We've Got Water!

The Man and I were recently talking about how we don't have a source of water on our land.  We are on city water and I can't stand it, as it smells of chlorine so badly it almost burns my nose!  I'm really surprised our animals will even drink it, although they do so without complaint.  However, lest you should think I'm a whiny baby, I'm very thankful to have city water (right now) because we don't have to worry about power outages or running out of water.  Here's another however, however, I don't like feeling as if city water is our only option, should we ever need to go another route.

Ok, so that leads us to this blog post!  The Man came in from working on his new quail pens and said..........Hey!  We've got Water!

Our land is split into two sections.  The bulk of our property is on one side of a dead end road and that is where our house, the goats, chickens, rabbits and pigs when we have them, live.  Right across the dead end road is the remainder of our property....

This used to be quite full of junk when we first bought the place.  We've been working on stuff over on the part of our land that our house sits on, and working with building outbuildings and fencing and such and haven't done too much with this side of our property.......

But inside this cinder block enclosure.......

Is this!!  That's a well my friends......

And we wanted to know how deep it was, so we can start planning on putting in a "pitcher pump", or hand pump......

So how do you measure the depth of a well?  It's terribly difficult and complicated....go get some paper and pen so you can write down how to do it.......

Ha!  Just kidding, it's easy peasy!  

Get a long ball of yarn and about 5 nuts....or washers....or a heavy rock even and tie to the end of the yarn.....

Then drop the weighted end down your well, slowly and being careful not to drop the whole shebang down there!

Keep feeding your weighted line down the well.  Once you reach the water, you'll know it because your weight will stop swaying side to side and will pretty much just go straight down...and once you hit bottom you'll know, although it's a bit trickier about that.  You have to feed it down slowly, and just "feel" when it's on the bottom and not going down any farther.  This isn't an exact science, but will give you a ball park figure on how deep your well is.....

Then we went back to the main yard to measure.  We used a 100' tape and first measure how much of the yarn was wet.....about 16 feet.  That means we've got 16' of water in our well.  

Then we measured how much total string we used......

It's a loooooong way, as you can see.......

We had 90' of dry yarn, plus our 16' of wet yarn for a total well depth of approximately 106'

What does that mean for us?  Well we'll have to figure out the best type of non-electric pump for this depth of well and then begin plans for getting it installed.  Then we'll test the water with a home test kit and hopefully have good drinkable water in the event of an emergency!

I've got hopes that it will be good water as it's the highest point around, there are no septic systems close to it, and it isn't around any farm ground for pesticide run-off.  Of course that doesn't mean much nowadays because that stuff can seep into just about anything!  :)  However, it's a start!

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.  John 4:14

Till next time.....I remain yours in Christ,