On 8/2/2014 5:01 PM, Ohioguy wrote:
My wife and I have been searching on and off for a place with several
acres but in the same general area. Fairly recently, I saw a place with
4 acres and we went to view the interior. To our surprise, the inside
is pretty much move in ready. It has an old fuel oil furnace that would
need to be updated. House size is a bit small at 1,200 square feet for
our family, but we could easily add a second toilet,
bedroom and living room on to the east side.

Anyway, I wanted to find out why this bank owned property, which is
in a great neighboring school district, was only being listed for about
$64k. It turns out that as far as the realtors was concerned, it had
"no water". The bank has recently dropped the asking price from the
original price by about $3k or so. I was able to find that the bank
obtained the property for under $50k, supposedly.

I decided to do more digging, since my Dad and I had seen what looked
like 2 fairly new well caps. I read over the well reports, and they
reported between 1/2 and 3/4 gallon per minute flow rate for both of the
wells, which were each sunk over 200 feet deep within 40 feet or so from
the house. Well, that's not "no" water, but it doesn't compare
favorably to the average of 8 gallons per minute in the surrounding
area. The former owner spent nearly $20,000 drilling those 2 wells.

Speaking of that, all of the surrounding wells struck water at an
average depth of 45 feet, and the neighbors I interviewed said they had
no problems with well water ever running out.

Looking over our water bills from the past few years, I figured out
that our family uses an average of 135 gallons of water per day. (not
including water for the garden, which we could get from house rainwater
runoff) This means that just 1 of the wells could be pumped for 5 hours
a day and give us enough water to use.

Would it be possible to get a large poly tank - say 2,000 gallon, and
have a small pump trickle the water up into that so that we would always
have a week or more of water stored up for future use? Would something
like that be as simple as adding the tank and running a pipe over to it
from the well, then adding a pump in the tank for the house? (or are
there a bunch of inspections and permits that would be required for
something like this?)

Both my wife and I liked the property and the house, despite it being
on the small side. We were truly surprised at the general good
condition of the interior, given the price. Everyone else is fearful
because of the water situation. I am sensing that the bank may continue
to lower the price of the place over the next few months before finding
someone willing to risk buying a house with "no water".

We are tempted to make an offer on the place, but I'd like to hear
from someone who has dealt with a similar situation before deciding
whether we should go ahead.
I looked at a property one time that really had no water. The
previous owners had a tank in the garage that they filled by
hauling in water from some place else. It was a nice enough
house but the lack of water was a big problem.

Bill