“We’re at 140 feet,” the well driller shouted over the rumbling of the drill. Excitement had turned to dread as we’d approached that magic number, the number that my husband, Robin, and I had agreed on as our limit to how deep we would dig searching for water. But there was no water to be found, just endless, suffocating, rock dust. “We can do another 20 feet on the house,” said the driller. “Oh, thank you,” I gushed, abandoning any pretense of composure. We were paying per foot and had already sunk more than $10,000 into that hole; I was desperate for our luck to change.
Why a well?
Robin and I were building a house in Atlin, a small community in northern B.C. and on Taku River Tlingit First Nation’s territory. We needed a water supply and had considered our options, including water delivery by truck (costly), pumping water from a small creek (we worried about seasonal fluctuations), and even hauling it in ourselves (commendable but time consuming).
If you’re considering developing a well on your property, you’ve probably weighed similar alternatives. Even if you live on the lakefront, with a limitless supply of water out your front door, a well may offer advantages. “A drilled well can be better than drawing out of a lake, because you generally can worry less about bacteria,” says Colin Slade, a partner at Drillwell Enterprises, a third-generation family-run drilling business based in Duncan, B.C.
For us, the appeal of a well was irresistible: no time-limited showers, no fretting over tank levels on a long weekend, no biting our tongues as well-meaning guests ran the tap while doing the dishes. We figured our well would pay for itself over 10 to 15 years by eliminating the cost of water delivery. Additionally, it could increase our property’s value if we ever decided to sell.
It was this grand vision of watery abundance that led us down the path of well development and overshadowed the very real risk of not finding water at all.
Drilling down
After considering our options (see here), we decided on a drilled well. Drilled wells can be hundreds of feet deep and are generally finished with six-inch steel or plastic casings (the vertical lengths of pipe that form the well walls). The deeper the well, the longer the surface water has to travel down, filtering out microorganisms and reducing the risk of contamination along the way. That said, drilled wells can become contaminated if the casings or caps fail or are improperly installed to begin with. Because drilled wells are deeper, they’re more resilient to fluctuations in the water table. However, all that water comes with a hefty upfront price tag. To develop a drilled well you’ll need a licensed contractor with a rotary drilling machine. Depending on the depth of your drilled well, development costs start in the thousands and can easily run into the tens of thousands. Slade operates on Vancouver Island, where he says they’re able to hit water 90 per cent of the time, though the odds can be higher or lower depending on the area. “We let clients know ahead of time if there have been unsuccessful wells nearby, and we might recommend that they don’t drill a well and consider an alternative, such as a rainwater catchment, hauling water, or trying for a dug well,” says Slade. (Depending on the ground conditions, in some cases, a drilled well won’t find water but a dug well might.) “At the end of the day, no one’s going to be happy rolling the dice if your odds are only fifty-fifty.”
Going deep on due diligence
Back at our property, as the drill hit 140 feet, I was baffled. How could there be no water? Our property was full of the stuff: a pond, a spring, a rushing creek, even a 30-year-old existing well that had reached its normal life expectancy and had run dry the previous year.
We’d asked our neighbours about their wells and talked to two drilling companies who’d assured us of good odds. We thought we’d done our research, but we later learned there were several things we could have done to improve our chances of striking H2O. Turns out, well development due diligence starts with two main questions.
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Will there be enough water for your demands? For a typical household, that can be up to 500 gallons per day.
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What is the quality of the water available? “Depending on the minerals that are present in the aquifer, you might have a water chemistry that needs treatment,” says Slade. Some problems, such as salty water or arsenic, “can be a lot more expensive to treat than others.”
Does ‘water dowsing’ or ‘water witching’ actually work?
Then get some answers
Reach out to local well drillers; they can give you a general idea of what types of wells have been successful in your area.
Look up nearby existing wells by searching your provincial online well registry. You’ll find information such as the depth of the wells, when they were drilled, and a well log that describes what drillers found at various depths. Some records will even have a note about the water quality—but don’t rely on them entirely. Water quality issues often only come to light after testing, and the records may not capture the results.
Ask around. For water quality info, “talk to your neighbours or a pump installer that does water treatment in the area,” says Slade.
Connect with a geohydrologist. Following our drilling fiasco, our driller put us in touch with Jim Coates, a partner at Kryotek Arctic Innovation, a geotechnical consulting and climate technologies company in Whitehorse. Coates, using geological maps, revealed that our property rested on serpentinite bedrock, an impermeable rock that retains surface water. It turns out, there were only two small faults on our 15-acre property where we might have had success drilling.
“Most provincial and territorial geological surveys have online maps showing bedrock and surficial geology,” says Coates. However, interpreting these maps is best left to an expert. “Look for a local hydrological, geophysical, or geotechnical engineering consulting company and give them a call.” You can also try reaching out to your municipal government or conservation authorities, geological or hydrological survey, or a nearby university (who may have an engineer on staff).
Though it’s uncommon for residential drilling, you can have your property surveyed by a geophysicist using electrical resistivity tomography. This technology involves injecting electricity into the ground through long cables. “Electricity travels more easily through some soils and rocks than others,” says Coates. “We look for less resistive areas that can indicate the groundwater table.” These services cost between $5,000 and $8,000 for a simple survey and analysis.
While there’s never a guarantee of finding water, the more research you do and the more experts you speak with, the better your odds of success.
Choosing a contractor
When you hire a contractor, ensure that they’re licensed for the work to be done. (You can check your province’s online directory of licensed well contractors and ask your well contractor or technician for proof of a valid license.) In some provinces, there are separate license classes for drillers, diggers, and pump installers.
Reach out to at least a couple of contractors and ask your neighbours for recommendations. “A good driller is going to have lots of people in the area that can speak to the experience that they’ve had with them,” says Slade.
Sizing up a quote
Costs vary by location, ranging from $60 to $120 per foot for drilling. “Other areas charge a lump sum for a well regardless of depth,” says James Squire, the owner-operator of Georgian Bay Well Drilling and Water Treatment. “For an overburden well—a well constructed in sands, gravels, silt, or clays—50 to 300 feet deep is pretty typical. For bedrock wells, in the areas we service, 300 to 500 feet deep is average. But there are areas where the wells are 600 to 1,200 feet deep,” says Slade. (Geology and aquifer depth varies drastically by area.) However, drilling into bedrock may cost less per foot because it doesn’t require well casing.
Aside from the per-foot charge, additional expenses may include mobilization (the costs to organize, assemble, and transport equipment and materials to the job site), the installation of a well screen to filter out particulate at the water intake, the pipes to deliver water from your well to your cottage (depending on whether or not you install them yourselves, as we did), as well as pumps, water treatment systems, and other components.
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Ask what you’ll be charged if the contractor doesn’t find water. Squire emphasizes that drilling a dry hole can actually cost more because the well needs to be properly abandoned (sealed and plugged) if it’s not successful.
Where to drill
As your well construction date approaches, your contractor may visit your property to determine access for equipment. This probably goes without saying, but “make sure that the well is on your property and that you’re respecting setbacks,” says Slade. Setback requirements can vary depending on a number of factors, including the local geology (soils or bedrock, for example), and established minimum safe distances from nearby property lines and sewage systems or other potential sources of contamination.
On the day
Plan to be on-site on drilling day. We stayed on our property for the duration of the drilling, ready to make decisions based on the driller’s updates regarding depth, ground types, and the water flow rates they encountered.
Testing and treatment
The driller will send a water sample for analysis, but if the sample shows contamination, don’t panic! According to Slade, initial post-drilling samples aren’t always representative. “You’ll often see a false bacteria hit and elevated levels of minerals.” This is due to all the churning, grinding, and oxygen exposure involved with drilling. Slade suggests installing the pump and retesting the water later, after moving “several well volumes of water” to obtain a more accurate sample. Depending on the size of the well, and your water use, this could only take a few days. “You don’t want to install an expensive treatment system if you don’t need it,” says Slade.
If you find your well water is non-potable or mineral-rich, you’ll have to treat it. Treatment options are available, including disinfection, softeners, reverse osmosis, distillation, chlorination, and UV treatment.
Once your well is established, regular testing is important, especially after periods of flooding, heavy rainfall, or snowmelt, or if you notice a change in the water’s colour, smell, or taste. Testing frequency recommendations vary by province; call your local public health department to investigate the standards in your area and find out if it offers free bacterial testing.
For chemical or physical contaminants (say, mercury or arsenic), order a test through an accredited lab (estimated cost: $200, plus shipping). Again, recommendations for testing frequency varies. In the Yukon, for example, authorities suggest you test for the first two years of a well’s life. If there are no changes from year one to year two, then you can test every five years.
All’s well that ends…
Robin and I watched the drill grind through the last 20 feet of rock. Then everything came to an abrupt stop, the air heavy with dust and defeat. The drillers expressed their sympathies, cleaned up, and loaded their equipment. Robin and I stood for a while in silence. It felt necessary to mark our loss. He picked up a big rock and placed it where our well would have been. This location, our $12,000 hole to nowhere, would serve a purpose, if only a reminder to our future selves: well development is risky, so proceed with caution (and a lot of research). With a burned-out budget and winter fast approaching, we decided to run a 500-foot line from our home to connect to that old well on our property that had previously ran dry. Happily, it’s producing enough water for now. If it runs dry in the future, we’ll first hire a driller to rehabilitate it, an option we only learned about after drilling the second well. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try our luck developing a new dug well. But lesson definitely learned: this time we’ll launch into the venture with a lot more information.
Oh, wells
One option that we never considered (but perhaps should have) is a dug well. Dug or excavated wells are three to 15 m deep and one metre wide, and draw from shallow groundwater, which makes them susceptible to surface contamination (for example, overflow from your septic, motor oil from parked cars, or road salt, fertilizer, and pesticides). They’re also affected by factors such as drought and seasonal water level fluctuation. “They might not produce enough water during the summer months,” says Slade. Traditionally, these wells were dug by hand, but today, they are built using an excavator or a backhoe, and they cost as little as a few thousand dollars to install. You may be able to construct these wells yourself, without hiring a registered well driller, provided you meet all the legal requirements for your area.
Shore wells are shallow wells, similar to dug wells, installed near the shore of a lake, pond, or stream (this can be beneficial: you don’t need to worry about wave action affecting the water intake, or the waterline freezing, for example). However, unlike dug wells, they draw directly from surface water and have thin or no protective soil layers to filter out microorganisms. They’re not considered “true” wells, making the water especially inappropriate for direct human consumption without proper treatment. You may be left without water when lake levels are low, or experience damage to the well tiles when levels are high. Driven wells (also known as sand-point wells) are another shallow well type; they consist of a 2.5 to 5 cm pipe that is driven into sand or gravel. They source shallow groundwater aquifers, and similar to dug wells, are more susceptible to surface contamination.
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