How much did your well cost? (Lakeview: home, costs, estimate)

[homebirthmountainmama]

If you've had a well drilled in the past 5 years:

How much was the total cost or cost per foot?
How deep was the well?
Output?
Did you end drilling at first water or go deeper? Why?
Was the estimate (if you had one) close to the actual well depth?
What company did you use/can you recommend?

And any other info would be helpful pertaining to types of soil hit, solar pumps etc.,.

And, conversely, if you've drilled a well yourself I would love to hear all about it. Equipment used, depth, were you successful, advice, etc.,.?

Thanks!

[PNW-type-gal]

All that matters, cost-wise, is what they are in your area. IIRC, you have property near Beatty - you could be looking at drilling through solid basalt, or fractured basalt, or mixed sandstones, or ash and sand. The costs can vary wildly.

Where I am, over by Agency Lake, they never hit actual rock, just compacted "sandstones," silt and ash. They used a smaller air rotary drill, didn't have to change out bits and went 310', put the pump at 160' because of sand and silt issues and the total cost (not including pumps) was around $10k. My neighbor's well is shallower, but they had to change out drill rigs because of rock issues and he paid about half again more.

As a geologist, reading well logs drives me nuts because every driller calls the material something different. There is no absolute standard for how the layers are called out and two drillers working the same area can call the same materials different things. You just find someone who does a lot of work in the area (we used Norm Seavey out of Lakeview).

As far as depth, I already knew what the local wells averaged and figured it'd be somewhere in that range, which was what the estimate I got said too - it was a general range of prices depending on what they found. You can't really get an exact estimate beforehand. Often you don't even get a guarantee that they'll find water (not so much around here, but that's quite true in fractured basalt terrains).

For info on solar pumps, try Home Power Magazine - they have archives of articles on the topic.

[davefr]

I believe well drilling reports are all public record.

However there's huge variance across the state depending on the area, geography, elevation, environment, etc.

You'd be better off accessing local data because anything other then local reports will be next to meaningless.

[sarahkate_m]

Well Log Query

You can find well drilling info at the above link. It takes some finesse to find what you want. I managed to find properties near mine & could see WHO did the drilling, WHEN, HOW DEEP & what the reported SOIL conditions were. Very interesting.

[hamellr]

$212.57 for twenty seven feet in 1947, including installation of a brick liner. The water table was at 21 feet then.

As stated, you need to include more info. What area are you drilling in? If you're in eastern Oregon it's going to be a different story due to the large percentage of basalt and other lava flow created rocks there. In the valleys it's easier to drill, but you have to go further for an aquifer that isn't contaminated.