How deep it goes

Ahhh that sweet sweet voice of Anne Wilson, Nancy's tender picking -- there is a reason why this song has been stuck in my head for a few days...

The well guys came with a really really, no really, BIG truck with a super giant drill, and the guy dangled his keys around a bit and said "h-yup, right here".  He estimated we would find water at about 20 meters (60 feet or so). At 100 euros per meter, the quote was for 2grand, and that was OK...


And along comes Drilling Day...20 meters, still pulling up gravel, not even reached bedrock yet...30 meters...the guys have to go back to get more pipes...40 meters...the guys have to get bigger pipes because the gravel keeps caving...50 meters...and finally bedrock.  How much bedrock before we hit the water table?

Not much farther now, says the well guy, for sure for sure.  60 meters...70 meters...80 meters...No water and we quit for the day.

So here we are, 4 times over budget and seriously worried -- what do you do?  Keep going, keep spending for each meter?  How do you stop when so much has already been invested?  But what if there is no water?  What if we don't reach it until 200 or 250 or even 300 meters?  We started talking to folks with wells, and everyone had a horror story -- "oh, my sisters well was 330 meters deep (that's 1000feet -- just the energy to pump the water up from that depth is heart stopping!)".  "My uncle had one that went to 220".  "oh, at my cottage it went to 250"...EEEPS!!

Well, not much to do at this point, so the next day we just kept drilling and drilling.  And HURRAY! We finally hit deep water reservoir at 120 meters -- about 360 feet.  It has a good strong flow too, more than 1400 litres an hour, which is OK, and provides some pressure to get the water up with less energy than I feared.

Still, though -- 6 times what we expected to pay.  If we had any idea it would be that expensive NO WAY would we have dug a well at the little farm -- the running spring is enough, and we could just use that to fill a tank for the few times we will spend the night there.  But hey, now its done, so if ever we do want to live there, or have someone else live there, it will be ready!

So, I've done the calculations -- we use water at the little farm mostly to irrigate the vegetable garden, since we aren't living there, and that takes about 600-1000 litres every other day when its not raining.  At 1 euro per bottle, we could water the garden with Evian for a couple of months for the same price!