Submitted by: A Peterson
This Dare To Escape topic addresses various ways to determine if land you own or are considering owning has a water aquifer within your well depth reach. After reading this, and applying the information it references, you should know more about finding water on your land and how to get a water well drilled.
I Love This Homesteading Land, but If I Buy It, Will I Have a Water Supply?
At this point, you are either looking for land, or you have bought land. Now you need what is called a water aquifer. Ideally, one should have already determined if there was water present on the land, was it good for drinking water, is the groundwater plentiful, is the water quality good, and is it free of water pollutants. I would hope that you are at the beginning of your speculations on prospective land for sale.
If you read my articles about finding and living on land, you may remember that we found a great deal of very cheap land. I think I may have found 40 acres for $29,000 on one site. There may be nothing at all wrong with that land. Often, you can simply eyeball the land and see that it has trees, lush vegetation, that wildlife and insects are plentiful.
Of course, these are fair indicators that are really symptoms of a nearby food and water source. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it is no guarantee that you will necessarily be able to produce water on the land at a price you can afford. However, it is a fair indicator of whether you there is a water supply so you may be able to grow crops. If you see some of the ultra cheap land we have looked at, you may notice that it is in a barren desert where nothing grows. That kind of land is not a good water bet. Usually you will want to get data from three or four different sources in order to make a good bet on water being available on your land.
The paragraph above makes it sound like a water aquifer is hard to find.
That really is not true either. Water is probably one of the most plentiful resources on the planet, but it does make a difference where your land is located. Before drilling became popular for water wells, many people dug wells by hand, which are wide affairs (sometimes 3 or 4 feet in diameter or larger), and they kept digging and hauling dirt up until they were below the water table. After the well was stabilized and the water was clean, people would haul their buckets up out of the dug well using a bucket. In most places in America, if you start digging or drilling and you go deep enough, and in some places that is pretty deep, you will usually find water. Today, most people use drilled wells and use an electric water Pump to get the water out of the well and into their residential plumbing.
Water is indeed plentiful, but there are so many sources of data that you can use to estimate how deep your well will be and how expensive that it is likely a venture like this will cost, why would you pass up the opportunity to use it? You are looking at harvesting water just as surely as you would plan a crop or build a house. Use the data. You can tell if there are water pollutants, and you can tell at what level the surrounding groundwater table is. In most cases, finding all this out is free. There are places where you can get most of the information you want about a groundwater table in an afternoon. So, why not make reasonably sure water is present before you sink all that cash into a piece of acreage that you may not be able to get water out of?
One thing is certain, unless you are not planning on living on the land you buy, you are going to need water. There are places in the country where the water is scarce. There are not many, but this is usually reflected by how cheap it is. If a piece of land is extremely cheap, there is a reason for it. Find out what that reason is. It may be really cheap because the power grid is so far away. If that is the reason, then that is a plus because you were probably planning on an alternative energy source such as solar or wind. But if that is not the reason, dig deeper (pun intended). It could be that you may not be able to get to water in a way that fits your budget.
How To Find Water And Assess Water Quality On Almost Any Land
I was amazed to find this web site in helping determine where water was. Did you know that the United States Government has already compiled massive data on the availability of water throughout the country? Did you know that this data is updated in REALTIME? On top of that, did you know that data for finding the groundwater table for your water supply is free?
You will want this web address URL and go play with it:
http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/rt – is a principal use of water table data for the United States with real time water levels and well depths.
At this site, you can click on any region of the country you like, and the USGS (United States Geological Survey) has already collected data on aquifers, at what level they are, what their quality is, and how deep the wells are.
I will grant that this site does take some playing around with to get the hang of, but if you are persistent, you can find almost everything you want to know about water availability in any region of the country. Armed with this knowledge, you can query the surrounding property owners of the land you are considering, check with the agent, call the local well drillers, and get the information you need. The more of these data sources that agree, the more likely you have good information and can make a good decision about the water supply in the groundwater of the land you are considering.
Once you know this information and you are reasonably sure about how good the data is, all you need to do is figure out how expensive it will be to pump that water out of the ground.
Of course, some of you will want to diy a water well, while others would be more comfortable hiring the professional. It is usually going to be a once in a lifetime thing, so the decision is totally up to you and your wallet. Once you have found the clean water you need to grow crops and for drinking water, it is a relatively simple concept to get it out of the aquifers and into your home for your personal use.
How To Know If You Should DIY a Water Supply
If you have done the data mining to find out if you have water, then you should know at what depth you can expect to find your groundwater table, what the water quality is, and what you can expect from the harvesting of water in expenses. There are many ways to do this, from renting equipment to buying expensive equipment to making your own equipment. There are hybrid systems where you may make most of your own equipment, do the actual drilling by hand, but have to buy certain things like PVC pipe and a water well drilling well point .
Here is the web address URL of a man who has done just such a thing, but he cautions that it only works on wells from 25 to 35 feet deep:
http://www.drillyourownwell.com – This guy drilled his own 25ft to 35ft water wells using PVC and handmade items
It is quite an interesting read, even if your well will have to be deeper. You will most likely learn many things about water well drilling that you probably did not know before. He does not use a lot of technical jargon. He has the entire process laid out in steps, and even has videos to show how it is done!
If you find that you can use his system, that is great. Yet, if you find yourself needing to go with a more high-end system, at least familiarize yourself with the hand drill system so that you will be able to recognize the principal parts of having to diy your own water well to get to your ground water.
If you find that you do not have the strength, the time, or the kind of circumstances that would lend itself to you diy drilling your own well, then by all means, hire the professional. But shop around. These guys are in high demand. They can name their own price. They are not always available due to their backlog. So understand, even though you are the customer to the water well driller, he probably has more business than he or she can get to. Most drillers will give you the price once they know the story, and then will let you take it or leave it.
In short, if you can do it yourself, you will be the richer for it, both philosophically and money-wise. But, since this is a one time thing, you may find it is a skill that you do not want to take the time or difficulty to develop.
How To Bring All You Know About DIY Water Supply, Harvesting of Water, Groundwater, and Drinking Water Quality Togethe
There is a lot of good information out there. There is probably a lot of bad information out there too. This is something you will want to take your time to get to know. A water problem is forever as long as you own the land you have. This is worth becoming more informed about.
At the end of the day, you will use the government’s information, you will use the agent’s information, and you will talk to the land owners around the area and ask them how deep their wells were and what the water quality is.
Finally, you will make a decision, hoping it is the right decision. Right decisions come from correct investigations and not from emotional choices. Whether you decide to pay someone, or diy your water well, you are going to need water, and you are going to need to know what your chances are of finding some.
Either way, what I have said here just begins to touch the surface. I hope I have given you a good start in the right direction.
About the Author: Alex spent a lot of time living in the country, but then found himself trapped in the city for decades. He writes about self-reliance and living off-grid in the wilderness. His articles are reminiscent of Thoreau, but practical enough for modern times.
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