Farm well quesiton, it is a flowing well...

On a farm we have with a rental house we had some water clarity issues. There is a shallow well pump in the basement and I was always a little weary of it. The well driller and I tried to find the well casing but couldn't and wonder if was a driven point or what. There were some other light bulbs that went off to say this was a well that flowed, but I had never been around anything like that. The house is in the bottoms. So we undid the feed coming in and it flows. Anything I should do to utilize this feature? Build a pond!?!? Has anyone ever put a frost free hydrant on a flowing well line before? I know there's flow, but the pressure must be very low I'd guess. Looking for some insight please. I do farm around this house also, don't think there's enough water to irrigate it. That would get the neighbors talking...

I am in a region where back in the '60's "Cotton was King". Water was not available. Lots of farmers living in this area. Best wells were over 250' deep. Most used cisterns collecting rain water from roof draining gutters......quality ugh in my opinion. Today's community wells that can produce 80 gallons per minute or so, reliably 24/7/365 are 2000' deep.

Back 50 years ago a FHA loan produced community water that has evolved over the years to a reliable source and obviously associated costs to the user.........but that's ok!

The point I am attempting to make in answering your inquiry is this: Back in the '60's a bath out in the yard in a #10 wash tub was the way you did it. The "privy" was a shack out back.....get the idea. None of these mechanisms could support a modern household.

So sir, volume of water availability and usage would to me surely be a serious item of determining what it is you choose to do.

You mean you have an "artesian" well? One that enough natural pressure that it will flow out the top of the well casing. Does it come straight up? How high above the ground does the water come up? That will give you a sense of the pressure.

Just because it flows in the basement does not mean it will flow into a pond. The well at our cabin sometimes flows 50 gpm from a knee high overflow, and sometimes it's down 4 feet below ground level, depending on how much rain we have gotten. When it was first drilled it flowed the 50 gpm so we built a pond, worse slimy mess you ever saw, from iron! So we filled in the pond and now just have a pipe underground to the road ditch. Now the well at our house has +12 feet of head, but it has a submersible pump and a seal above the pitless. When we are gone in cold weather we leave a hose run in the lake, with the pump shut off it runs about 3 gpm. We were told to do this to prevent freezing.

Half way between our farm and the grandparents farm was an artisan well by the roadside. I drove an old VW bug and it was hot as a firecracker in the summer. I always stopped at the well and got a drink. After that the old bug usually vapor locked from the lack of air moving while I got my drink. Ahhh, the memories.

We'll the rest of the story was I knew the well was somehow shallow since it has a shallow we'll pump. I wanted to put in a deep well to try for "better" water. Guess what? Went to drill and proceeded all the way to bedrock with nothing. So now we're back to trying to make the current well work. 2 water tests have been done with only a slight iron issue present. I'm putting in a fancy softener and sand filter to see how it goes

That well wasn't along US20 near Fayette, OH was it? Been by that one many times, lots of people stop there and fill up water jugs.

Flowing wells are very common in this part of Nebraska. Used to be they flowed strong, all the time. With several years of drought some have stopped, or stop at some times. When I went to school we'd stop at one on the bus route on hot days. Later years I rode the bus in the morning and the van in the evening on a different route back (I was one of the furthest out so they switched it so I'd get home sooner), the van would stop at a different one. There are at least three of them each within 200 feet outside of my property about a mile away from my yard, each more than a mile apart. Two are next to livestock tanks, one fills a small pond. Water is good here, no iron or anything bad in it. I have one corner of my property that could have one, was always going to put one in but never got around to it. It's on a meadow I don't pasture so I never got around to "justifying" it. My cousins drill wells, I have helped them drill several and would likely not even get a bill for having it done, but I don't like that, so when I do have one done I "guess" how much to send them. Regular wells here are 100 ft deep, pump hangs around 30, water level is sometimes 6 ft or so depending. Further east in the hills they are drilled over 200 ft.

Good luck