water well drillers

[spencerhenry]

i am wanting to put in a well next spring, local guys charge a fortune. i was in georgia last week and a guy with experience in the business tells me that down there they charge $8 per foot. i am wondering what the rates are for other areas that might be closer to me. it looks like it will be cheaper to pay someone to haul in from several hundred miles away than to hire a local guy. anybody know someone that wants to come to colorado and drill a 400 to 500 foot well for me?

[Raider Bill]

I paid $10.00 a foot plus another $11.00 a foot for casing in 2007. This was in Tenn. SOB is 850 feet deep!

[jim king]

I paid $10.00 a foot plus another $11.00 a foot for casing in 2007. This was in Tenn. SOB is 850 feet deep!

That cost more than my house ¿

[Raider Bill]

It sure put a hurt on my building fund

[DanG]

I think the licensing of such things is done by the States, so you might not find an out-of-state driller that can do it. :-\

[John Mc]

I wouldn't bother comparing rates from several states away anyway. The drilling conditions are likely very different, which would be reflected in the rates. They can be enough different that significantly different equipment is needed.

Where I grew up in NW Ohio, the water table was high enough that a 50 foot well would often give you plenty of flow. With some exceptions, it was pretty easy drilling (very little rock, and what was there tended to be a lot of limestone). Here in Vermont, my well is 500 feet deep, and they went through a lot of rock along the way (much of it granite and quartzite, I believe). I doubt the guys from Ohio even have the equipment needed to drill here.

[tree-farmer]

$7.00 a foot here, that was a few years back though. We used a dowser which I thought was whacked (wife insisted); he came and did a grid type search and came to a place where he said two veins of water intersected. Maked spot and said water was at 120 ft. I had the drill set up exactly where he marked and at 120 feet we hit water. I believe now.
Dang I hate it when she is right..... :-[
But we have a dependable well, 10 years and its never missed a beat.

[beenthere]

i am wanting to put in a well next spring, local guys charge a fortune. i was in georgia last week and a guy with experience in the business tells me that down there they charge $8 per foot. i am wondering what the rates are for other areas that might be closer to me. it looks like it will be cheaper to pay someone to haul in from several hundred miles away than to hire a local guy. anybody know someone that wants to come to colorado and drill a 400 to 500 foot well for me?

spence
What is the cost per foot for the local guy?  "charge a fortune" is hard to compare to $8 a foot.

[ely]

had mine drilled in 95 and it was 12 bucks a ft and that was a cased well ready for a pump. 110 ft deep and it was 42 ft to the water in the well after it all settled down. never have lacked for water. had my uncle witch the well for me.

[captain_crunch]

Don't know todays prices but when I was installing pumps a 100 ft well was around 3000.00

[Harvey]

Mine was drilled 2 years ago in Nova Scotia,  $16. per foot,  had to go 400 feet.  Plus casing,  wire,  pipe and 1` hp pump,  almost $10,000.    >:(

[spencerhenry]

i didnt put the local price in my first post so people would give me numbers that did not have anything to do with my number.
the guy around here charges $40 per foot. that is NO pumps, NO electrical, NO piping to the house. just a cased well. the nearest wells are around 400 feet, but 2 relatively close to me are 585, and 640.
as far as different conditions, the guy i was talking to in georgia was drilling in granite, around here it is basalt, way far down could be some granite, but more likely sandstone.

[Tom]

$40 a foot !!

It sounds to me like he doesn't want the job. :D

[ely]

i couldnt do much of that before i became a sawmiller/waterwelldriller.

[logloper]

Try  "Wildcat Drilling" out of Cedaredge Co. They did 3 wells for me a couple years ago, and did an excellent job. Seems their price was closer to $30 per foot, but I wouldnt speak for them. Their # is 970-856-6583

[den]

Was he using a rotary drill or a stomper drill for $40 a foot?
Here it's about $6 a foot for slate a little more if limestone + casing.

[timberfaller390]

The geology and equipment does make a huge differance. If he is using a rotery rig it will go alot faster but if he is running a cable tool rig it will take a month to go 400 feet if there was much rock to deal with. About 25- 30 dollars a foot should be about right for a cased well.

[Mooseherder]

The Drillers with bigger rigs may not care to travel long distances. Sleeping in motels and fuel charges, wear and tear would eat into a lot of the discounting.  The crew we used had the Big Hammer Drill Rig, a large support truck with all the casings and also towed a pickup behind the support truck.
They would drive the pickup home at night while leaving the rigs at their next job.

Our well at the Cabin in Northern Maine a couple years ago cost 5300 with the Pump and extra large bladder tank.  He also threw in two hundred foot of wire for me to plug into my generator.
The well is 203 ft. deep.  The water is great, especially since we don't have to haul it in anymore.

[SwampDonkey]

400-500 feet to water?  Not in this country, maybe as much as 200 like up at Moose's camp. Mom's uncle drilled 60 through sand to water. The neighbors drilled in a spot I told them would be an artesian, going by the lay of the land and knowing a spring emerges down hill a bit from there at times. It was a geyser spouting out of there when he hit the vein. :D

[Ianab]

Yeah..I guess we were spoilt at my old place. Artesian spring that just surfaced in the middle of no where.

Just bubbled up through a sand bed, but plenty of water to feed 4 farms, and 3 x 3kw pumps hardly made a dent in the flow.

Drill down 500ft, probably hit natural gas  :D

Of course, we do get a bit of rain....

Ian

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, my cousin was still hooked up to a spring house just a few years ago that grandfather dug 80 years ago or more. My grandfather was born in the 19th C. ;) It also fed grandfather's place and the trough at the barn.

[thecfarm]

Wells are a scary thing. You never know how deep or how much. Mine well went down only 140 feet,40 gallon a minute. I missed the whole thing.Took them no time to drill it.We was doing some running around for the new house and by the time we got back they was gone. Cost me $14 per foot for everything.The guy building the house just had one drilled at his place by the same guy for twice that much.He kept saying the bill was wrong.Could not convince him that they went twice that far at his house. I heard ALOT of stories when mine was being drilled.This one  sticks out the most. A guy at work was having a well drilled.Went down 700 feet not much water.They stopped and asked him what he wanted to do. He said to set over 20 feet go down 10 feet and go straight 100 feet and drill into his neighbor well that was getting 50 gallons a minute.They went down another 50 and got 10 gpm. They did take $2000 off a 7000 bill.

[Ianab]

Yeah. what is going on underground is often a mystery. Here the whole underground has been pretty well surveyed by the oil companies, and if you can get a look at their maps they show how the sandstone structures  are underground. We just happened to break into one that extended out 20-30 miles east. Once it skipped our river valley it extended out west under the volcanic area and into the sea where they were drilling for oil.

You could actually see the hard layer where the river had carved though the harder sandstone layer nearby.

So a 1/4 mile away, the aquifer didn't exist any more and you relied on river run-off from the Mt.

Ian

[northwoods1]

I had one drilled last year at my farm. I got estimates from 4 different drillers. I went with one driller who used a system no one else offered , and it allowed him to put the casing down at the same time the hole was being drilled. This method didn't require a drilling slurry to be used , as the well is being drilled they just put compressed air down the hole with a very little water. The advantage of this is a soon as you hit a little water you will know it , with a slurry they are pumping a large amount of that down there and it is much easier to drill right through a vein of water and not know it. I got very lucky as I only had to go 83 feet. I was there when he was drilling so I could see exactly what was coming out of the hole as he was going down and I told him when to stop. I stood back and watched as they were developing the well to see what kind of flow it had and the water began pouring out... 50 gpm :D I was so happy  8)
total cost just for the well was $3,380 . It was $25 a foot to drill including casing. Other cost was for the well screen, developing the well, drive shoe, well cap, water sample, and they charged $100 for what they called mobilization/demobilization which was fuel related costs.

[JBS 181]

You are looking at around 32 bucks a foot here but there is quite a bit of rock in some places depending upon where the drillindg is being done. This includes casing.