The well

There are two wells on the property—the existing house well, and the pump house well. We originally intended to reuse the existing house well for our domestic water, but the design of the house included rotating it slightly out of the original footprint, which made the house well inaccessible. That well had to be sealed. So we turned to the pump house well, a very deep well, at 338 ft, with a 12” casing, that was used by the lake association from the mid-50s to mid-60s to pump a million gallons of water a day to increase and maintain the water level of Lakes DeMontreville and Olson. When it was no longer needed, my family acquired the property it sits on, which is adjacent to our original lot. Except for occasional use by the DNR to check the level of the aquifer, it has sat undisturbed for about 50 years.

As we planned our new home, we wondered how best to use this unusual resource. We gave considerable thought to a ground source heat pump, but the logistics and cost were prohibitive, especially considering the very low heating and cooling loads the house would have. Since the county required that we either use it or seal it (not an inexpensive endeavor!), we had the well cleaned and the water tested. It turned out to be both safe and delicious, and could easily serve the domestic water needs of the home for a hundred years.

The video shows the well being cleaned by a process called airlifting. Two pipes were dropped into the well—one inside the other—and a generator and air compressor were used to pump air through one pipe down into the well and force the water out the top through the other. At the end of the cleaning, when the water looked relatively clear, they took samples for testing, and I took one home for tasting (once the tests came back clean).