Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Cost of drilling a well?

Just that?

Depends on what size well... and how busy the drillers are. With the housing boom, the guys around here were asking for $40K for a residential well, and up. During the last bust, they were putting them in for a quarter or less of that. If you can wait, wait a bit. It's going to get a LOT cheaper next year or two.

Now, I need to drill a couple of 48" holes on the fish farm, and they quoted me $7,000 per day, counting travel time. But, that's a good size drill rig. Any casings etc are extra. You've got to pay to play....

We are doing aright for now, but our steel cased well has rusted enough that the pump can't be lowered.

They should be able to clean that one and re case it

The same well company that drilled it, said it's cheaper to drill a new well.

I found the same thing. After 30+ years running the original pump, I thought it would make sense to change out the pump in a "planned" manner, other than wake up one morning without water. So I did, had a local company that used a quality pump instead of a no-name knockoff pump come out and change out the pump. Simple process, pump comes straight up and out, new pump/pipe/wires same length, pump won't go back down. A rock or something fell back into the hole after the pump came out and nothing we could do would dislodge the blockage. So we cut back the length of pipe and reinstalled. Still had plenty of static water level in the hole, and it's been 2 years now.

But I called around to ask about bringing a rig out and setting up and clearing the blockage. I got the song and dance about the difficulty of setting up exactly over the same hole, the casing depth not to code as it was back when it was drilled, blah blah. Said to just drill a new hole.

Thanks Wayne, sometimes plastic is better, no rust.

Richard, ours was 207' deep, CAD$75/foot for drill & casing + Electrician/plumber !

Almost $20k all up !

getting 6 gallons per minute.

Paul, how far to bedrock?

I had mine done 2 years ago but the driller is about 5 miles away.... he used it as a "filler" job in between his big jobs so it took him a little longer.... he drilled it it about 3 weeks after we talked.... then came back about 2 weeks later and developed it. All said and done it was 6 weeks. 250 Ft deep, 8" pvc case was $9000. Fuel was cheaper back then so even though it was a "neighbor/buddy" deal it would probably be quite a bit more now.

36 bucks a foot for an 8" is one helluva good deal. Here in the far northstate the drought is so bad...drillers are booked ahead 2 years.

Mine is 65 feet deep. My pump went bad a few years ago. Called a local driller, he replaced it for $500

Yeah, I was expecting worse but I guess the guy was feeling generous? My old well was about 6" about 140 ft deep but was probably drilled in the 50's and the steel case had rotted so bad it finally kind of caved in.

I went and bought a 3000 gal poly tank at the feed store and had my water truck from work swing by and top it off every other day until the new well was done. Pain in the azz but I am lucky that my grandfather owned a pump company and I grew up doing that kind of work. Found a used little 1/2 hp pool pump on Craigslist and hooked it up to the pressure switch and plumed a tee into my current setup.....got us by no problemo until the new well was done and I installed the new pump. Luckily it was during spring and we didn't need any irrigation water just for the house.

I have no idea what they charge for drilling a well here. The two guys that I knew that did it are both dead. We have sulfur water here, and we finally got tired of buying drinking water. I had a guy run me a water line across the fields and I hooked to county water. Best thing I ever did, although the cost of water has gone up almost double since I did, and I had to use it for the cows during the drought, which ran the bill up even more.

We only use the county water for the house, and I have a couple of cattle waterers hooked up to it where it comes across the fields. I use the well for everything else.

They tell me it's right about 60 grand and 2 year wait for a driller.
500' +

I asked a couple months ago what drilling costs were, when a well guy was testing the neighbor’s well for flow rate - $34 a foot drilled and capped.

food for thought ..... This was a quite a few years ago. After calling around asking the well drillers how much and how long the waiting list was, I learned that they all seemed to be pretty busy and pretty close in cost with the exception of one whom was $3-$4 per foot less than the others. When researching the Montana Bureau of Mines water well logs to see how deep most of the wells were in the area that I needed a well I noticed that the well driller that was $3-$4 less per foot also seemed to drill his wells A LOT deeper than the others. Sometimes twice as deep or more. Thats when I realized that the cost per foot wasn't as important as hiring the most reputable well driller in the area even if the waiting list was longer.

I hate to be a negative Nancy here, but I have done some welding over the years for different drillers, take this as something learned from firsthand observation...the hole you were billed for, may not be the hole you ended up with. Say for instance the driller says to the customer, you got good water at 120 feet, but in this formation, I'd advise going to 200. OK, no red flag there. He gets the OK and supposedly goes another 80 feet, I am right there, and bored welding and watching, counting drill stems at 20 or 21 feet apiece. He is only 7 stems downhole when he quits, test pumps and maybe he has me weld on the safety cap, 7 stems he is down 140 ish. Joe the pump guy shows up, he can only hang the pump at 138 feet. He does, bills the owner, the owner picks up the discrepancy between the pump at 138 and the bill for 200. He calls the driller. The driller says, son of a bitch, I was afraid of that, it caved, we shoulda cased but I didn't want to lose your water at 120. That's the way it goes, sorry. The owner MAY have just gave the driller an 1800 dollar bonus. But...wells DO cave in, depending on the formation. Ask your pump guy who he likes for drillers too.