The realtor has a responsibility to tell the buyer of any problems on the property it's called failure to disclose in Texas you can sue because of it. And you will always win keeping everyone honest
What about the property owner's responsibility to ensure they have access to electricity, if they want it, and water. What fools would buy bare property, build a house, and then complain after the house is built?
Thinking about the big land swindells out between Austin and San Antonio the show Green acres beautiful forest and Creeks filled with clear blue water. These places are in the Chihuahua desert there are no green fields the only time the creeks have water in it is the rainy season that's the springtime. And if you do find water you're going to have to go down a half a mile some of those boils are a mile deep on those huge ranches. They have giant pumps to pump it up. It's a big rip-off they know people want to move to Texas and they advertise this desert land as a an oasis or whatever. It's only $140,000 to get 10 a and a metal building. And they don't show the Sand road going up to it. Four-wheel drives have a hard time getting through that sand. Massage lamp prices in Texas or grossly inflated. But if a Democrats take the White House again I can see those prices coming down but nobody able to get a home loan anymore. Yeah commercial real estate in a deep dog do. What are all those small Banks collapse that are given loans on these rip-offs land prices will get back to normal. 3,000 to 5,000 an acre for unimproved land in the middle of nowhere. 10,000 an acre for useless desert land . 20 years ago I paid $250 an acre for land not far from there just to have a place to park we like to go out and hunt small game. Shoot coyotes or whatever. Any old boy felt guilty for charging me that much I bought two acres. It cost me $15 a year for taxes and that's a rip-off.
I would have thought that doing both of those things would be the norm before actually building the house. It doesn't make any sense to build the house and THEN see if water is available or the soil percs enough to put in a septic.
@@valeriestevens5250 So many things need water that I'm surprised it didn't have impact during the construction phase due to the lack of water. Hell, you got to be able to test the plumbing before you close everything in.
Please note how OP doesn’t like any of the comments that make him feel like a f**kin stupid piece of idiotic s**t that is only now realizing why everyone was making fun of him for the whole build
I was thinking that might have been a good idea. 😆 🤣 😂 I wonder if they knew about the triassic basin thing before beginning. Obviously, the neighbors knew.
If the area is already known to be low water producing then I would think either the builders or local municipality would recommend drilling the well first before construction begins. Just common sense, the world needs more every day .
Before I bought the land that my current house is on, I had it evaluated for its ability to support a septic system. Then, I looked at neighboring properties to see if they had wells (they did). After I bought the land, the first thing I did was have a well drilled. It took me 2 attempts followed by a fracking to get an adequately producing well. Only then did I move forward with building a house on the property. Take care and God Bless.
That's exactly the way to do it. The average family in the US uses 300 gallons of water a day, over 100,000 gallons a year. People underestimate their water usage.
I live in Northwest New Jersey. My next-door neighbor's well is at 50 feet in depth. When I built my house they drilled my well about 50 feet away from his, 10 feet from the property line. They ended up drilling 200 feet and only got the state minimum of 1 gallon per minute. It is amazing that just a short distance makes that much of a difference.
Just built a home last year. First thing we did was make sure we had a good well before committing to the build. Make sure you have water and septic approved before building
Love your content. You provide well produced videos of how wells and water supply are created, along with educating people what you do and WHY. The "why" factor you take the time to explain is what takes your videos over the top, reveals your deep knowledge of the industry, and a compliment to your family company of raising another generational business owner that will continue the business yet another generation into the future.
On our farm we are blessed with springs that fill cattle troughs for the critters and do rain catchment with an old cistern and another cistern up from the house. I couldn't imagine building a house and not having water. As for that one customer, it's ok as a business to fire a customer who continues to screw things up.
I am a carpenter. People always think that one the first meeting I am there to sell them something. I don't have anything to sell in that meeting. They do. I'm there to be sold on their dream. I walk from lots of potential jobs because the customer doesn't know what they want and for a shop that is 100%custom that doesn't work. If they can't find a color in the hole Benjamin Moore or Sherwin deck how can I help them. They say they want white. Ok great I have over 100 different varieties of white. One one interview they didn't know what color they wanted. So I asked what way do you want the white to go. To the gray, yellow, or red. They didn't know what I was talking about. So I told them the three popular colors that went throughs ways. They then said," I thought that you said you had 100's for whites to choose from. Why did you only give us three options?" I told them the scale that each of the whites where in and that I was trying to limit them to around 25 choices. I told them that they didn't sell me on their job and that they would need to find a shop that would tell them what they wanted and sell them what they had to offer. Because I only offer you your dream I'm not going to be able to do anything for you. In fact you have just fired me. If you give me your price I will recommend a few shops that can do the work in that price range. They said something. You have three choices in your price range. IKEA, or the boxes that are in stock at a box store. You will have to install them to stay within your budget. Then the wife went to the other room and came back with a bid from IKEA. I told them to double to triple that depending on how custom they wanted. Then I said can I show my self out. The door was over there. Usually they don't fully understand what happened. A year later I got a call from them asking if I could fix finish the kitchen as they told the other guy to leave. I said yes I can it will be $500 a running foot. So it will be about $60,000 for me to finish up for you. They said I don't think so to other guy was doing it for $30,000. I said then I think that you got what you paid for. Good luck finding someone to help you out. Just remember if you are looking for a trade to do something for you most of us don't have anything to sell to you. If you feel like you are on a car lot then you need to call someone else. Most trades offer wants. Ask yourself do you need to be sold on something that you have already decided you needed and wanted. Answer is that you don't. You just have to agree on the price for what you want. So you will try to talk me down and in turn tell me how much you value my work. When my price goes up because you don't want to give anything up to lower the price. I always go through every wall and say what I will deliver. I do that so you have a chance to say what you thought you were getting. So if giving a price and asking questions about what goes where is selling then I must be a great salesman because I usually get a check because I have walked away from the people who don't want what I have to offer.
We bought rural land in upstate SC and the first thing was to be sure it had water before building. One neighbor had a 650 ft well producing 4 gal per minute, another had a deep well giving 3.5 gal per hour. We got water at 420 ft and 250 gal per minute. Driller said we hit an underground river. He certified it at 125 gal per minute because he didn’t think people would believe it
Depends on where you live. I live in Alaska, the area I live has water. Here you can buy land and build a house before your well is in. Finding water isn't an issue.
In Arizona They allow builders to build houses in areas that do not produce any water. The owners of the houses have water trucked in. Then the city of scottsdale cut off the water trucks due to low water reserves from the colorado river and these entire communities have no water. Then the county wanted us to pay to install piping from Scottsdale to the community that ran by our neighborhood and we all have working wells that we paid to install before we built out homes, (because we arent dumb). So we refused and sued the county because they are the idiots who lets the builders build on dry land that they knew was dry from the start.
Worked 40 years in open pit mining. Water is where you find it. You can look up the 2000 foot face of a Open pit mine . You may see a water vain coming out of the pit wall, and move over a foot and miss the water vain completely.
@@stillwill1808no pit miner can spell the same word the same way twice. Also the term is "gneiss" (then again maybe only geologists would know that one)
Where I grew up in Franklin County, NC there was seven natural springs all within about a 1/4 of mile of each other. A few of them dried up every summer. One had such a low flow it turn the woodlands around it into a marsh. I never knew exactly where the water started at. Another was too far from the house to be much use but its mouth made for a great location to camp at. Fresh cold water bubbling right out of the ground. The last spring was where our water for the house came from. We literally just pumped it to the house as it flowed out of the ground. And that spring had been providing water to that home since recorded history in Franklin County. (Yes, my childhood home was well over 200 years old. It literally predated official government records. And it still stands to this day though the house and property are no longer in the family.) Around the early 2000s an inspector came through and wanted us to stop using the spring water. They wanted a proper well dug up to supply water to both my parents house and my grandmother's home. Dad hired a douser and had a well dug where he recommended. I have long since forgotten how deep the well was but it produced an insane amount of water per minute. Not even a hundred years ago, people in that area could have hand dug a well and hit water before even going 20 feet. These days, the water table has been hit so hard in the area due to agriculture and development that you will drill 300 feet easily before striking water. I remember as a child hating to see somebody drill a well near the property. Thinking every well dug was going to impact all those natural springs.
What a nightmare, build a home and have no useful water. Great video as ever. I hope your customers know how lucky they are to have an honest well company to use.
This absolute failure, and I mean he’s a world class, award-winning dumbass, should not even HAVE customers at all because he just did everything exactly backwards and is a disgrace to architects, contractors, and their technicians everywhere
Why anyone would buy a piece of land not knowing if there was water is beyond me... I had to chuckle when you commented; the builder probably got a good deal on the land.
Seems like an absolute exercise in futility to me - poking holes in the dirt hoping to find water. And then you have to check whether it's contaminated with anything from the neighbour's septic tank to the pig farm up the road or the chemical factory in the next town or just toxic minerals because that's what you find in the ground. Meanwhile, if you have enough rainfall to sustain agriculture, you have enough rainfall to sustain a household from the water that lands on your roof. You don't have to worry about some corporation dumping their wastes in it. You don't have to worry about a neighbour overdrawing it until the water table drops and your well can't access it. The water that runs off your roof into your tank is 100% yours. You can put filters on it if you're worried about birds getting on your roof, but it's never going to have salts and toxins in it like dirt water. And you always know exactly how much you've got in storage!
@@Baebon6259 If the government won't let you keep the rain that falls on your own roof, that's where you don't buy land in that government area at all. Do you ever find it ironic that this sort of shite happens in a country that calls itself "free" ?
@@tealkerberus748 That is turn of the other century technology, it wasn't a good idea for drinking water back then. Maybe this is one of the reasons we live longer now. That water would be so unsafe from birds, bacteria or even bugs and dead animals.
I've worked with landowners in Pittsylvania co. That had similar issues. They sold the timber off it and replanted as they knew they wouldn't get water so they couldn't subdivide. Great explanation.
Well...lol... I learned one thing. Do not drop rocks down your well! I have actually done this. Live and learn. It turned out I had city water. I do plan to make use of the well. Hopefully, I didnt jam it up and can get that pump out. Cool video.
As someone whom lives in your service area. It very interesting to see your work and deep knowledge of the earth and drilling skills especially because it is relevant to me and my location. Keep up the awesome videos. I really enjoyed this one and how you kept track of the plight of the builder. Thank you.
Drop ice cubes instead of rocks in your well to check the static level of the water. I lived for 20 years on a well that produced 1 gallon per hour…24 gallons per day, so I know what it’s like to live without water.
Thats a good idea, seems to me that consistently pumping into a storage tank is the only way to make a well like that produce enough water to sustain average use and have backup for washing machines or 5 minute showers
Why not go with rain water at this point? Like I get it if your in a place that hardly rains. But at this point it wouldn't take much rain to meet 24g a day and you already need most the same filtration
My parents had to go down 80 feet to hit water. More than aa decade later we had a drought and the water table dropped. We had to go down to 120 feet to get water again.
That is fascinating. I grew up in east springfield pa. 5 miles from lake erie. Water everywhere, but not so much on our patch. The well adjacent to our house (well #2 on our land) was great water, but forever going dry. Laundry day was stress day. Dad had #3 drilled, about 50 feet away, at douser's advice. There was water and lots of blue clay. You couldn't get clear water at 500'. It was always gray. It was very disheartening. After saving up more money, he got the douser again, and went to this field adjacent to our property. He sited a location where two streams came together. #4 got plenty of water at 30'. It was land the government abandoned after new Rte 20 was abandoned. The well also dried up during drought, and my parents had to have water delivered. It recovered when normal rainfall returned. When both of my parents died, we put it up for sale. Our neighbor, arse hat that he is, wanted it cheap.. we said no. So he physically occupied the land that we had maintained for 40 years which the government had abandoned, and also had our well. LSS, our realtor advised we drill #5 well. We found good and plenty water 30" from that initial well dad drilled. Needless to say, any time i looked for a house, the first thing I checked was the water supply. Lots of pressure, clear, sweet, water.
@@2tubas seeing as that was 50+ years ago and geologists were not thick on the ground then or now. It is a story about places where water seems easy to find. It is called Springfield, after all, and it is in close proximity to a huge body of water. I'll take your comment as from a sarcastic grumpy pants know it all. We have all been 13 at one point in our lives, so we understand.
I live in East Texas and we have abundance of water 💦 where my farm is located is on a river which it only takes about 80 feet to get plentiful water to where I live 10 miles away it’s taking 300 feet 👣. Great video!!!!
We had a local old time driller in our area who knew the area very well. He didn't believe in the dowser. However, if you needed a well, he could come look at your location and tell you where to drill and how deep it was going to be. He was always correct. He'd been drilling in the area for over 50 years.
If you look at Africa, on the East coast, it's splitting off and it's making a new continent. It's called the East Africa Rift Zone. This is similar in nature
Had a business in an industrial park just outside Raleigh city limits. It was on a well. There is a fault line from there to Chapel Hill. Owner’s son said, when they were drilling, the sediment looked like diamonds. Eons old ocean. One side of the road, water, the other side, no
I live in a Triassic basin region in Chatham County, NC and have seen how difficult it is to find water. I had a house built 3 years ago and my well was drilled to 600 ft. I ended up with around 2.5 gal/min, so I was lucky I guess. Had I known about this region, I would have had the well drilled before the house was built. My neighbor found water, 1.5 gal/minute after his third try. A neighbor very close by got 12 gal/min at 400 ft. The driller told me that several homes down the road weren't so lucky and got less than 1 gal/min.
Here in Southeast Arizona, everybody depends on Wells at 400 ft. A Minnesota dairy with thousands of cows came in and drilled a many thousand feet well to the bottom of the aquifer. All the water will be gone. The whole valley will go dry. Arizona legislature paid to ignore this crime.
If you have enough rainfall to support agriculture, you have enough rainfall to support a household on what lands on your roof. If you don't have enough rainfall to support agriculture, why are you living there? Only fools depend on dirt water for drinking.
Ist thing we did before buying the property was to interview property owners and well drillers. 1st thing after buying was drilling. Hit water at 480' total depth 530'. Grundfos 6 SQF 3. Runs with 4 panels totaling 1150 watts of solar or Honda 2200 generator.
In Montana, it's not uncommon to have to go to 1000ft before you find water. Also most contractors, in rural Montana at least, will refuse to build on your land if you haven't drilled or at least tried drilling for a well first.
@countrysister700 we try not to hit our aquaifer up here since most of it is buried 10,000ft plus deep. Also we have to worry about, pardon the pun, Texas size granite boulders randomly left behind underground from the last ice age.
See geologists really are worth money! I briefly looked at the map and the history of the basin and man that is some tough sledding. Really good video summarizing how you have to know the area and the geology
Wow, definitely crazy and educational at the same time. It would be nice if localities would keep those areas zoned for something else so people don't get screwed on homes.
When I was growing up in Dayton Ohio my grandfather had a well drilled and it was only 50ft deep and had 20ft of water in it and they used it once with a fire pumper truck and never pumped it dry....It had a steel casing because it is a gravel aquifer we never seen the level move much at all in 20 years...
@@davidkettell1073 Ohio is pretty big.....that's a silly statement. Where in Ohio? Parts near the big lake? Near PA? Near KY? Near PA? They don't all have water like that.
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MOVE TO CREATE AN RURAL WATER DISTRICT?? IN THE LATE 1960s WE PUT TOGETHER AN RURAL WATER DISTRICT WHICH WAS SUBSIDIZED BY FEDERAL LOANS , AND I PURCHASED TWO HOOKUPS FOR MY PROPERTIES WE HAD AND STILL HAVE AN EXCELLENT WATER SYSTEM TODAY!
You should see what it is like in northern Arkansas. Flint, shale and limestone mountain tops have challenging to find aquifers. Many homes actually take surface water off springs (not allowed today) because well drilling can be such a bust proposition. The home I grew up in was out of city limits and supplied by a community estate well and pump. It's situated down in a bit of a valley and they still had to punch down 1200 ft in 1970s to hit water. Average water producing well in the county is 450 ft deep and it's ALL rock. There is very little soil on the Ozark mountains.
Go rain catch... 40 X 40 ft roof in an area with appx 25 inches a year of rain has potential to catch up to 27,000 gallons a year, if you have the tank space. That's far more than you need for a family of 6. Tanks are the expensive part. 3000 gallon tanks are close to $3000. 30,000 gallon tank is appx $17,000. IBC is $25 to $250 for 300 gallons. The cheaper ones are not potable, but can flush out to be used for the lawn if you care. $120 to $150 is common for potable used IBC. I let the overflow of the 3000 go to a chain of IBC tanks to use for irrigating a garden. These IBCs had car wash soap. No problem for plants after one rinse. You could use the water to shower, but I wouldn't drink it. Look up average rainfall patterns and determine how much tank you need. A 1 inch shower a week, you don't need much tank space. All the rain in 2 months and dry the rest of the year, you need a lot of tank space. A lot cheaper than drilling a 1000 ft well that comes up dry.
@@5.43v Netherlands here, lots of farms and more remote houses used rainwater till the late 60 s, we did drink it as well, never ever had problems with it,
Awesome video! 👋 @1:57 Just an FYI.............. a big storage tank doesn't necessarily mean there's little/no water. In my area (central coast Cali.) EVERY rural property has one or more big storage tanks regardless of how much the well produces. Tank is needed for possible fire suppression. My well is over 10 GPM and my storage tank is a 5000 capacity. Have a 3 phase high pressure pump to supply the property. That's just the way we roll here. Also, JMO.......... paying a douser to find water is borderline fraud.
An above ground storage tank where he is, and anything north, is a HUGE red flag. It means no water. And anything north of there means it could freeze so the risk of a tank is no joke. I'm only an hour north of here and my in-ground pool freezes to 8", so a tank would freeze through. Your experience is VERY specific to your area and the need for fire suppression water.
@@ian3580 North Alabama here. I have an above ground cistern and a slow well. Water out of the ground is about 50 degrees, and it doesn't take much to overcome the freezing. Last winter, I ran a stock tank heater for one day during the very coldest weather, but didn't really need to. The exposed tank in the video that hasn't been painted is dumb though. It will grow algae and be much more susceptible to freezing. Paint it silver, put grass clippings or wood shavings around it and all's good.
@@hchickpea As you said, you're in North Alabama......I'm guessing freezing is a lot less a concern than it is in Virginia and other points much further north. I'm not far from him, and a stock tank heater wouldn't do it without a decent amount of insulation.
Definitely a very cool video! I am one of those who loves a lot of details :) I use to have water hauled about 25 years ago, but He retired, and never found anyone else in this area who delivers. I have been collecting rain water from my roof for over 25 years now :) Zero problems, always plenty of water! (I have 2 - 2500 gallon storage tanks) :)
So, let me get this straight, after seeing the video, with what looks like a house in finished state, someone was supposed to "CHECK FOR WATER AVAILABILITY," I'll bite, just who the "F" would that be, inquiring minds would luv to know????? Let me guess, the bank is your answer. Palm to forehead, rolling my eye's very loudly, even you can hear them, ROTFLMAOFF!!! ROTFLMAOFF = Rolling On The Floor Laughing My A$$ Off.
Wow. What an absolutely fascinating story. Definitely pays to do your research before you buy a piece of land in that area! I can’t imagine how terrible it would feel to build your dream house on a visually great plot of land; only to not have access to water other than by having it delivered and stored in a tank in your yard…… 🤯🤯 Philip, your videos never disappoint. When TH-cam first suggested one about a year ago; I would never have guessed that out of the mostly technology/IT channels I’m subscribed to, that a channel about water well drilling would be in my top five favorite channels. Keep up the great work man!
When we were landlords we were responsible for three wells. There often were things going wrong including plumbing issues because of the wells. That's all behind us and we're very happy just paying a city water bill and having zero problems.
This video was very informative and you did a greeat job of rxplaing the triacic basin. You have a tremendous knowledge of well drilling. You produce the best videos on well drilling. Your customers are blessed to have such a great well driller to provide them with a reliable weter souece!!!
In Arizona, you can tell where the ground water can be found. It's where the housing already is. There are large stretches between towns where no one lives...
Before I purchased my land I contacted the adjoining neighbors and asked about water quality and quantity. I also requested an old style pounder vs rotary drill rig. The well driller could not pump out the well at only 60' but went 120' for reserve.
Near Lubbock, TX, I see people buy a 10.1 acre lot, build the McMansion, then the drilling rig shows up. It leaves, returns a few weeks later, leaves, and may return again. Many of the McMansions have big water tanks in the garage, the water truck comes by once a week. Oddly enough here it is also very difficult to get water out of the Triassic.
Truth. We buy our farms in the region based 1st of water (quantity then quality) and 2nd off soil (depth then quality). One property we have all the wells only do 50-75gpm but quality is superb. Another the quality is OK and most wells around the property only do 75-80gpm. Every well and every new well we’ve drilled on it does a true 150+gpm. Well worth a premium price!
I enjoy watching your show..Im no well driller but my area is all wells. We are in the Mojave desert, very little rain but lots of ground water. Pretty much guaranteed to hit water anywhere you drill and 10 gpm+.
What a story. I had no idea there are such water well inhospitable geological areas on the East coast. Drilling a well is a nail biting exercise if you are the owner builder. We developed our property in 1980, drilled the well, installed the septic system and electric power and telephone. We lived in a mobile home the first couple of years. That way when we were built our house we knew the expenses we could not control were for the most part taken care of. Drilling a dry hole would have broken us.
till it dries up! so south GA water table is very high, 50 -70ft you have water. thing is, it dries up a lot. this time of year when we dont get water, you get no water. even when you drill deeper still same issue
@@michaeldomanski9352 roll the dice brother. not my problem to dig out of (pun). and several miles certainly not. plenty of data to very well estimate what you will run into based on your geographic area, which is quite bigger than a mile or so down the road....
@@jim_ward if your lake is anything like ours, you wouldnt want to use that water to wash your car..... theres a lot of factors. generally well is cancer, septic is a pain. but only morons willingly go on well water for anything but a seldom used retreat cabin or something. you will not change my mind.
The geology lesson on rift valleys was very interesting. Some of the most famous rift valleys in the world are Lake Baikal in Siberia, and Lake Tanganyika, etc. and the Red Sea in Africa. This is the same sort of thing except it filled in with soil instead of water over the eons. It makes plenty of sense once you explained it. I had no idea that this existed right here in North Carolina. Oh, and you are definitely a lot closer to being a geologist than the average person. Thanks very much for a very interesting video.
In Australia we don’t drill for water mainly, in areas with no town water we place large rain water ranks on concrete slabs with an electric pump to pump water to the house. If it don’t rain to fill the tanks we buy drinkable water from a supplier to fill the tanks.
My well here in North Florida is 385 feet deep. The water from the 4 inch pipe was shooting 3.5 foot over the pipe when they finished drilling. I put in separate piping bypassing the pump, it will push water into the house. Not enough to shower but plenty at the sinks and tude. Most of the homes in our area are the same. I guess we are lucky as to water here.
Where I live, Wisconsin, we have the Great Lakes. The water table from those lakes make those that have to rely on well water to almost never come up dry. Up here we have Terraine that was formed from the glaciers, and large meteor impacts over the deep history of the Earth. I can only imagine what the owner of the spec home is going through now that he sunk all the money into a property with no water. Reading up on the basin you dealt with in that area it also appears that one can also have problems with a septic perking out. Up here some have to use a mound system, which is more costly, but a conventional leach bed is still a likelihood. I would think a brand-new home with zero ground water is going to be almost impossible to sell. Glad I came across your channel, by pure chance.
New subscriber now because of this video. Wow, who knew this is an issue in an area like that. "Appears" to be normal. Definitely eye-opening if you're house hunting. Thanks for this video.
I worked on water well pumps since 1976, my dad drilled from 1945 to 1965, then he worked on pumps from 1965 to 1980, now my son owns his own water well pump co.
I have listened to the depth of y'all's wells, and here in South Carolina our 12" irrigation wells are only 400ft. The water hasn't dropped a millimeter since it was put in 10 years ago. It makes 500 gal/min. Glad i don't live in Virginia.
Well drilling has always mystified me. Once I wrapped my head around rock being porous, I had to learn that the surface of the land today was not always the surface of the land in the past. In Illinois we had a lot of glacial action across the northern part of the state. For those who haven't been here, it is flat with the exception of areas around rivers and where the glaciers melted and left hills. But below that is an entirely different surface which you can sort of see in the southern part of the state where the glaciers didn't grind everything flat. The problem in the north comes from the fact that the glaciers didn't actually grind it flat. It ground the tops off some of the hills and filled the valleys in with other material. In the areas where the tops of the hills got ground off, the bedrock can be really close to the surface, 5 or 6 feet. But in the areas that were valleys that got filled in, the bedrock may be 600 feet deep. And just because it was a valley doesn't mean there isn't water. It depends what the glacier left there. Sometimes it was gravel and other times fine silt or clay. You can see the patterns today in where the houses were built. The houses got built where they are because there is water there. So there will be a line of houses which follow where the water is but separated by fields that are a mile wide. Dig on a line between 2 houses and it is a really good chance you will hit water. Dig off that line and you will likely not find any water. Wells through bedrock are easy, those wells through the other stuff have to be cased full depth or they will collapse. And then there is northern Michigan. You can literally drive a well with a well point attached to galvanized pipe with a sledge hammer. Rarely do you have to go more than 30 feet and you have all the water you need. It is all sand though so wells going bad is pretty common as the sand fills in the well point. Not to worry though, go a few feet to the side and drive a new well with a new point and you are back in business.
I used to drive a big truck and it was so boring driving those long straight roads after 50 miles I would come to a town full of old houses lining the street which always made an elbow through town. 35 mph for the one cop and out the other side. What do these people do for a living? So happy to cross the bridge to Kentucky.
I really enjoy your videos and sure do appreciate the education. I've always been fascinated with your industry. I've had 5 wells drilled thru the past 25 years in north Georgia.
This was super insightful as a visual learner I wish I could better visualize what you’re talking about. Almost like dig a hole so deep I can see the variations but hey this was super informative
In this area the rule of thumb is if you are hitting red sandstone made of very fine particles and random green small rocks, you will find nothing at all. Blue, slate colored, or gray to light tan granite indicates you may have an interruption and could be where water collects. The red sandstone can vary in depth to only 800-1200 feet in some areas to 10k+ feet in others and will hold zero water. You are pretty much correct on the Triassic basin. In Pangea Virgina, Carolinas, and surrounding areas were smashing into the African plate. Layers of rock were bunched up, pancakes on top of eachother, turned vertical, etc. This is essentially what formed the Appalachian Mountains. When the plates started to pull away large rifts formed and tended to sink into valleys. All the sediment then filled in the valleys creating the Triassic basin areas. These valleys got filled with clay and sedimentary rock (sandstone and siltstone). These rock layers are heavily packed and have no spaces for water to really flow or propagate. The only water that moves is along seams of igneous rock that formed along the cracks in big vertical veins. These large veins are called dikes of Diabase rocks. In general, the only place water will be found is by finding the exposed edge of these vertical channels and drilling along them, or by happening to find a small underground depression in the sedimentary rock where a small amount of water collects (although that water may not be of good quality or could easily be contaminated by septic systems). Typically the best way to find these is to scour the land for pieces of igneous rocks at or near the surface and start mapping where they can be found identifying the general angles they are traveling through the earth, and then plotting where they will be found around the 400-800 ft mark. The downside is these veins can range from only inches across to 5-6 feet. But that still is a relatively small target to find and hit underground.
There is a valley like that in northern Maryland where people have 3-4 wells drilled on their property because they cant find water or it goes dry. "Greenspring valley" is what i call it. Majority of the wells are cut at least 400-500 feet and there are some hung on steel pipe that found water around 800 feet. Very bad place to find water
Always get a perk rating on the property before you buy. That will tell you how deep water level is. You can get that at the land management department of your local government offices.
Two things: 1. divert rainwater off roof like they do in Hawaii. 2. Have water delivered to a tank like they do in CA. 3. Build a retention pond and put a well near it.
We bought a piece of property in far north east California and when we started looking into a well we found out that the average well depth was 1700’ and most were getting between 1-3 gallons a minute. We sold that lot , at $100 a foot it quickly became far too costly for a recreational property. Here in the ouchita area of Arkansas we have water at 15’. We have a 50’ well that we tried to pump dry to test flow but was keeping up with a 250 gallon per minute pump, level didn’t even fluctuate noticeably. Unfortunately it’s highly contaminated from an old lumber mill. So we hooked up to city water.
Wells are so different from how I grew up in Duluth, MN, right on the shore of Lake Superior - most definitely plenty of water. City water intake is 100 feet out from the shore and 100 feet below the surface. Water temperature at my folks house which was about 6 pipe miles from the source was about 38 to 40 degrees - even on the hottest summer days. Due to work I moved to Minneapolis. Boy!!!! Do I miss that fresh, cold water.
just found your channel and been watching a ton of your videos and its amazing just how much info you give out in every video even better hearing how a guy was able to start his own business watch you, while i may never need or use this info "everywhere here is on city lines" your content is still very interesting
When the rift opened, it failed to continue rifting. Here in Virginia, our Midlothian rift valley is five miles wide with over 10,000 feet of material filling it in from both sides. And a bituminous coal seam. And lots and lots of fossils! The the actual rifting happened further east. Probably fifty miles off shore. I love geology.
Years ago my uncle Charlie took me out in the country where 5 or 6 houses were built and the same issue, all the wells we're dry these houses ended up sitting abandoned for years until plans for a larger development about another mile past where they sat for the city water to run past these out to wear that plan was to be
In alberta Canada here. We have 2 wells on the quarter section. One is very good water at 60ft. The other well is 30ft. Little bit of rust in that one and quite hard. Both maxed out the flow rate tests. Every time I've dug below 12 ft water flows. Bad for basements for sure but I'm glad I don't have to deal with getting fresh water on tap. P.s. there are 2 aquifers feeding a year round creek also. :)
My Grandpa drilled wells in the 60's here in Oklahoma with a "sludge bucket" (as I was told). I live on his old home place. He died in 67, I was born in 74. I have 2 wells here that are 2' apart and have different water. The first well went sulfury. He punched another beside it and it was clean water. They are both under a 100' deep
@@matthewhall5571 Not really. Old houses didn’t do anything to it and they have been fine for 50+ years providing they don’t get a lot of leaves and crap in there, But newer ones do filter and ad UV sterilisation. A lot easier than trucking in water or drilling multiple wells and hitting nothing.
Standard house in the US has *bitumen* on the roof. Yeah I wouldn't want to drink that either. The daft thing is, they have access to metal roofing - they just don't use it. Cover the house with polystyrene and bitumen and go looking in the dirt for water to drink, then wonder what went wrong with their lives.
When I was in New Zealand 3 decades ago the rural house I stayed at collected the roofs water and it was used for irrigation and to the toilets in the house. Originally it was used everywhere. But converted to just supply non drinkable water usage..
i live in ok , water wells are very expensive and you stand a good chance of getting sulfur water , we got some big water tanks and collect rain water off the roof . we get 800 gallons for one inch of rain but we get water . it rains a lot here
Interesting video. I've watched you for some time, and find the variations in methods and mechanics in your area opposed to places in Texas where I've lived, pretty interesting. I've got one well that's only 50 feet, 50+ years old, that we pump 20-25 GPM out of with a residential type pump, to keep a tank (y'all call them "ponds" I think) full. All the wells on the ranch are into "sand" the guy who drilled the last one told me, (he's been drilling in this area for 50+ years) and I hear you saying that your water is in layers of rock? Another difference I guess. Thanks for sharing.
I might be wrong but i'm pretty sure when the basin formed, it was filled with volcanic rock from the bottom and volcanic rock doesn't allow water seepage/movement so you HAVE to hit a vein/aquifer otherwise you ain't getting anything. Same thing happens in the Canary islands but they got lucky and have a massive fresh water aquifer so you just dig until you hit it.
I can dowse for water, but I don't know how anyone can tell you how deep they will find water. One time, they didn't dig the well where we marked it and didn't find water. They dropped a couple of sticks of dynamite down the well and it filled with water. The place where we marked the spot was 4-5 feet away from where they dug the well. They had to clean up the well and then dropped the casings down the well and it ran clean for many years. Anyone can dowse for water using two welding rods. It doesn't matter if you choose aluminum, brass or steel. They usually come in 3' lengths and all you need to do is bend a 90 degree turn about 6" from one end. Do this on both rods. The 90 degree section is your handle. Put one rod in each hand about 6" apart, with the long section sticking straight out. When you walk over a water vein or water line (even sewer line) the rods will spread apart. Once you walk past the vein (or water line) the rods will swing past you. Mark that spot and walk again at a different area. Make sure to keep the rods level at about waist high. It will work. It won't tell you how deep or how much, but it works.
You can earn yourself $100,000 from the Australian Sceptics Society if you can prove it works in a scientific situation. The offer has stood for over 30 years.
The realtor has a responsibility to tell the buyer of any problems on the property it's called failure to disclose in Texas you can sue because of it. And you will always win keeping everyone honest
Nobody cares about tejus. You clowns sue for everything, Nobody is honest in that shit hole.
What about the property owner's responsibility to ensure they have access to electricity, if they want it, and water. What fools would buy bare property, build a house, and then complain after the house is built?
And who died in the used home
Thinking about the big land swindells out between Austin and San Antonio the show Green acres beautiful forest and Creeks filled with clear blue water. These places are in the Chihuahua desert there are no green fields the only time the creeks have water in it is the rainy season that's the springtime. And if you do find water you're going to have to go down a half a mile some of those boils are a mile deep on those huge ranches. They have giant pumps to pump it up. It's a big rip-off they know people want to move to Texas and they advertise this desert land as a an oasis or whatever. It's only $140,000 to get 10 a and a metal building. And they don't show the Sand road going up to it. Four-wheel drives have a hard time getting through that sand. Massage lamp prices in Texas or grossly inflated. But if a Democrats take the White House again I can see those prices coming down but nobody able to get a home loan anymore. Yeah commercial real estate in a deep dog do. What are all those small Banks collapse that are given loans on these rip-offs land prices will get back to normal. 3,000 to 5,000 an acre for unimproved land in the middle of nowhere. 10,000 an acre for useless desert land . 20 years ago I paid $250 an acre for land not far from there just to have a place to park we like to go out and hunt small game. Shoot coyotes or whatever. Any old boy felt guilty for charging me that much I bought two acres. It cost me $15 a year for taxes and that's a rip-off.
The realtor on empty land says, "I don't know about water."
My father was a contractor and he always made sure he had water and a good perc test test for a septic before he started building a house.
I would have thought that doing both of those things would be the norm before actually building the house. It doesn't make any sense to build the house and THEN see if water is available or the soil percs enough to put in a septic.
@@valeriestevens5250 So many things need water that I'm surprised it didn't have impact during the construction phase due to the lack of water. Hell, you got to be able to test the plumbing before you close everything in.
Please note how OP doesn’t like any of the comments that make him feel like a f**kin stupid piece of idiotic s**t that is only now realizing why everyone was making fun of him for the whole build
I was thinking that might have been a good idea. 😆 🤣 😂 I wonder if they knew about the triassic basin thing before beginning. Obviously, the neighbors knew.
If the area is already known to be low water producing then I would think either the builders or local municipality would recommend drilling the well first before construction begins. Just common sense, the world needs more every day .
Before I bought the land that my current house is on, I had it evaluated for its ability to support a septic system. Then, I looked at neighboring properties to see if they had wells (they did). After I bought the land, the first thing I did was have a well drilled. It took me 2 attempts followed by a fracking to get an adequately producing well. Only then did I move forward with building a house on the property.
Take care and God Bless.
Yeah this is the right way to do it for sure. There are options for living without a well though depending on your state.
this is what makes sense to me too. good one.
We got 500klm of pipe from River Murray too owe town big seaport and steelworks gotta have water SOUTH AUSTRALIA
That's exactly the way to do it. The average family in the US uses 300 gallons of water a day, over 100,000 gallons a year. People underestimate their water usage.
Appreciate you explaining your concerns and knowledge thank you
I live in Northwest New Jersey. My next-door neighbor's well is at 50 feet in depth. When I built my house they drilled my well about 50 feet away from his, 10 feet from the property line. They ended up drilling 200 feet and only got the state minimum of 1 gallon per minute. It is amazing that just a short distance makes that much of a difference.
Ha! Don’t drop rocks, drop ice cubes.
Big brain move.. as a Granville county resident, it doesn't surprise me that they didn't think about it
aH ! nice low tech thinking . My first thought was use some radar .
Stupid is just what it is stupid.
………’now you tell me’….! Gheesh….! lol…
Oh well! 😉
Just built a home last year. First thing we did was make sure we had a good well before committing to the build. Make sure you have water and septic approved before building
I know banks that won't loan if you don't have adequate water, a passed septic percolation test and electric in the area.
Love your content. You provide well produced videos of how wells and water supply are created, along with educating people what you do and WHY.
The "why" factor you take the time to explain is what takes your videos over the top, reveals your deep knowledge of the industry, and a compliment to your family company of raising another generational business owner that will continue the business yet another generation into the future.
On our farm we are blessed with springs that fill cattle troughs for the critters and do rain catchment with an old cistern and another cistern up from the house.
I couldn't imagine building a house and not having water.
As for that one customer, it's ok as a business to fire a customer who continues to screw things up.
I am a carpenter. People always think that one the first meeting I am there to sell them something. I don't have anything to sell in that meeting. They do. I'm there to be sold on their dream. I walk from lots of potential jobs because the customer doesn't know what they want and for a shop that is 100%custom that doesn't work. If they can't find a color in the hole Benjamin Moore or Sherwin deck how can I help them. They say they want white. Ok great I have over 100 different varieties of white. One one interview they didn't know what color they wanted. So I asked what way do you want the white to go. To the gray, yellow, or red. They didn't know what I was talking about. So I told them the three popular colors that went throughs ways. They then said," I thought that you said you had 100's for whites to choose from. Why did you only give us three options?"
I told them the scale that each of the whites where in and that I was trying to limit them to around 25 choices. I told them that they didn't sell me on their job and that they would need to find a shop that would tell them what they wanted and sell them what they had to offer. Because I only offer you your dream I'm not going to be able to do anything for you. In fact you have just fired me. If you give me your price I will recommend a few shops that can do the work in that price range. They said something. You have three choices in your price range. IKEA, or the boxes that are in stock at a box store. You will have to install them to stay within your budget. Then the wife went to the other room and came back with a bid from IKEA. I told them to double to triple that depending on how custom they wanted. Then I said can I show my self out. The door was over there. Usually they don't fully understand what happened. A year later I got a call from them asking if I could fix finish the kitchen as they told the other guy to leave. I said yes I can it will be $500 a running foot. So it will be about $60,000 for me to finish up for you. They said I don't think so to other guy was doing it for $30,000. I said then I think that you got what you paid for. Good luck finding someone to help you out.
Just remember if you are looking for a trade to do something for you most of us don't have anything to sell to you. If you feel like you are on a car lot then you need to call someone else. Most trades offer wants. Ask yourself do you need to be sold on something that you have already decided you needed and wanted. Answer is that you don't. You just have to agree on the price for what you want. So you will try to talk me down and in turn tell me how much you value my work. When my price goes up because you don't want to give anything up to lower the price. I always go through every wall and say what I will deliver. I do that so you have a chance to say what you thought you were getting. So if giving a price and asking questions about what goes where is selling then I must be a great salesman because I usually get a check because I have walked away from the people who don't want what I have to offer.
@@thomasswearingen6971 You would be a really good mall Santa
We bought rural land in upstate SC and the first thing was to be sure it had water before building. One neighbor had a 650 ft well producing 4 gal per minute, another had a deep well giving 3.5 gal per hour. We got water at 420 ft and 250 gal per minute. Driller said we hit an underground river. He certified it at 125 gal per minute because he didn’t think people would believe it
We had our house built, but BEFORE we did, we had the well drilled and septic installed. Who builds a house then drills? Recipe for disaster.
Speculators .
@@Mk101T😂 they just figured out why the land was so affordable 😂
Depends on where you live.
I live in Alaska, the area I live has water. Here you can buy land and build a house before your well is in.
Finding water isn't an issue.
In some parts of Canada you can't get a mortgage unless the well produces atleast 4 gallons a minute.
In Arizona They allow builders to build houses in areas that do not produce any water. The owners of the houses have water trucked in. Then the city of scottsdale cut off the water trucks due to low water reserves from the colorado river and these entire communities have no water. Then the county wanted us to pay to install piping from Scottsdale to the community that ran by our neighborhood and we all have working wells that we paid to install before we built out homes, (because we arent dumb). So we refused and sued the county because they are the idiots who lets the builders build on dry land that they knew was dry from the start.
Worked 40 years in open pit mining. Water is where you find it. You can look up the 2000 foot face of a Open pit mine . You may see a water vain coming out of the pit wall, and move over a foot and miss the water vain completely.
Vein. Look up vain.
@@thomasmleahy6218 Spell checkers are not needed.
@@thomasmleahy6218 lose and loose drives me crazy.
@thomasmleahy6218 Thats how its spelled in pit mining genieass
@@stillwill1808no pit miner can spell the same word the same way twice. Also the term is "gneiss" (then again maybe only geologists would know that one)
Where I grew up in Franklin County, NC there was seven natural springs all within about a 1/4 of mile of each other. A few of them dried up every summer. One had such a low flow it turn the woodlands around it into a marsh. I never knew exactly where the water started at. Another was too far from the house to be much use but its mouth made for a great location to camp at. Fresh cold water bubbling right out of the ground. The last spring was where our water for the house came from. We literally just pumped it to the house as it flowed out of the ground. And that spring had been providing water to that home since recorded history in Franklin County. (Yes, my childhood home was well over 200 years old. It literally predated official government records. And it still stands to this day though the house and property are no longer in the family.)
Around the early 2000s an inspector came through and wanted us to stop using the spring water. They wanted a proper well dug up to supply water to both my parents house and my grandmother's home. Dad hired a douser and had a well dug where he recommended. I have long since forgotten how deep the well was but it produced an insane amount of water per minute.
Not even a hundred years ago, people in that area could have hand dug a well and hit water before even going 20 feet. These days, the water table has been hit so hard in the area due to agriculture and development that you will drill 300 feet easily before striking water. I remember as a child hating to see somebody drill a well near the property. Thinking every well dug was going to impact all those natural springs.
What a nightmare, build a home and have no useful water. Great video as ever. I hope your customers know how lucky they are to have an honest well company to use.
I would always drill 1st then build the house
And know what they are doing.
What a great channel
Builders...always trying to exploit land that was empty and discounted for a reason.
Why here you have to prove water adequacy to get a building permit.
This absolute failure, and I mean he’s a world class, award-winning dumbass, should not even HAVE customers at all because he just did everything exactly backwards and is a disgrace to architects, contractors, and their technicians everywhere
Why anyone would buy a piece of land not knowing if there was water is beyond me...
I had to chuckle when you commented; the builder probably got a good deal on the land.
Seems like an absolute exercise in futility to me - poking holes in the dirt hoping to find water. And then you have to check whether it's contaminated with anything from the neighbour's septic tank to the pig farm up the road or the chemical factory in the next town or just toxic minerals because that's what you find in the ground.
Meanwhile, if you have enough rainfall to sustain agriculture, you have enough rainfall to sustain a household from the water that lands on your roof. You don't have to worry about some corporation dumping their wastes in it. You don't have to worry about a neighbour overdrawing it until the water table drops and your well can't access it. The water that runs off your roof into your tank is 100% yours. You can put filters on it if you're worried about birds getting on your roof, but it's never going to have salts and toxins in it like dirt water. And you always know exactly how much you've got in storage!
@@tealkerberus748 then the city gonna be like "nope"
@@Baebon6259 If the government won't let you keep the rain that falls on your own roof, that's where you don't buy land in that government area at all. Do you ever find it ironic that this sort of shite happens in a country that calls itself "free" ?
@@tealkerberus748 That is turn of the other century technology, it wasn't a good idea for drinking water back then. Maybe this is one of the reasons we live longer now. That water would be so unsafe from birds, bacteria or even bugs and dead animals.
I've worked with landowners in Pittsylvania co. That had similar issues. They sold the timber off it and replanted as they knew they wouldn't get water so they couldn't subdivide. Great explanation.
I'm kinda a geek I love the educational/geological lesson. Knowledge is power
Well...lol...
I learned one thing.
Do not drop rocks down your well! I have actually done this. Live and learn.
It turned out I had city water. I do plan to make use of the well. Hopefully, I didnt jam it up and can get that pump out.
Cool video.
As someone whom lives in your service area. It very interesting to see your work and deep knowledge of the earth and drilling skills especially because it is relevant to me and my location. Keep up the awesome videos. I really enjoyed this one and how you kept track of the plight of the builder. Thank you.
Man thats crazy to think about, makes me want to actually have a better understanding of how water moves underground. Something i never thought about
Drop ice cubes instead of rocks in your well to check the static level of the water. I lived for 20 years on a well that produced 1 gallon per hour…24 gallons per day, so I know what it’s like to live without water.
Sorry, I didn't notice that you mentioned ice as well before I posted.
@@pauleastend4706 all good!
Thats a good idea, seems to me that consistently pumping into a storage tank is the only way to make a well like that produce enough water to sustain average use and have backup for washing machines or 5 minute showers
@@TalRohan 24 gallons of water a day. Hits different than a gallon a minute. Yikes. Get to pick between a shower, doing laundry, and the commode.
Why not go with rain water at this point? Like I get it if your in a place that hardly rains. But at this point it wouldn't take much rain to meet 24g a day and you already need most the same filtration
Watching this makes me appreciate living somewhere water is ridiculously abundant.
Or actually had a water supply and sewer system!
Looking at the size of these trees, this was a pasture or farmland 40 years ago. They arrigated the hell out of the place. All with underground water.
My parents had to go down 80 feet to hit water. More than aa decade later we had a drought and the water table dropped. We had to go down to 120 feet to get water again.
Fresh water is not unlimited on planet earth
I love the geology !!!
In NY we you are not allowed a building permit unless you FIRST have a well that can produce at least 1gpm (it might be 5gpm). No water, no build.
That is fascinating. I grew up in east springfield pa. 5 miles from lake erie. Water everywhere, but not so much on our patch. The well adjacent to our house (well #2 on our land) was great water, but forever going dry. Laundry day was stress day. Dad had #3 drilled, about 50 feet away, at douser's advice. There was water and lots of blue clay. You couldn't get clear water at 500'. It was always gray. It was very disheartening. After saving up more money, he got the douser again, and went to this field adjacent to our property. He sited a location where two streams came together. #4 got plenty of water at 30'. It was land the government abandoned after new Rte 20 was abandoned. The well also dried up during drought, and my parents had to have water delivered. It recovered when normal rainfall returned.
When both of my parents died, we put it up for sale. Our neighbor, arse hat that he is, wanted it cheap.. we said no. So he physically occupied the land that we had maintained for 40 years which the government had abandoned, and also had our well. LSS, our realtor advised we drill #5 well. We found good and plenty water 30" from that initial well dad drilled.
Needless to say, any time i looked for a house, the first thing I checked was the water supply. Lots of pressure, clear, sweet, water.
If your father had paid for an actual survey instead of getting scammed by the village witch he would have struck a good well the first attempt
@@2tubas seeing as that was 50+ years ago and geologists were not thick on the ground then or now. It is a story about places where water seems easy to find. It is called Springfield, after all, and it is in close proximity to a huge body of water. I'll take your comment as from a sarcastic grumpy pants know it all. We have all been 13 at one point in our lives, so we understand.
And don’t waste money on dousers.
I live in East Texas and we have abundance of water 💦 where my farm is located is on a river which it only takes about 80 feet to get plentiful water to where I live 10 miles away it’s taking 300 feet 👣. Great video!!!!
We had a local old time driller in our area who knew the area very well. He didn't believe in the dowser. However, if you needed a well, he could come look at your location and tell you where to drill and how deep it was going to be. He was always correct. He'd been drilling in the area for over 50 years.
Fascinating! Never knew anything like this existed. Thank you for bringing all of this information to us.
If you look at Africa, on the East coast, it's splitting off and it's making a new continent. It's called the East Africa Rift Zone. This is similar in nature
Had a business in an industrial park just outside Raleigh city limits. It was on a well. There is a fault line from there to Chapel Hill. Owner’s son said, when they were drilling, the sediment looked like diamonds. Eons old ocean. One side of the road, water, the other side, no
Wow. Very informative and very descriptive.
I live in a Triassic basin region in Chatham County, NC and have seen how difficult it is to find water. I had a house built 3 years ago and my well was drilled to 600 ft. I ended up with around 2.5 gal/min, so I was lucky I guess. Had I known about this region, I would have had the well drilled before the house was built. My neighbor found water, 1.5 gal/minute after his third try. A neighbor very close by got 12 gal/min at 400 ft. The driller told me that several homes down the road weren't so lucky and got less than 1 gal/min.
Awesome to learn this information as I'm down in this neck of the woods....
Here in Southeast Arizona, everybody depends on Wells at 400 ft. A Minnesota dairy with thousands of cows came in and drilled a many thousand feet well to the bottom of the aquifer. All the water will be gone. The whole valley will go dry. Arizona legislature paid to ignore this crime.
If you have enough rainfall to support agriculture, you have enough rainfall to support a household on what lands on your roof. If you don't have enough rainfall to support agriculture, why are you living there?
Only fools depend on dirt water for drinking.
That's arizona.
Ist thing we did before buying the property was to interview property owners and well drillers.
1st thing after buying was drilling. Hit water at 480' total depth 530'. Grundfos 6 SQF 3. Runs with 4 panels totaling 1150 watts of solar or Honda 2200 generator.
In Montana, it's not uncommon to have to go to 1000ft before you find water. Also most contractors, in rural Montana at least, will refuse to build on your land if you haven't drilled or at least tried drilling for a well first.
Same depth in central Texas. Deeper if you want to hit a bigger aquifer.
@countrysister700 we try not to hit our aquaifer up here since most of it is buried 10,000ft plus deep. Also we have to worry about, pardon the pun, Texas size granite boulders randomly left behind underground from the last ice age.
See geologists really are worth money! I briefly looked at the map and the history of the basin and man that is some tough sledding. Really good video summarizing how you have to know the area and the geology
Wow, definitely crazy and educational at the same time. It would be nice if localities would keep those areas zoned for something else so people don't get screwed on homes.
When I was growing up in Dayton Ohio my grandfather had a well drilled and it was only 50ft deep and had 20ft of water in it and they used it once with a fire pumper truck and never pumped it dry....It had a steel casing because it is a gravel aquifer we never seen the level move much at all in 20 years...
my well is also very shallow with only 30 feet of pipe. It never runs dry ,i can fill my pool with it , i agree ,if you want good water come to Ohio.
@@davidkettell1073 Ohio is pretty big.....that's a silly statement. Where in Ohio? Parts near the big lake? Near PA? Near KY? Near PA? They don't all have water like that.
@@ian3580Wasn't it in Ohio where a river
caught fire?
@@thomasmleahy6218That's handy oil and water in the same well lol
HAS THERE EVER BEEN A MOVE TO CREATE AN RURAL WATER DISTRICT??
IN THE LATE 1960s WE PUT TOGETHER AN RURAL WATER DISTRICT WHICH WAS SUBSIDIZED BY FEDERAL LOANS , AND I PURCHASED TWO HOOKUPS FOR MY PROPERTIES
WE HAD AND STILL HAVE AN EXCELLENT WATER SYSTEM TODAY!
You should see what it is like in northern Arkansas. Flint, shale and limestone mountain tops have challenging to find aquifers. Many homes actually take surface water off springs (not allowed today) because well drilling can be such a bust proposition. The home I grew up in was out of city limits and supplied by a community estate well and pump. It's situated down in a bit of a valley and they still had to punch down 1200 ft in 1970s to hit water. Average water producing well in the county is 450 ft deep and it's ALL rock. There is very little soil on the Ozark mountains.
Have challenging to find.
Go rain catch...
40 X 40 ft roof in an area with appx 25 inches a year of rain has potential to catch up to 27,000 gallons a year, if you have the tank space. That's far more than you need for a family of 6.
Tanks are the expensive part. 3000 gallon tanks are close to $3000. 30,000 gallon tank is appx $17,000. IBC is $25 to $250 for 300 gallons. The cheaper ones are not potable, but can flush out to be used for the lawn if you care. $120 to $150 is common for potable used IBC.
I let the overflow of the 3000 go to a chain of IBC tanks to use for irrigating a garden. These IBCs had car wash soap. No problem for plants after one rinse. You could use the water to shower, but I wouldn't drink it.
Look up average rainfall patterns and determine how much tank you need. A 1 inch shower a week, you don't need much tank space. All the rain in 2 months and dry the rest of the year, you need a lot of tank space.
A lot cheaper than drilling a 1000 ft well that comes up dry.
Yes, looks like they have plenty of vegetation around. Probably get good rainfall catchment or two would be the way to go.
I would say the rain stuff would be good for everything except drinking and cooking
@@5.43v we run our rain water through 2 filters and a uv light ,it is fine
@@5.43v Netherlands here, lots of farms and more remote houses used rainwater till the late 60 s, we did drink it as well, never ever had problems with it,
Awesome video! 👋
@1:57 Just an FYI.............. a big storage tank doesn't necessarily mean there's little/no water. In my area (central coast Cali.) EVERY rural property has one or more big storage tanks regardless of how much the well produces. Tank is needed for possible fire suppression. My well is over 10 GPM and my storage tank is a 5000 capacity. Have a 3 phase high pressure pump to supply the property. That's just the way we roll here.
Also, JMO.......... paying a douser to find water is borderline fraud.
An above ground storage tank where he is, and anything north, is a HUGE red flag. It means no water. And anything north of there means it could freeze so the risk of a tank is no joke. I'm only an hour north of here and my in-ground pool freezes to 8", so a tank would freeze through.
Your experience is VERY specific to your area and the need for fire suppression water.
@@ian3580 North Alabama here. I have an above ground cistern and a slow well. Water out of the ground is about 50 degrees, and it doesn't take much to overcome the freezing. Last winter, I ran a stock tank heater for one day during the very coldest weather, but didn't really need to. The exposed tank in the video that hasn't been painted is dumb though. It will grow algae and be much more susceptible to freezing. Paint it silver, put grass clippings or wood shavings around it and all's good.
@@hchickpea As you said, you're in North Alabama......I'm guessing freezing is a lot less a concern than it is in Virginia and other points much further north. I'm not far from him, and a stock tank heater wouldn't do it without a decent amount of insulation.
Definitely a very cool video! I am one of those who loves a lot of details :) I use to have water hauled about 25 years ago, but He retired, and never found anyone else in this area who delivers. I have been collecting rain water from my roof for over 25 years now :) Zero problems, always plenty of water! (I have 2 - 2500 gallon storage tanks) :)
ICE CUBES people.....use ice cubes to test for your water level.....NOT rocks.
First thing I do when i'm looking at a piece of property is called a local well drillers. After I buy the property I drill the well first.
Enjoyed you are one honest dude
I would think you would make sure the land could support a house with water etc before building on it?
One would think 😂
So, let me get this straight, after seeing the video, with what looks like a house in finished state, someone was supposed to "CHECK FOR WATER AVAILABILITY," I'll bite, just who the "F" would that be, inquiring minds would luv to know????? Let me guess, the bank is your answer. Palm to forehead, rolling my eye's very loudly, even you can hear them, ROTFLMAOFF!!!
ROTFLMAOFF = Rolling On The Floor Laughing My A$$ Off.
you can't know until you drill and find water.
That would have been job one 🤷♂️🤦♂️
@@stanwooddave9758 Does your floor stink from your ass being all over it?
Wow. What an absolutely fascinating story.
Definitely pays to do your research before you buy a piece of land in that area!
I can’t imagine how terrible it would feel to build your dream house on a visually great plot of land; only to not have access to water other than by having it delivered and stored in a tank in your yard…… 🤯🤯
Philip, your videos never disappoint. When TH-cam first suggested one about a year ago; I would never have guessed that out of the mostly technology/IT channels I’m subscribed to, that a channel about water well drilling would be in my top five favorite channels.
Keep up the great work man!
I’m a city boy (concrete jungle) but I learned a lot from this vid.. one day I plan on moving out the city
When we were landlords we were responsible for three wells. There often were things going wrong including plumbing issues because of the wells.
That's all behind us and we're very happy just paying a city water bill and having zero problems.
This video was very informative and you did a greeat job of rxplaing the triacic basin. You have a tremendous knowledge of well drilling. You produce the best videos on well drilling. Your customers are blessed to have such a great well driller to provide them with a reliable weter souece!!!
In Arizona, you can tell where the ground water can be found. It's where the housing already is. There are large stretches between towns where no one lives...
Before I purchased my land I contacted the adjoining neighbors and asked about water quality and quantity. I also requested an old style pounder vs rotary drill rig. The well driller could not pump out the well at only 60' but went 120' for reserve.
Near Lubbock, TX, I see people buy a 10.1 acre lot, build the McMansion, then the drilling rig shows up. It leaves, returns a few weeks later, leaves, and may return again. Many of the McMansions have big water tanks in the garage, the water truck comes by once a week.
Oddly enough here it is also very difficult to get water out of the Triassic.
Truth. We buy our farms in the region based 1st of water (quantity then quality) and 2nd off soil (depth then quality). One property we have all the wells only do 50-75gpm but quality is superb. Another the quality is OK and most wells around the property only do 75-80gpm. Every well and every new well we’ve drilled on it does a true 150+gpm. Well worth a premium price!
I enjoy watching your show..Im no well driller but my area is all wells. We are in the Mojave desert, very little rain but lots of ground water. Pretty much guaranteed to hit water anywhere you drill and 10 gpm+.
What a story. I had no idea there are such water well inhospitable geological areas on the East coast. Drilling a well is a nail biting exercise if you are the owner builder. We developed our property in 1980, drilled the well, installed the septic system and electric power and telephone. We lived in a mobile home the first couple of years. That way when we were built our house we knew the expenses we could not control were for the most part taken care of. Drilling a dry hole would have broken us.
I am blessed, I live in S.W. Va and had a well drilled. 75 gallons a minute
till it dries up! so south GA water table is very high, 50 -70ft you have water. thing is, it dries up a lot. this time of year when we dont get water, you get no water. even when you drill deeper still same issue
@@johndonovan7018 I am 300 yard from a lake, my well is 220 feet, I doubt my water will ever dry up.
@@johndonovan7018every location is different even by several miles....just because you say so doesn't mean that it will happen to someone else.
@@michaeldomanski9352 roll the dice brother. not my problem to dig out of (pun). and several miles certainly not. plenty of data to very well estimate what you will run into based on your geographic area, which is quite bigger than a mile or so down the road....
@@jim_ward if your lake is anything like ours, you wouldnt want to use that water to wash your car..... theres a lot of factors. generally well is cancer, septic is a pain. but only morons willingly go on well water for anything but a seldom used retreat cabin or something. you will not change my mind.
The geology lesson on rift valleys was very interesting. Some of the most famous rift valleys in the world are Lake Baikal in Siberia, and Lake Tanganyika, etc. and the Red Sea in Africa. This is the same sort of thing except it filled in with soil instead of water over the eons. It makes plenty of sense once you explained it. I had no idea that this existed right here in North Carolina. Oh, and you are definitely a lot closer to being a geologist than the average person. Thanks very much for a very interesting video.
I guess that’s why they call the spec homes? Speculation? Glad geography answers the questions of why.
Speculative builds. A home constructed without a buyer under contract.
In Australia we don’t drill for water mainly, in areas with no town water we place large rain water ranks on concrete slabs with an electric pump to pump water to the house. If it don’t rain to fill the tanks we buy drinkable water from a supplier to fill the tanks.
Live in NC and never heard of it. Learn something new everyday
My well here in North Florida is 385 feet deep. The water from the 4 inch pipe was shooting 3.5 foot over the pipe when they finished drilling. I put in separate piping bypassing the pump, it will push water into the house. Not enough to shower but plenty at the sinks and tude. Most of the homes in our area are the same. I guess we are lucky as to water here.
Thanks for this Super Informative Vidclip .... Much Appreciate you sharing it .... Best to ALL from ChCh, NZ
Where I live, Wisconsin, we have the Great Lakes. The water table from those lakes make those that have to rely on well water to almost never come up dry. Up here we have Terraine that was formed from the glaciers, and large meteor impacts over the deep history of the Earth. I can only imagine what the owner of the spec home is going through now that he sunk all the money into a property with no water. Reading up on the basin you dealt with in that area it also appears that one can also have problems with a septic perking out. Up here some have to use a mound system, which is more costly, but a conventional leach bed is still a likelihood. I would think a brand-new home with zero ground water is going to be almost impossible to sell. Glad I came across your channel, by pure chance.
New subscriber now because of this video. Wow, who knew this is an issue in an area like that. "Appears" to be normal. Definitely eye-opening if you're house hunting. Thanks for this video.
You said it, you need to know the local geology. Some areas have large aquafers deep down.
Gives a new meaning to a dry county.
Very interesting! Thanks
I worked on water well pumps since 1976, my dad drilled from 1945 to 1965, then he worked on pumps from 1965 to 1980, now my son owns his own water well pump co.
I have listened to the depth of y'all's wells, and here in South Carolina our 12" irrigation wells are only 400ft. The water hasn't dropped a millimeter since it was put in 10 years ago. It makes 500 gal/min. Glad i don't live in Virginia.
Congrads and hope the info helps educate someone before they spend money!
Congratulations.
Well drilling has always mystified me. Once I wrapped my head around rock being porous, I had to learn that the surface of the land today was not always the surface of the land in the past. In Illinois we had a lot of glacial action across the northern part of the state. For those who haven't been here, it is flat with the exception of areas around rivers and where the glaciers melted and left hills. But below that is an entirely different surface which you can sort of see in the southern part of the state where the glaciers didn't grind everything flat. The problem in the north comes from the fact that the glaciers didn't actually grind it flat. It ground the tops off some of the hills and filled the valleys in with other material.
In the areas where the tops of the hills got ground off, the bedrock can be really close to the surface, 5 or 6 feet. But in the areas that were valleys that got filled in, the bedrock may be 600 feet deep. And just because it was a valley doesn't mean there isn't water. It depends what the glacier left there. Sometimes it was gravel and other times fine silt or clay. You can see the patterns today in where the houses were built. The houses got built where they are because there is water there. So there will be a line of houses which follow where the water is but separated by fields that are a mile wide. Dig on a line between 2 houses and it is a really good chance you will hit water. Dig off that line and you will likely not find any water. Wells through bedrock are easy, those wells through the other stuff have to be cased full depth or they will collapse.
And then there is northern Michigan. You can literally drive a well with a well point attached to galvanized pipe with a sledge hammer. Rarely do you have to go more than 30 feet and you have all the water you need. It is all sand though so wells going bad is pretty common as the sand fills in the well point. Not to worry though, go a few feet to the side and drive a new well with a new point and you are back in business.
There is as much water in the sandstone around Lake Powell in Utah as there is in the lake.
Very informative thank you
I used to drive a big truck and it was so boring driving those long straight roads after 50 miles I would come to a town full of old houses lining the street which always made an elbow through town. 35 mph for the one cop and out the other side. What do these people do for a living? So happy to cross the bridge to Kentucky.
I really enjoy your videos and sure do appreciate the education. I've always been fascinated with your industry. I've had 5 wells drilled thru the past 25 years in north Georgia.
This was super insightful as a visual learner I wish I could better visualize what you’re talking about. Almost like dig a hole so deep I can see the variations but hey this was super informative
Great video ! Most people will believe a lie before the truth !
In this area the rule of thumb is if you are hitting red sandstone made of very fine particles and random green small rocks, you will find nothing at all. Blue, slate colored, or gray to light tan granite indicates you may have an interruption and could be where water collects. The red sandstone can vary in depth to only 800-1200 feet in some areas to 10k+ feet in others and will hold zero water.
You are pretty much correct on the Triassic basin. In Pangea Virgina, Carolinas, and surrounding areas were smashing into the African plate. Layers of rock were bunched up, pancakes on top of eachother, turned vertical, etc. This is essentially what formed the Appalachian Mountains. When the plates started to pull away large rifts formed and tended to sink into valleys. All the sediment then filled in the valleys creating the Triassic basin areas.
These valleys got filled with clay and sedimentary rock (sandstone and siltstone). These rock layers are heavily packed and have no spaces for water to really flow or propagate.
The only water that moves is along seams of igneous rock that formed along the cracks in big vertical veins. These large veins are called dikes of Diabase rocks. In general, the only place water will be found is by finding the exposed edge of these vertical channels and drilling along them, or by happening to find a small underground depression in the sedimentary rock where a small amount of water collects (although that water may not be of good quality or could easily be contaminated by septic systems).
Typically the best way to find these is to scour the land for pieces of igneous rocks at or near the surface and start mapping where they can be found identifying the general angles they are traveling through the earth, and then plotting where they will be found around the 400-800 ft mark. The downside is these veins can range from only inches across to 5-6 feet. But that still is a relatively small target to find and hit underground.
have are.
@@thomasmleahy6218 thanks for spotting that mistaken edit I made.
Excellent information! Thank you!
There is a valley like that in northern Maryland where people have 3-4 wells drilled on their property because they cant find water or it goes dry. "Greenspring valley" is what i call it. Majority of the wells are cut at least 400-500 feet and there are some hung on steel pipe that found water around 800 feet. Very bad place to find water
Always get a perk rating on the property before you buy. That will tell you how deep water level is. You can get that at the land management department of your local government offices.
Two things: 1. divert rainwater off roof like they do in Hawaii. 2. Have water delivered to a tank like they do in CA. 3. Build a retention pond and put a well near it.
Rainwater collection is legal in that area, I do it here in AZ with 10" rain per year and get more than enough water.
Now 8.55 correct. Good work.
Wow
I remember when you were shooting for 10K subs
Congratulations on 100K
We bought a piece of property in far north east California and when we started looking into a well we found out that the average well depth was 1700’ and most were getting between 1-3 gallons a minute. We sold that lot , at $100 a foot it quickly became far too costly for a recreational property. Here in the ouchita area of Arkansas we have water at 15’. We have a 50’ well that we tried to pump dry to test flow but was keeping up with a 250 gallon per minute pump, level didn’t even fluctuate noticeably. Unfortunately it’s highly contaminated from an old lumber mill. So we hooked up to city water.
Very interesting topic. Thank you for sharing. It's always a good day to learn something new.
Wells are so different from how I grew up in Duluth, MN, right on the shore of Lake Superior - most definitely plenty of water. City water intake is 100 feet out from the shore and 100 feet below the surface. Water temperature at my folks house which was about 6 pipe miles from the source was about 38 to 40 degrees - even on the hottest summer days. Due to work I moved to Minneapolis. Boy!!!! Do I miss that fresh, cold water.
Duluth Mn water tastes just like the well water we had in Newnan Ga,sweet.
just found your channel and been watching a ton of your videos and its amazing just how much info you give out in every video even better hearing how a guy was able to start his own business watch you, while i may never need or use this info "everywhere here is on city lines" your content is still very interesting
When the rift opened, it failed to continue rifting. Here in Virginia, our Midlothian rift valley is five miles wide with over 10,000 feet of material filling it in from both sides. And a bituminous coal seam. And lots and lots of fossils! The the actual rifting happened further east. Probably fifty miles off shore.
I love geology.
Years ago my uncle Charlie took me out in the country where 5 or 6 houses were built and the same issue, all the wells we're dry these houses ended up sitting abandoned for years until plans for a larger development about another mile past where they sat for the city water to run past these out to wear that plan was to be
That's clever as hell to fix the pump
In alberta Canada here.
We have 2 wells on the quarter section. One is very good water at 60ft. The other well is 30ft. Little bit of rust in that one and quite hard. Both maxed out the flow rate tests. Every time I've dug below 12 ft water flows. Bad for basements for sure but I'm glad I don't have to deal with getting fresh water on tap.
P.s. there are 2 aquifers feeding a year round creek also. :)
My Grandpa drilled wells in the 60's here in Oklahoma with a "sludge bucket" (as I was told). I live on his old home place. He died in 67, I was born in 74.
I have 2 wells here that are 2' apart and have different water. The first well went sulfury. He punched another beside it and it was clean water.
They are both under a 100' deep
Congratulations on the hundred thousand i'm sure you'll get a lot more
Drilled one well to 360’. 5gpm. Broke the pvc driving steel to the bottom. Had to abandon. Moved 10’ north and same depth produced 20 gpm. Wild.
Very educational video. Enjoyed it a lot.
Why don’t they just catch rainwater? That’s what we do here in Australia, heaps of houses are on tanks, far more common than well water.
Complicated to make that drinkable. But perfectly fine for ag purposes.
Not complicated. Prefilter and UV filter.
@@matthewhall5571
Not really.
Old houses didn’t do anything to it and they have been fine for 50+ years providing they don’t get a lot of leaves and crap in there,
But newer ones do filter and ad UV sterilisation.
A lot easier than trucking in water or drilling multiple wells and hitting nothing.
Standard house in the US has *bitumen* on the roof. Yeah I wouldn't want to drink that either. The daft thing is, they have access to metal roofing - they just don't use it. Cover the house with polystyrene and bitumen and go looking in the dirt for water to drink, then wonder what went wrong with their lives.
When I was in New Zealand 3 decades ago the rural house I stayed at collected the roofs water and it was used for irrigation and to the toilets in the house. Originally it was used everywhere. But converted to just supply non drinkable water usage..
This is an amazing video, keep up the hard work!
thanks for the info on such a hard way to get water,,,
i live in ok , water wells are very expensive and you stand a good chance of getting sulfur water , we got some big water tanks and collect rain water off the roof . we get 800 gallons for one inch of rain but we get water . it rains a lot here
Interesting video. I've watched you for some time, and find the variations in methods and mechanics in your area opposed to places in Texas where I've lived, pretty interesting. I've got one well that's only 50 feet, 50+ years old, that we pump 20-25 GPM out of with a residential type pump, to keep a tank (y'all call them "ponds" I think) full. All the wells on the ranch are into "sand" the guy who drilled the last one told me, (he's been drilling in this area for 50+ years) and I hear you saying that your water is in layers of rock? Another difference I guess. Thanks for sharing.
I might be wrong but i'm pretty sure when the basin formed, it was filled with volcanic rock from the bottom and volcanic rock doesn't allow water seepage/movement so you HAVE to hit a vein/aquifer otherwise you ain't getting anything. Same thing happens in the Canary islands but they got lucky and have a massive fresh water aquifer so you just dig until you hit it.
Thanks for the info😊
I can dowse for water, but I don't know how anyone can tell you how deep they will find water. One time, they didn't dig the well where we marked it and didn't find water. They dropped a couple of sticks of dynamite down the well and it filled with water. The place where we marked the spot was 4-5 feet away from where they dug the well. They had to clean up the well and then dropped the casings down the well and it ran clean for many years.
Anyone can dowse for water using two welding rods. It doesn't matter if you choose aluminum, brass or steel. They usually come in 3' lengths and all you need to do is bend a 90 degree turn about 6" from one end. Do this on both rods. The 90 degree section is your handle. Put one rod in each hand about 6" apart, with the long section sticking straight out. When you walk over a water vein or water line (even sewer line) the rods will spread apart. Once you walk past the vein (or water line) the rods will swing past you. Mark that spot and walk again at a different area. Make sure to keep the rods level at about waist high. It will work. It won't tell you how deep or how much, but it works.
You can earn yourself $100,000 from the Australian Sceptics Society if you can prove it works in a scientific situation. The offer has stood for over 30 years.