Home owners with well water, how do you handle water in winter.

[thomas_quinn]

We never had trouble with the well in the winter not saying it does not happen to people but I have never heard of freezing problems with wells.

[KKay9]

You should not have any trouble with a properly installed well in New England. We're on a well and have been through some pretty hard core winters with no unanticipated problems.

The line from the well head to the house is 60" underground, well below the frost line. The pressure tank is inside the basement. When you hear about people having trouble with their well in winter, it is usually people in the south, who have their pressure tank outside, in a well house. They sometimes have to put a heater, or even just a light bulb, in their well house, when they get an, unusual for the area, hard frost. Pressure tank in the basement, 250 foot drilled well, line to the house below the frost line, no freezing issues.

The only things I do differently with a well, than I did when I was on town water are:

1) stock either a generator + fuel or bottled water, in case of power outage. The well pump will not run without power, whereas you'll still have town/city water during an outage.

2) I shovel out the well head after a snowstorm. Three foot circle all around it, plus access from the drive. The well will work just fine with piles of snow on the head, but, on the off chance the 30 year old pump fails during winter (when else would it fail!), I don't to be searching for the well head under snow, or making well guys break through ice to get to it. I keep a 6' marking flag next to the well head, so I know where to shovel..paid off when we got 3' in one night in 2015.

[KellyCrash]

We've never had a problem with our well in the winter either.

We have had frozen pipes. Every winter when the temps dip below 0 the kitchen sink's cold water line freezes. Those pipes are in a bump out area of our kitchen. We just go in the basement and put a hairdryer to the pipes, leave the cabinet doors open, or leave the water trickling to avoid it.