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Trials in Home Ownership: My Well Runneth Over

We moved into this house about 15 months ago, since which time we've had a little problem with water in the basement, and a big problem with water in the yard. For example, from last April, our backyard lake and front yard riverbed:

There have been problems with water in the basement since the very first day we moved in. It seeps in at the threshold of the bulkhead and creates a puddle usually around six feet in diameter. (We do indeed have a sump pump, but unfortunately it seems to have been placed at the highest point on the cellar floor, so all water runs away from it.) We've been after the builder to fix the water problem, and they have taken various steps and repeatedly pronounced it fixed, only to be proven wrong the next time we get a few inches of precipitation. I am certain the root cause of the problem is that our lot is not graded properly, and they need to get in here with some tractors and move some serious earth to fix it.

Anyway... if you live in the area you know, we have a lot of accumulated snow laying around and all day today it rained. When I got home, I walked past the basement door and heard the unmistakable sound of running water -- and it was a good healthy stream too -- imagine your kitchen faucet on half-way running into a bowl in the sink -- that's the sound I heard. I've never heard a running water sound from the basement before... this can not be good.

Downstairs I find the usual large puddle around the bulkhead door, plus another 75% of basmenet floor flooded (of course the corner with the sump pump was completely dry), and a steady stream of water pouring into the cellar -- from the well pump. This is new. Thank goodness a few weeks ago I was inexplicably motivated to reorganize and clean the entire basement, and almost everything was on palettes or otherwise off the floor... except the rugs. More specifically, the water was coming through the electrical conduit which comes from the well, through the foundation wall and connects to the pump in a little gray box with a "Square D" logo on it. To me, that logo means "electricity" and water was pouring out of it. I did not touch it.

I did however rig some buckets under it (which proved futile since they quickly filled and overflowed) and called the well company. Of course it was afterhours so I had to leave a callback number and wait. Someone called me back within a half hour and said he'd be over in a little while and suggested I connect hoses to bouth outside spigots and run them wide open but away from the house. I set to work on that and ran into my neighbor with whom I share a front yard. He was busy trying to dig a channel to free a lake that was damned up by snow in front of his house. I ran the hoses as directed, but it did not seem to help much.

The guy from the well place showed up and explained to me that there are two possibilities: (1) our well is "flowing free" which he described as so much pressure being built up in the bedrock water table that it is being pushed out; or (2) surface runoff is going into the top of my well and overflowing it.

We went to the front yard to investigate the well head, where my neighbor was still digging. I climbed over the little snow embankment from shoveling along our front walkway expecting to step into maybe a couple feet of snow. Instead my leg plunged through about 5 inches of crusty snow into about 12 to 18 inches of water. Yup, I guess the well head is under water. A lot of water. Since I'd stepped in with one leg off the embankment, I now continued to fall forward, and as I put my free hand out to catch myself, in it went, leaving me in some sort of half-crouched position up to my thighs and elbows in ice cold water wondering if the rest of me was going to plunge through and get trapped under the permafrost in some sort of bizarre front yard drowning/hypothermia tragedy. It took me a minute to extricate myself, and I retreated back over the embankment and went inside to change into dry sock and boots (did I mention I was wearing sneakers?). Meanwhile the well guy said he would get in his "gear."

When I came back outside, the well guy was dressed like a Coast Guardsman, in an orange full-body slicker with rubber boots, and he and my neighbor were hacking away at the enormous hard-packed snow and ice embankment from the plowing that runs the length of our driveway. They had cut a small channel, and water was absolutely gushing out into the driveway. I pitched in (and only almost whacked my neighbor in the face once, but that's why they gave me the plastic shovel) and soon we had it widened to about three feet, but the water just kept coming. The well guy estimated it at 25 gallons a minute. The flow of water is undoubtedly the same river that runs downhill out of the woods and was responsible for last Spring's ravine pictured above.

The channel we cut did manage to get the well head back above the water line, so the well guy thought it probably would not run into the house any more. He did some tests, but we still had water coming into the basement. Of the two possibilities he mentioned, we are lucky enough to have both a free flowing well and have it be under water. The good news is that by getting the well head above water and keeping both outside spigots open, the water coming into the basement is reduced to a small drip. The bad news is that our well is now contaminated so we can't drink from it. Before we can use it they need to put an extension on to raise the well head further above "sea level" and then shock the well with chlorine. In the meantime, at least we can flush the toilets.

Of course, the rain is continuing all night, and something about going to sleep leaving the faucets running makes me uncomfortable (so I blog). I called our landscaper/deck remodeler friend and he is bringing his tractor over tomorrow to remove the rest of the embankment from along our driveway, so maybe we can get the rest of the front yard drained. As for the backyard... I haven't even dared look. I'm afraid my septic tank may be floating around back there.