves a column of water in the well that's 235 feet tall.)
• Each foot of that column amounts to 1-1/2 gallons of water for a total of 345-350 gallons.
• The pump can pump 5 gallons a minute.
• The well recharges at a rate of 3 gallons a minute.

Although it would take quite some time, I could draw the well down to nothing since the recharge rate is slower than the pump. But that would be BAD. As it is, drawing too miuch water at one time would really stir things up and produce huge amounts of sediments. Hence the ten minute run time that I'm using. Once things are purged and the cistern is filled, there's a float switch in the cistern. It will come on when the water level drops a certain amount, the pump comes on and fills the cistern to an upper level and then shuts off. There's about an six or seven inch difference between the two positions. Each inch represents five minutes of run time and about 25 gallons of water. Therefore, six inches of water would be 150 gallons of water. That's about half of the supply in the well and drawing down that much at one time shouldn't be a problem.

Even so, I'm going to be looking into rain barrels this spring. The garden will need watering!

Meanwwhile, the excavation really made a mess! Sure, it's at the end of the driveway and not the middle, but there will be a need to remove some of the rocks that were brought up to the surface. Then, after Mother Nature has tamped it down with her frost heaving, the earth will have to be leveled. Luckily, there's still room for the Aveo and Jeep to be parked next to the house and not out front with the Tundra and RV.