Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Need a well, bore it

Need a well?

If you need a well the one mistake that people make is they think the only way to have water is from a well that is drilled.

There is another option; it is having a bored well.

What’s the difference you ask?

For one the price.

I have your attention now don’t I, a bored well is a lot cheaper to have installed then a drilled well.

What’s the difference?

The difference is that a drilled well is completed by using a drilling rig to drill down with a pipe about 5 inches in diameter until you have enough water to satisfy your needs. The great thing about a drilled well is that you can go as deep as you need too in a very short amount of time. Once the casing is installed then the well is completed, all it requires is for you to put a pump and a water line down to the bottom to get the water out of the pipe and up to the house.

A bored well is used when you believe that you have water near the surface. A bored well uses a boring machine mounted on the back of a large truck. The bit is 3 to 4 feet wide, they can actually bore up to 80 feet down. That means instead of an 80 ft well at about 8 inches you would have an 80 foot well at 4 feet wide, this acts as a holding tank for your water.  That allows a lot more water to be held in reserve waiting for you to use it.

Usually when wells are bored they only have to go 25 to 40 feet in the ground. Once they hit their depth and have enough water they install concrete well tiles to fold back the earth. The well tiles are then parged to stop water surface run off from entering the well, which is a safety measure to help keep your well from being contaminated by chemicals or bacteria that is found on the surface. A pump is installed at the bottom of the well with a water line to supply your home with water.

Bored wells have the capacity to hold a lot of water in their large well tiles, this means that the flow rate for a bored well can be a lot less than a drilled well. With a drilled well you want a high refresh rate of water because the amount of water in the well is minimal and with a lot of water usage in a short amount of time it can be run dry. The opposite is needed with a bored well, because of the holding capacity of a bored well you can have a large volume of stored water that will be used before the well runs dry. If the bored well has a low or slow re-fresh rate it wouldn’t matter as much because the amount of water used has to be extreme to empty the reserve. Usually the only restrictions on a bored well with a low flow rate is that they not be used to fill pools or to water expansive irrigation systems.

The key with a bored well is that you want water that is close to the surface for boring to work, if you see signs on your property that you have water close to the surface or springs on the property then talk to a well borer. If you think that you will have to go down a long way for your water then you should stick with a drilled well and call a well driller.

It never hurts to understand your options especially when your talking about something as important as the water for your home and family.

Rob Abbott
Operations Manager
Village Builders Inc.

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