On Sunday, August 3, 2014 11:17:22 AM UTC-4, Pete C. wrote:
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.



In some areas low producing wells are common. As long as the total

production per day of the well(s) is a reasonable amount, it's a simple

matter of installing a 1,000-2,000 gal cistern, a pump to pump from the

cistern to a normal pressure tank for household use, and a controller

for the well pumps. The controller runs the well pump or pumps (might

need two controllers) until either the cistern is full or the well is

dry (detects the pump running dry and shuts it off for a period of

time). The cistern is plenty big to meet normal household demand peaks,

and the wells keep up with refilling the cistern at a slower rate.

Nothing exotic or to be afraid of as long as the wells are reliable if

slow.

I guess the big question is how can one determine if the wells are
reliable, long term? Besides asking well drillers, neighbors, anything
else one can do? I would think one good thing may be that the wells are
deep. If it was a 50ft well, I would think it would be more likely that
the water level could decline due to changing conditions.