Spring 2002 | Carrie Collins

For homeowners, a residential well can have you "seeing green" in the heat of the summer and fall, instead of waiting for rain to quench your scorched landscaping.

This advice also holds true for real estate developers and commercial property managers, who often find themselves at the mercy of arbitrary bans imposed by town water departments.

As water continues to become a precious and pricy commodity, each year many towns place water restrictions and water bans on homeowners and businesses alike. Just when your expensive landscaping needs it the most you may find you cannot water the lawn, shrubs, trees and flowers.

A sensible and also cost effective solution is very often a private water well. In many instances the cost of the well is recovered in just a few short years. This quick financial recovery is most often seen in towns that are served by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority where the cost of water has skyrocketed in the past few years because of the environmental restrictions designed to clean up Boston Harbor. Many homeowners in those towns can find that installing a well has a one-year payback. As a guideline, the average well and pump system costs around $5,000.

There are different types of water wells and homeowners as well as businesses need to take into account town regulations and their own specific water needs. In towns such as Duxbury and Norwell where landscaping is at a premium, it often makes sense to install an irrigation well. The costs of landscape design, putting in and maintaining a lawn, trees, shrubs and other plantings warrant maintaining your investment. Any gardener or landscaper will concede that water is the most important nutrient and the key to successful gardening, making an irrigation well a good investment. Irrigation wells need only around 3 to 5 gallons per minute.

For more than 150 million Americans groundwater is the source for daily drinking water. The rules vary from town to town but generally if a town provides the service of town water you cannot install a drinking water well. There are currently nearly one million old-fashioned, or dug wells in use. These dug wells are very difficult to keep free from water quality problems. Drilled rock wells are much more reliable and provide safer drinking water.

The latest equipment makes today's wells easier to install, safer and more reliable than the old fashioned wells. The rigs are quite expensive and can cost contractors $600,000 to purchase. The rigs drill a hole through the soil and rock layers to reach the groundwater. Rotary drilling is the most common method. Casing is then put in the borehole to stop it from collapsing and to prevent surface water from getting into the well.

A reputable contractor will evaluate site-specific factors, such as formation and location, to determine the appropriate drilling method to be used for a well. The contractor should also evaluate site-specific factors such as geologic formations, required water yield and well location to determine the appropriate drilling methods. Well diameters range from 4-inches to 8-inches and can be up to or greater than six hundred feet in depth. Off Cape, the average well is a rock well set in bedrock between 200 to 600 feet.

In selecting a contractor the cheapest price is not always the best deal in the long run. One question you should ask is how much equipment the contractor has on hand to accommodate those instances when there are breakdowns. Smaller, one and two person operations may not have an abundance of equipment and a breakdown may mean that your residential or commercial well can be delayed indefinitely. Another question to ask is if someone is in the contractor's office to answer your questions as they arise. Typically smaller operations are owner operators allowing only a small window when they will be available to talk with you.

When properly drilled and installed your well should be simple to maintain and problem free.

Homeowners, and businesses, with private wells used for drinking water should test their well water once a year to ensure a safe water supply. Most wells do not require chemical treatment because the water moves straight from the soil and rock into the house. However the testing is essential for safety reasons and for peace of mind.

Carrie Collins is President of DRAGIN Drilling, a state certified, Woman-Owned Business Enterprise and Disadvantage Business Enterprise drilling company. The company's name was originally created as an acronym to describe its scope of services, "Deep Remedial and Groundwater Investigation Needs." A custom-designed fleet of vehicles, several of which are one-of-a-kind, accommodate virtually every drilling need. DRAGIN Drilling is one of the only drilling firms in the United States with 24-inch
auger capability. DRAGIN Drilling maintains headquarters at 2696 Cranberry Highway,
Wareham, MA 02571.

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