Ridgetop - our place and how we muddle along

[Ridgetop]

Still trying to find out information on the water quality in the Carrizo acquifer. We are sitting on top of it in northeast corner of Wood County, Texas. I still think that drilling a new well woud be the best use of ur money but DS1 wants me to call the other people and talk to them about the fitration system, etc. I keep trying to tell hm that the 400' of pipe int the acquifer is pitted which is letting the iron and other impurities into the water but he said I should discuss it with the other fitration people. The well is at least 20-30 years old. DS1 said that the testing people disconnected the tank from the well and pulled the water out from the pump directly. It ran clear but had high levels of iron so he thinks the sediment in the tank is the problem and thinks that putting in the filtration system will fix it. Fine I will call the filtration people, but I really think we need a new well drilled. I don't undertand why they can't put a new smaller diameter pipe down the original 400' pipe but maybe it is too deep to do that.

Doing more checking o the Carrizo-Wilcx aquifer and the depth is between 360' and 400'. I wonder if we shuld have the driller go further down than 400' to guarantee water if the aquifer shrinks. This aquifer is supplying a lot of city and county water districts as well as agricultural irrigation and as more people move into the areas supplied by the aquifer it decreases.

I checked with Jeremy - one of our neighbors on the east side of 154. He does not have a well now but is planning to drill one. He said he had heard that some shallow wells have had problems but he is planning 400' also. I asked hm about the taste (which DS1 was worried about since it has iron and alkali) and he said that everyone with wells that use them for drinking said the water is excellent. That reassured us on drilling a new well. It is possible that our well has so much sediment because it is a shallower well and is pumping sediment in addition to whatever is coming through the pitted pipe. DH said that Mr. Folmar said the well was drilled in the 70's. Mr. Folmar said his dad did repairs on the pump more recently - about 20-30 years ago. I will call Mr Folmar and see if we can have the well drilled in late November when we are back on the ranch. I don't think the ground will be frozen then. Otherwise we can do it after the new year which might be better for us taxwise.

Three more ewes were marked by Junior today. That makes 5 ewes marked since putting him in to clean up. I will keep a lookout in January in case he is just being a h---y, happy ram. DS1 says several others are also marked on heads, sides, etc. LOL He gets down to business like his daddy, Lewis.

 

[farmerjan]

Explain why .... if the testing people pulled the pipe out of the storage tank... and it ran clear... that you don't go on and replace the storage tank? How big is the storage tank? OR why can't it be cleaned out? If there is iron in the well, there will "dollars to donuts", also be iron in the aquifer...
Also, they cannot put a smaller diameter pipe inside the existing one because then the submersible pump will not fit down into the well... on top of the logistics of trying to feed it 400 ft.... but then you said it is a "shallower well"... so I am confused.
If the present well is 400 ft now... then it is most likely in the aquifer already... so drilling a new well will not solve anything EXCEPT putting in a new storage tank along with new well pump etc.......
If the testing people could disconnect the current storage tank... then I don't see why it cannot be replaced, cleaned out, as in flushed out completely... pumping out all the sediment in it... if it is too big to just replace it ; then disconnecting it, pumping it down with a "trash pump" with as much mucky stuff as it can get... then running water at a high pressure and stirring it up as it is pumped out more... will clean it out. If it like a 50 or 100 gal storage tank, just replace it.... He//, you can get an upright poly storage tank to put in it's place for a couple hundred dollars... There are a couple of dairies that have upright water storage tanks that fill slowly and then they have several hundred gallons of water on demand for washing parlors or in the wash system... perfectly good clean water...
If the sediment was coming from the well then the well pump could be lifted 10-25 ft UP in the well so it is not sucking sediment at the bottom of the well... that is what we did at a farm we used to rent..... had the well people come and pull the pump up about 10-15 ft... WAH LAH.... clean water in a couple of days after the pipes were flushed out.

 

[farmerjan]

By the way, wells around here are 50 yrs old and older... easy.... and no one is drilling new wells unless theirs goes dry... and some are actually sinking their current well deeper...
The well at this house is over 75 years old... my problem right now is the pressure and I think the pressure tank with the "bladder in it" is bad.... Worst case scenario is I will replace the pressure tank... and I want to put in a large storage tank to have water available without the pump having to kick on and off so much.....
In CT as a kid growing up, many of those houses have wells that are REAL old... In one house that was 150 yrs old m/l...... I had a hand dug well that I used and put a gallon of chlorine bleach in it once a year... had it tested after about 4-6 months... EVERY YEAR... and it tested fine... the bleach was to kill most pathogens...

 

[Ridgetop]

The water in the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer has a somewhat high iron content as well as some aquilinity. The iron in the water is what is being blamed for eating pin holes through the piping. Apparently the current well was dug in1972 so is an older well. The well piping is probably cast iron. The iron and calcium may have combined to pit it and ruin the joints. Adding chlorine bleach will cancel the iron pitting in new piping. The filtration people want to filter the iron and treat the water - and charge $400 every 6 months to do that. I will check about having the bladder tank replaced instead of drilling a new well. When we get back I will do another water test. I am not sure why the wells here are not lasting longer. There have been 5 wells on this property in the last 200 years, but I don't know how deep they were. If we have to dig a new well, we will since we want the benefit of well water. The oldest well we know about was about 200 years old and served everyone on the road north/south through east Texas. The site of that well is in our vegetable garden. The other 3 were drilled/dug before 1940. I don't know why they were abandoned, maybe they were shallower or the shaft collapsed. I am not sure why the well can't be redrilled but at 400' of pipe, we were told it would cost more to pull out the old pipe than to drill a new well. The old pipe may be cased in concrete or something.

Jeremy told me that the reason we don't have much city water pressure is because we are at the end of the Yantis Water Co-Op pipline. When he built his house (converted a commercial building) he went with Fork Lake Water District since the storage tank is right near his house and he gets better pressure that way. He doesn't have a well but plans to drill one this year. The water is really good to drink, so we will do more investigation and maybe just replace the tank first. If we have to drill a new well, we can use the new tank on it.

 

[Ridgetop]

DH has now decided that a scenic trip is just what he wants. He has identified a scenic route in Arizona and one in New Mexico. They will only take us a day or two out of our direct route to meet DS1 in Amarillo. On the way back he wants to drive through the Painted Desert. Tomrrow we will pick up the maps from Auto Club. We will pack the car on Thursday and leave Friday right after PT. I will pack some lunch and snacks and we will plan to eat supper at Denny's (10-15% off for AARP members).
Free hot breakfast at the motels. We will stop every couple hours to walk around. If there are Visitor Centers at the different scenic areas we can spend some time there or at small museums.

I bought a pair of sweat pants at Ross (Senior Discount day today) since I only brought warm weather clothes to CA for my surgery stay.