Wyoming Water Well Cost / cheap off grid land in wy (Cheyenne: mineral rights, for sale)

[WY housebuilder]

Wyoming has lots of cheap off grid land for sale. Main thing is, year around access. Wyoming winters can be wild..
ALso even though solar and wind powered wells work, Only one guy in wyoming i know who does solar/wind water wells i trust, that does these. He also uses old school Zero dry hole cable tool method of drilling.

Water well cost in where in west is higher than in southern places where water is easy to hit and shallow.
Wyoming water wells 100ft or less for home use cost 13k to15k depending on where, and how much rock.

Is your land flat or steep ect.
If you have to go deeper than 100ft figure on 40 to 100 per ft after the 1st 100ft.
Some places are so hard to drill, some drillers from Cheyenne will not even call you back if your in these problem areas. , because they dont want to lose there tools, pipe and damage there rig on your hole. .


Rotary drilling is cheaper but 70% dry holes, because they use thick drilling mud to drill with which seals off your water.

Air rotary is not as bad, but still you have less water that other methods.

Cable tool drilling is the best, NO drilling mud and you always have more water that any other drilling. Problem is fewer people use this method, so waiting list can be longer. But i never wanted a fast dry hole, so i waited.

After building lots of homes, cabins, barns , and off grid remote getaways, the best method of hitting water i used on these projects was hands down cable tool. I used a cable tool driller in Saratoga wy. Small enough operator, the owner himself drilled the wells, not trainees or beginner's.

[Exwyocowboy]

I dunno about cable. Next door neighbor used a ground pounder - got three dry holes. Rotary found water in btwn the three dry at 650ft. We had springs - and gravity feed to cistern and WelTroll for pressure into the house. Course this was in the 90s - on lower SouthFork.

[Wytempest]

Speaking only of the northern half of Wy. Dry holes are uncommon. Most will hit water 400-500ft but it's horrible water. Good water can be had but it's 700 ft + and easily turns into a $30k + well. There are several good, reputable drillers in the north. NW drillers will/can try to fleece you but you have the ability to hire a driller elsewhere that will come to your land for about half the cost as local nw drillers. Which is exactly what we did when we owned property in Bondurant. We bought off grid land in the north last fall. We were looking in an area 100 mile radius of our grandkids. Very, very little for sale and cheap is not a word I'd use to describe any of the land we looked at. We were extremely fortunate the land we bought wasn't listed and the seller was out of state so didn't know what was starting in WY. We bought it before the land got so crazy high from covid. We're not going to do a well this time and plan on hauling.

[Exwyocowboy]

Cheap off grid land is that akali area north of Rawlins. I only know of one family that bought and lived there for three years. They got out when Rocksprings boom went bust. They couldn’t find potable water and had to haul 3x week. Also ran out of propane a couple of times when the truck couldn’t get thru the drifts.

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by Exwyocowboy

Cheap off grid land is that akali area north of Rawlins. I only know of one family that bought and lived there for three years. They got out when Rocksprings boom went bust. They couldn’t find potable water and had to haul 3x week. Also ran out of propane a couple of times when the truck couldn’t get thru the drifts.

What are some areas that would potentially have good water wells? I’m finding it difficult to find this out being located in Texas without direct access to humans who live up in WY. Also am I correct that you cannot capture your rain water? I believe I read something years ago about this being “theft” of rain that turns in to ground water for ranchers down the water table. I’m considering looking again in WY for potential land out “in the sticks”.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Mister Torgue

What are some areas that would potentially have good water wells? I’m finding it difficult to find this out being located in Texas without direct access to humans who live up in WY. Also am I correct that you cannot capture your rain water? I believe I read something years ago about this being “theft” of rain that turns in to ground water for ranchers down the water table. I’m considering looking again in WY for potential land out “in the sticks”.

If I were looking at a site with "potentialy ... good water wells", I'd be contacting the local water well drillers with their local knowledge of areas that have produced good "potable" water wells. The three big concerns: (1) how deep are they having to drill to find good water in the area, (2) rate of year-round production (I've seen some areas with good water for some months but can drop to less than 1-2 gals/minute for much of the year; domestic use wells are limited to 16 gpm with some areas readily producing this and some areas struggling to provide a fraction of that amount), and (3) water quality, to include water testing beyond the minimum tests that Wyoming requires; ie, I'd be testing for nitrates and other contaminants such as heavy metals. I've seen multiple properties around various areas which had a history of resident families all having various ailments, and they didn't make the connection between the contaminants and their ongoing illnesses. (we had friends with a large healthy family ... 12 kids ... that rented a rural property and within 6 months all were dealing with allergy/colds/flu type symptoms. They'd assumed that the county mandated water well tests for the sale of the property were adequate to protect their health. Unfortunately, the property & domestic well were directly downstream from a sub-surface drainage area from a number of irrigated fields where the farmer consistently applied heavy nitrate fertilizers every year for decades. Upon my suggestion, the folks had their water quality tested and the nitrates were way high. They moved to another place with municipal treated water ... and much as they don't like fluoridation ... the family got back to their "normal" healthy within a couple of months.)

AFAIK, collecting run-off rainwater directly from the roof of a structure on your property in WY is legal. However, once that moisture touches the ground, it's Wyoming State property and you cannot capture that water without a specific Wyoming State Engineer use permit (typically irrigation or livestock use).

Be forewarned that many areas of Wyoming have widely varied sub-surface water available. IOW, you may be looking at a parcel "out in the sticks" where the adjacent parcels may have producing potable water wells ... and yet, on the parcel you're considering, you might have nothing but "dry holes" when you attempt to get a producing water well. Again, I'd be consulting with a local well driller about their take on the site.

[jody_wy]

like Wyoming Black Hills. one reason there not lot of development is simple , Water....

[Mister Torgue]

Thank you both. I always suspected water was the most difficult obstacle I’d be facing. I bet having water hauled in is expensive accordingly. I just don’t think we could capture enough rain off the roof to supply a family of three.

I’ve seen some houses for sale with all utilities setup but it is a bit concerning that the water might be a crap shoot...

[highplainsrunaway]

One other thing to consider is that owning the land doesn't necessarily mean you own the water.
Water and mineral rights can be separate from the property.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Mister Torgue

(snip)
I’ve seen some houses for sale with all utilities setup but it is a bit concerning that the water might be a crap shoot...

Wyoming real estate law requires that a "well and septic system" test be done for the transfer of the property.

Unfortunately, the domestic well testing requirements are pretty skimpy in light of what we now know can be contaminants. As written, the law "assumes" that many contaminants don't present an excess of safe levels around the state, so it doesn't require that they be tested as a wholly unneeded expense.

IMO, this is part of the "due diligence" that a buyer needs to perform in purchasing rural properties around the state. If I was looking at a specific parcel, I'd be asking the local water well drillers what they've seen as water quality problems in the area, perhaps ... they might even know the details of the property you're considering. You need to look around and see what activity presents on the nearby parcels ... farming, mining, or ? Each has the potential to be a source of contamination of certain items and you should have the water tested for it.

Here's an example ... in some areas of Wyoming, there are old missile launch sites. The AF used to use some solvents (like "trike" TCE) to clean the equipment, and just let the used solvent drain out the bottom of the facility. The result? a PCB contaminant trail leaching into the groundwater of the area for many years. IIRC, some of these contaminant trails reach for miles away from the missile sites with adverse results upon the domestic and livestock wells. Some can be mitigated with on-site whole-house water treatment system (reverse osmosis, charcoal filtering, etc), some are so contaminated that the owners are advised to haul in domestic potable water. Some of the wells produce such "stinky, foul-smelling & tasting" water that while it may be "safe" to drink, it's not something you'd want to drink or have in contact with your food.

The one thing I've found you can count on with rural properties for sale in Wyoming: if the sellers have knowledge of these types of defects with their property ... they'll do everything they can to not report it as part of the transaction because it's adverse to their sale. Generally, it's only when a problem reaches the point when a gov't agency is involved that it will be disclosed to a buyer because it's actionable by a buyer if they've not been given that information and subsequently believe they've been damaged by the seller's actions ... especially if the seller's RE agent/broker "should have known" of the problem.