WATER WELL DRILLING
More incentives than ever to drill your own well
DO you have a well that needs rehabilitating on your land or are you after buying a house and need a well to be drilled?
If so there are several water drilling experts in the area who can offer a fantastic service at a reasonable price to meet all your needs. They can look after your project from start to finish which includes advice from the get go, providing well and pumps and help on filtration and water analysis.
Approximately 11 per cent of Irish people get their water from private wells. Grants are available under the Rural Water Programme for the provision of or improvements to an individual water supply in a house.
A grant of up to 75 per cent of the cost, subject to a maximum grant of €2,031.58, is available, subject to certain conditions. These are: there cannot be an alternative group or public supply available, the house must be more than seven years old and not connected to either a public supply or group scheme.
Only one grant per house will be allowed in any seven year period and the proposed work must cost more than €635.
You can contact your local authority for more information on this grant and the full qualifying conditions.
Unlike public water supplies or group water scheme supplies, water services authorities do not test drinking water quality of private wells. Testing your well water is your responsibility and should be done regularly to make sure your drinking water quality is high. People with VTEC (a form of E.coli) are more than four times more likely than the general population to have consumed untreated private well water. This is why maintenance and servicing of wells is also very important for reducing the risk of contamination.
If you are considering boring your own well, it is vitally important the well is constructed properly, sealed against pollution and disinfected. This is where your local water well drilling company comes in.
For many new home builders who don’t have easy access to mains water, the only avenue open to them is to bore a water well before proceeding with their building programme.
Being able to source your own water now makes more economic sense.
A water well is any hole dug into the earth which reaches the water table for the purpose of extracting water. Strictly speaking, a dugout which intersects the water-table is therefore a well.
Generally however, we think of wells as being a few inches to a few feet in diameter.
No drilled well should be less than six inches in diameter, because smaller ones seriously limit production and make repairs and servicing of pumping equipment very difficult.
Wells are drilled into two types or aquifers: water table and artesian. A water table well penetrates an aquifer whose lower surface is relatively im- permeable confining the bed, and whose upper surface is the water table itself.
When pumping lowers the water level of the well, the water table drops in its vicinity. An artesian well does not neces- sarily flow, contrary to popular thought. It penetrates an aquifer whose upper and lower boundaries are both confining beds. Water table wells are usually shallow and more susceptible to contamination, but their yield is frequently greater than from artesian wells.
Access In selecting the site for your well, convenience of access should be considered. Also remember that wells in low areas do not have to be as deep as those on knolls. Avoid drilling down near, barns, privies or septic tanks. These can readily pollute a water supply.
Assuring the purity of well water should be the most important consideration.
Also remember the most satisfactory pump for a borehole is the submersible type, which involves no suction pipe or foot valve. Sizes range from 1.3 horse power to 100 h.p. and give volumes and pressure suitable for needs ranging from private houses to factories.
Pumps can be installed to operate automatically, using a client’s existing pipework and with pressure to suit individual requirements. So call your local expert now for sound advice and a quote that won’t bore a deep hole in your pocket.