Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Shallow water well

I have cabin near Anchor Pt. Neighbors have good water, but I have little experience for DIY. Found a contractor in the area but was wondering if anyone has been down this road recently.

You say your neighbors have good water. How deep is their well? How many gallons per minute does it make? What is the static water level? At what depth do they have the pump set?

Your title refers to a shallow well. Be advised if your well is too shallow your just drinking water ever is on the ground. Ideally you want to be at least below the first clay layer and into water below that level. That can be fairly shallow in some areas and considerably deeper in others.

If you plan on a shallow well that is essentially giving you surface water, you need to consider a water filtration system or at least frequent water tests.

One thing to consider if you are not using the cabin year round is to put in a tank and haul water. Not as convenient as a well but for the price of having well drilled, casing, pump, pump pipe, and running pipe to the cabin you might be money ahead to haul water.

I agree with Mart, but I'll add that a shallow well can be worth it just to have non potable water. Then you only have to haul drinking water which is minimal.

At my old cabin we had water at 6' deep and punched a well to 40' to get below the clay layer. Water quality was not great, lots of soluble iron, but it reduced the hauled water by alot. It cost about 1500 dollars and it was worth it to me. I installed the pipe and pump myself.

Thanks for responding. The water is 4-6 feet deep. Most wells in the area are 20-30 feet deep. Deep well nearby has crummy water. I'm looking at a Gould's pump that I assumed stayed above the well. The contractor uses 4' diameter concrete sections with drain rock around it. Still trying to piece it together in my head. Not sure how much water we'll need yet, just trying to go big.

Sounds like he is using a jet pump. They are designed for shallow wells. I cannot caution you enough about drinking water from that shallow a well. At 4-6 feet you are drinking what ever hits the ground. Unfortunately most wells in Alaska have sulfur tasting water. It may test out fine but the sulfur gives it an off taste, sometimes a downright terrible taste. A Brita filter pitcher does a fine job of removing the sulfur taste.

I would even be skeptical of a 20-30 foot well unless there was a layer of clay between the ground surface and where ever the well was making water. The clay serves to isolate the surface water from the subsurface water and driving casing through that clay layer allows you to draw water from the lower water zones without danger of the surface water co-mingling with the clean water.

Thanks mart, we are planning on testing the water and adding the correct filter system.

I spent 36 years being a well drilling and pump installation contractor. One thing to consider is, are there state regulations dictating construction standards? Our state have very stringent standards. Mart has a firm grasp on contaminated wells. For every well there is a septic system to add once used water to shallow water tables. Even if your septic is at a safe distance, is your neighbors close to your well? I have never seen a well where concrete casing is used. I do not care for surface pumps. They work fine but I much preferred submersibles. The drain rock is known as a filter pack and is used to hold back fine sands from entering the pipe perforations. That gets me to thinking, with concrete pipe, how was it perforated? I would assume the contractor has been at his profession for a few years and has a firm grasp on well construction in his area.

Thanks. The neighbors are a minimum of a 1/4 mile away. I have no idea how they put holes in the concrete casing, but the contactor was recommended by two different sources. I'll look into state regulations.

Testing the water is a good idea but if you are set on this shallow well, I would incorporate a filtration system regardless of how the water tests. Water quality, specifically surface water quality is entirely dependent on what is hitting the ground whether it's water or an unknown contaminant. That can very from month to month or even day to day depending on precipitation and the activities of surrounding neighbors.

ericj, I have installed a number of systems that you have described. They work quite well in the Anchor Point area. As long as your neighbor is not a gravel pit operator, water levels should not fluctuate much. Testing the water is always a good idea.

Will have a filtration system regardless. I figured to test the water to see which contaminants I would most likely be targeting. This is vacation property for now so I'm not trying rush it.

Jim, are you familiar with the concrete casing? BTW, we are eight miles out of Anchor Point just short of the Knob Hill area.

The concrete casing is actually a 48" precast concrete manhole. Numerous holes are drilled with a Hilti in the first section for water infiltration. They work quite well in the AP area. Some of the area rednecks just use a section of a large diameter culvert instead.

Thanks Jim. Planning on breaking ground June 20. Working with Johnson and sons construction.

Mart is right about very shallow wells and surface water, plus who knows what can get in the water below (even what your pets leave behind).

Anyway, a coworker of mine and his uncle drove a 40' 2" pipes in sections of 6' in length using a jackhammer. However, unlike shown on "youtube.com" these guys continuously turned the pipe that was being driven into the ground using a pipe wrench (jackhammer moving the pipe down, and the pipe being turned around by the other guy). He said that it took them about four hours.

The pump and a tank are inside the cabin, and the pipe outside is insulated coming into the house, plus heat-taped. The cabin is heated winter long. If you want a submerged pump outside (in the well), then the pipe can't be 2" since that's too narrow for the pump.

Something like that could be an option, very few rocks.

Ray is speaking of a device called a well point. These have hardened tips and a screen on the lowest section. These are commercially available. I have never installed a well point as they are illegal here and because we have too much pee gravel here in the mountains. Unlike other pee gravel elsewhere, our pee gravel is so large you can stand behind it and pee, and your neighbors cant see you. These should work good in areas with no rocks and shallow water.

7 to 10 ft is frost line in the winter in Anchorage thinking it will be a summer time well only. Lots of taste and hard water in Anchor Point area but it all depends on aquifer that you are drawing from. Lots of other issues in shallow water wells also.
Lots of Water sales people selling (Snake Oil treatments) but am a little biased. Just retired from 40 years in Water Treatment.
PM me for any help. Kurt

This one, but my coworker would turn the pipe with a pipe wrench. Supposedly by turning the pipe at the same time the jackhammer drives it down makes the process a lot faster since it prevents to pipe from binding against the whole it's creating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flYs98xBEZo

Thanks for the help. Still have a bit of time before I get started.

Kurt congrats on your retirement. Do you know of a filtration system to install if the water is worse case scenario? Just curious. Go enjoy your time off. Chit sorry for even asken. Go have fun.

Find out what water quality is and what problems, if any it has, then use proper filter to treat.

A lot depends on your intended use (drinking vs other uses).

Get the well in, have it developed (just pumped for a while nowadays) to get coarser sediment against the screen to help filter the fines.

Make sure the well is 'sanitized' with Cl bleach. PM if your well driller is not knowledgeable. #1 item afterward is to test for 'total coliform' bacteria. Other tests can be done separately.

Depending on flow and intended use, other advice can be proffered.

Problem with testing for total coliform is it changes more than all the rest... High water can bring the bad stuff to you at any time, no matter how the well has been testing...

Agreed, but It's the place to start and shallow wells should be tested more frequently.

Or, as an intermittent-use, seasonal well, it could just be disinfected prior to use at the start of the 'season' and if/when conditions change.

Don't these shallow wells freeze over winter? Or does "shallow" still mean below the frost line?

I have a lot of shallow wells on my place.

I use a screw in post hole digger that has a 1" thread steel pipe between the T handle and the auger bit. The auger bit looks like a coffee can with a slice in one side that shaves the dirt into it. When full pull it up and shake out the can. It pulls up a perfect plug of dirt. In Rock free dirt I can bore a hole 8 feet deep in 30-40 minutes comfortably. It will go as deep as you can turn the handle, and still pull up the plug of dirt. I think the deepest I have made is about 12 feet. Maybe a bit more. I had to use a ladder to get it out of the hole because the pipe was so long. The pipe also started to bend quite a bit.

Once the hole is done, my 8 foot holes are filled with water to about the 2 foot from the surface level. I drop in a 12V 500 gallon per hour bilge pump from a marine supply story. Then with a 4amp solar panel it will pump the water up from the hole into a storage tank. Bilge pumps don't have a lot of head pressure. So it cannot go much more then 6-7 feet deep unless you can use 120 VAC And get a Positive displacement pump down the hole or just a ordinary well pump.

It will pump water all day for free and fill an 800 gallon tank in a day or so. The pumps don't pump at rated flow when the head pressure gets to high( lifting the water that many feet up from the well reduces the volume.

So with about and hour of work, and a couple hundred bucks you can have all the water you want with this equipment. I irrigate my deer and turkey food plots with this exact system.

JJHack Whats your watt output on your solar panel and 1 deep cycle battery? Any links to your panel you use? Thanks

Pete, most are using an insulated pump house with a heater to keep things going. That said, I'm not seeing extreme temps.

I bought them at harbor freight. They are 23 volts out but I use a little regulater that gives me roughly 12v and 4 Amps. I x v = w

Should be about 50 watts

I bought the parallel connection kit so I have a pair connected together now. It does not increase the volts and I still use the 4 amp regulater. However the panels produce full power now with less then perfect direct sunshine.

erik,

FWIW, we had a well on our place in Anchorage and got all of our water filtration goods at Alaska Pure Water Products on International Airport Road in Anchorage. They were really good folks to deal with and knowledgeable about water issues across the state.

Ed

Thanks, I'll give them a call.

Just a late report. We have water at about 5' down. Really happy with local contractor. Filtration to come, as well as a drain field. Thanks for the advise. Peace.