Water in the desert - Maricopa (Phoenix: homes, buying, organic)

[DesolatingSmaug]

Hello!


My husband and I really want some elbow room and land to have horses - we're looking into buying some raw land in the city of Maricopa, Arizona and putting a manufactured home on that land. We've already figured out the financing part of this, but our biggest concern is water. If my research is correct, most of the raw land in Maricopa is not serviced by the municipal water facilities, and people use wells or hauled water. Hauled water doesn't seem like a very viable option for us, so we have been looking into drilling a well. I got a quote - $30,000 for a well. That's a ton of money, but we would pay it if we have to in order to get the land we want. I'm just concerned that we'll pay all that money and end up with a well that doesn't reliably provide the water we need (probably 6 - 10 thousand gallons of water a month), or that we will need to keep dumping thousands of dollars into every year to keep it running. Does anyone on here have a well in Maricopa or know anything about the reliability of wells in that area? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!


Thank you!

[jimj]

I've looked at doing something similar. Go to https://gisweb.azwater.gov/WellRegistry/ and look at the area you're interested in. The red dots signify wells and you can see every well in the area and it's depth, production rate and how long it's been there along with the company that drilled it.

This will give you some idea of what you can expect. I'd then call a couple of the companies that drilled wells there and see what they suggest.
$30k is quite a bit of money for a household well, but I guess if you have to go down 500 feet...

[locolife]

I don't think the Sonoran desert is a good place to depend on a well.

[kell490]

Originally Posted by locolife

I don't think the Sonoran desert is a good place to depend on a well.

My sister in law's home which was built in 1950's in Laveen has been using a well for all those years never had any problems except for a few pumps. they have never had any problems with it if you get a good company which knows the area should be okay. What you don't want is a shared well between properties a co-worker had one and the other 2 property owners never wanted to pay for pump replacements.

[DougStark]

One thing to realize with drilling a private well is this (and especially true of the lower desert areas): What quality of water can you expect from your drilled well? What will the TDS (total dissolved solids) of the well water produce? (TDS essentially means how many dissolved minerals are in the water. The City of Phoenix (surface) water, for example, has a TDS of anywhere from 400ppm to 850ppm (summer months)- not exactly great, but it's still usable. At a minimum, I'd have your newly installed well water to have analysis on the water's TDS level, level of nitrate/nitrite, and a general inorganic chemical analysis. Most of these tests are not that expensive and well worth the knowledge of the results. Make sure your new water well doesn't produce high levels of arsenic (expensive to remove this contaminant.)

[DougStark]

Originally Posted by locolife

I don't think the Sonoran desert is a good place to depend on a well.

For vast population areas? No. For scattered homes where no public water exists? yes.

[locolife]

Originally Posted by DougStark

For vast population areas? No. For scattered homes where no public water exists? yes.

I can't help but think of aquifer recharge resources and how those are impacted living what seems downstream from a vast population area that is as thirsty as ever? I'm no well expert, just looking at it from a logical point of view? How does one's well source not get sucked dry when located next to a population that's pushing 5 million now?

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by locolife

I can't help but think of aquifer recharge resources and how those are impacted living what seems downstream from a vast population area that is as thirsty as ever? I'm no well expert, just looking at it from a logical point of view? How does one's well source not get sucked dry when located next to a population that's pushing 5 million now?

For now a lot of that water is recharged by CAGRD, but whenever there is a call on the Colorado River those efforts cease. I'd expect, unless this drought comes to an end, that that will happen in the next 5 years.

[locolife]

Originally Posted by JGMotorsport64

For now a lot of that water is recharged by CAGRD, but whenever there is a call on the Colorado River those efforts cease. I'd expect, unless this drought comes to an end, that that will happen in the next 5 years.

Yeah, that would make me seem even more uneasy about what the OP is asking for. I'd probably avoid pumping a big chunk of life savings into a development with a somewhat risky waster source. Montana, Wyoming or one of the other Northern states seems much better suited for developing ranch style property to me.