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We thought our well pump broke yesterday 4pm and scrambled to get a service out today. Now told it is a bigger problem and we need to get the well - re-drilled. That service cannot come out until this Monday. This is really bad as I need to get water on the property for my horses. No flushing toilets and no showers - no running water. Banging head on wall to get some ideas to make it to Monday. Hotel is easy for us but not the animals. Plus next 4 nights below freezing....

Oh no! This is terrible news and why do these things always happens hen you can't get people out?!

Do you have barrels or some large things to hold water? You could probably get them filled at a near farm or at a community spot. '

Call the fire department, explain the situation, and see if they will bring a truck to fill the stock tanks. I've seen them do it here in Texas.

If that fails, as someone who has done many days without water and electric, thanks to hurricanes, I would take coolers to wherever you can get water, fill them, and use them to fill up the tanks. I've also purchased 5 gallon bottles at places like Wal-mart and refilled those as necessary. You can flush the toilet with 1 gallon of water, just pour it in steady and strong enough to get the current going and it will flush.

I once washed my hair by standing in the backyard during what remained of a hurricane because it needed it THAT badly. lol

Good luck! I hope they get it up and running quickly.

Josette I am not sure how far south you are from me, but if you need to bring some five gallon jugs to fill, I would be happy to provide water. I do think, however, that the fire department might be a better solution.

Chisamba - thanks so much for your offer but I'm about 2 hr drive from you. I'm waiting for next door neighbor to get home (horse farm) and will ask if we can fill water containers there. Also, we will run to food store get some water for brushing teeth and making coffee. Will use paper plates. I hear you about flushing the toilet. We can still drain the tanks with filtered water to get some to fill horse buckets tonight and flush toilets. I don't think it will last until Tuesday though. I don't mind using the stalls for wee but not for poo! You don't realize how much you miss running water until you can't shower, wash hands, dirty dishes, make coffee, FLUSH TOILETS! I guess I'm spoiled.

Been through similar several times for different reasons. I have the large 100 gallon stock tanks sitting below the barn downspouts in several locations so that I pretty much always have 3-400 gallons of water sitting available. I keep a tank heater in one of the tanks when it freezes so 100 gallons available during our occasional cold snaps.

That might not help you right now and hopefully your horsey neighbor will allow you to fill water but this strategy has saved us several times over the years in having a backup water source for the horses and emergency flushing.

So sorry! Been there done that had to redig well. Took several days plus $$$$. (Also nightmare of county paperwork.). Do you have a storage tank or was yours an "on demand" well? There are companies that will send out trucks with potable water to fill tanks, usually about 2000 gal. Not too expensive here, about $70 per delivery. You can usually use the pump from the storage tank, when there is water in the tank, even if we'll is down. I have also run several 1000 feet of garden hose to closest neighbor. Once for them and once for us. Good luck. I live in fear of going through that again.

Maybe you can find a water truck that will deliver some. Not necessarily this place, but there are others:
http://water-on-wheels.com/Water-on-Wheels/Welcome.html

I've seen small water trucks at hunter horse shows lots of times in the past.

I managed to reach the neighbor last night and we can get water from her. For now, DH is pumping air into the basement water treatment tanks which still contain SOME water. We use filtered water in the house and linked to the nearby barn. We will have to drain these tanks anyway to install new ones as they said the bladders were burst?? (I have no idea what that means.) I may actually have water to the barn for the weekend - maybe - using this water to flush toilets too. We purchased bottled water for our personal use. DH went into office today and will use gym to take shower. I'll hit my sister or uncle for their shower.

This may sound crazy but I'm tracking my horses drinking water inside their stall buckets. They typically have free stall access and prefer to drink the outside water in those large water tubs - and NOT drink in stall buckets. Those large water tubs were near empty. I was out to clean stalls, scrub/refill tubs when our well pump died at 4pm. That is the really bad timing as horses could have gone at least 4 days with 2 large outside water tubs topped off. Yeah - this is going to cost $$$$$.

Did you get snow? its quite white here now, but even twenty minutes south at the barn, its barely snowing. I hope your well stuff is not horrendously expensive.

No snow here but temperature is dropping. Cost for new well $17K. We are still trying to recover from the shock.

Could be worse I suppose as I hear a new septic system in this area goes for $35K - $38K. Insane.....

Ouch.

Yeah, drilling a new well... we had to do that a few years ago.

Take heart. Our new one is 700ft deep and lined with stainless steel pipe, and we had to trench and bring piping across the road and across the yard and through our driveway, all in all about 500 feet, to get to the house. (And they sliced through the main electricity cable in the process.)

I'm still getting over how much that little exercise cost.

Our new well was $20,000+ but we had to go 800 feet deep. The bladders are in your pressure tanks that create the water pressure that moves your water to your various faucets. If/when they break the pressure tank fills with water and no pressure. Pressure tanks need to be replaced about every 10 to 15 years (ask me how I know). Not cheap but not like a new well.

Srhorselady wrote:The bladders are in your pressure tanks that create the water pressure that moves your water to your various faucets. If/when they break the pressure tank fills with water and no pressure. Pressure tanks need to be replaced about every 10 to 15 years (ask me how I know). Not cheap but not like a new well.

The bladder just prevents the air from diffusing into the water so that the tank doesn't have to be recharged with more air. Some tanks have air spigots though, so can be recharged even after the bladder breaks. If the tank doesn't have a refill spigot though, and there's no way to replace the bladder, then the tank would need to be replaced.

We just pump more air into our tank whenever the water pressure starts to fade.

When this well was installed 18 years ago depth drilled to 350 ft. They told us the well pump was set at approx 140 ft - common depths at that time. Something happened where the water level dropped and the pump continued running and burnt out. Service person said it has happened to a few other homes in our area - same problem. So we need to discuss with the driller on Monday how deep to go this time and placement for pump much farther down. Any thoughts on this? I thought the pump would have been installed further down the first time......

Mountaineer - Ouch back!

My well was 23K and 342 feet deep. Sounds like you're in for a great, necessary education about water and horses; wells, tanks, bladders, storage, backup methods...Keep the horses hydrated. You can manage - even if it means no shower for a week, you can manage.
I suspect you may even find ways to use water more wisely forever more: I dump the dregs from the dog's bowl into a plant. Running water in the kitchen to warm it up, I fill water bowl, or watering can for plants, or the tea or coffee pot until the water heats. Brush my teeth with tap water set to hot so when I'm done, never letting it just run, warm water is available to wash my face. Water hardly ever just goes down the drain here in the country. I even designed the layout for the water heater to be just on the backside of the wall from the shower so the shower heats up NOW. Good luck and thank god for great neighbors!

Pumps should have shut off switch so they stop running if water level drops, our does. Are you super duper sure you need a new well? I've found well companies to not be any more honest than other contractors (I'm married to one so I know they're not all crooks!) but I would never take one company's word on such a big expenditure.

DH was present when they attempted to remove the well pump and it is definitely jammed and cannot be removed. They snapped a piece on their truck attempting removal. We were told the pump overheated causing the pvc pipe to distort and jam the well pump. DH rigged a device with his backhoe and still was unable to remove it. The shut off switch you mention - is it manual or automatic sensor? DH said he suspected the well pump wasn't working properly due to noise he heard. Lesson learned the hard way..... So far DH has pumped air into the tanks and we have water still running in the barn and can flush toilets infrequently. So cautiously reserving water to make it through to Tuesday. We purchased several 5 gallon bottles as backup for horses.

Older well pumps don't necessarily have the shutoff feature. Our old one didn't but the current one does. Do you have to do paperwork to declare your old well "dead" before they will give you a permit for the new one? We did. It was actually faster to get the permit to dig the new well on my parcel (original shared well was on neighbors parcel) and trench across the driveway to the original holding tanks. Good luck! You have all my sympathy.

Glad to hear you've got water back at your barn. It's really difficult to deal with no water and horses in any circumstances, but when you layer freezing temperatures on top of it, things can feel a little desperate.

We recently had a power outage (our well pump is electric. . ) due to heavy snows and had freezing temps to boot. We were able to heat a little water on the wood stove to wash our hands, it was amazing how civilizing/comforting that gesture was. Dealing with the horses was virtually all encompassing, hope you've got a gusher soon.

Srhorselady - yes - as you described we have to get a permit to dig the new well. I don't know about declaring the old one "dead" but no digging without a permit.

Koolkat - I hear you about the frigid temperatures but at least we don't have any snow. We went through Hurricane Sandy a few years back immediately followed by a sudden snow storm. So we had lost power twice within a 2 week period and honestly that was worse with freezing temperatures. Frigid temps at night the past few days but at least the house has heat with backup wood stove. This is just a nuisance for now and should be over soon. I will be buried washing dirty laundry for a while though.

I think this is what we have, or something similar. We're in a dry area, everyone has them.
https://www.amazon.com/FRANKLIN-ELECTRI ... B00T869ISW
Our is set for manual restart, cause if the shaft goes dry I've done something stupid and I need to figure out what the problem is before the poor pump tries to fire up again.

I wonder if you couldn't send a camera down there, see how it's stuck, and maybe knock it down the rest of the way and just leave its carcass at the bottom of the well! That might be too redneck

Oh my goodness, I am so sorry! Hope it all gets finished soon!

Keep us posted on how you are doing. I hope that it doesn't take long to get water back to the house!

Any updates? Do you have water?

We just got running water at 5:20 PM!!! I cannot say how glad I am to finally be able to shower at home. I am now buried in dirty laundry and dishes - but who cares when we have running water! I ended up going to WalMart to purchase water bottles - the large 5 gallon jugs for the horses. Since I only have 2 horses this was doable and worked. We had freezing temperatures the past few nights so they were easier to keep in the house. Crazy weather today was really warm and stripped blankets off horses. Inspector comes out tomorrow and then we can close up the hole. Old well sealed off with cement if I understood correctly. Oh and this time the well pump was set at 240 ft down and well same depth as before at 350 ft. Hope this NEVER happens again (we will know the signs at least).

Phew- I'm glad that you have water again!

What an ordeal. I'm glad it's over.

Talk about timing - yesterday morning inspectors came to approve the well so hole could filled. That was completed in the afternoon and this morning we have heavy snow coming down.