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- #11
hangin'witthepeeps :
Oh wow, I never even thought of this, ever. I have my chicken yard where my well is. This is absolutely terrible. I have to tear down all the houses and covered runs, electric fence and buried hardware cloth. Could I build a little house over my well to avoid contamination? I have a whole house filter which cost me a pretty penny as we have rust and manganese in the water. I had orange water with lots of sediment. Now with the superduper filter, its clear and tastes great. Never thought of chicken poop contamination.
I don't know if your filter system would take care of that type of contamination or not, but I doubt it. A french type drain dug around your pens to turn any contaminated water AWAY from your well would certainly help. It's not only YOUR water, but if you contaminate the aquifer, your neighbor's water could be contaminated also. I used to do pest control and one of our technicians sprayed Dursban TC (termite chemical) too close to a customer's well while doing a pretreat for a new house.... the next rain caused contaminated water to seep in and it poisoned that family and both of their neighbors' wells. It was a multi-million dollar lawsuit that the families won. It was totally accidental on the technician's part, but he was still held responsible.
There are many different ways that people dig french drains, but I do it like this: Dig a trench between the pen and the well, dig it at least a foot deep. If the ground slopes, turn it towards the downhill area where you want the water to drain. Place field line or black plastic pipe with holes down one side in the trench with the holes facing upward. If it were me, I would lay plastic down in the trench before installing the pipe. Once you put the pipe in the trench, fill the trench in with gravel. The rocks should be large enough so as not to enter the holes in the pipe. Point the end of the trench far away from the well and this should solve your problem. Make sure when you dig the trench that you have a good slope towards the open end so the water will drain. If your ground does not allow for the proper slope for good drainage, you can dig a pretty deep pit at the end of the drain and fill it mostly full of gravel. Dump the end of the pipe into the gravel and you can cover the top back with soil so you don't have to see it. Good luck with whatever you do.
Jeff
Oh wow, I never even thought of this, ever. I have my chicken yard where my well is. This is absolutely terrible. I have to tear down all the houses and covered runs, electric fence and buried hardware cloth. Could I build a little house over my well to avoid contamination? I have a whole house filter which cost me a pretty penny as we have rust and manganese in the water. I had orange water with lots of sediment. Now with the superduper filter, its clear and tastes great. Never thought of chicken poop contamination.
I don't know if your filter system would take care of that type of contamination or not, but I doubt it. A french type drain dug around your pens to turn any contaminated water AWAY from your well would certainly help. It's not only YOUR water, but if you contaminate the aquifer, your neighbor's water could be contaminated also. I used to do pest control and one of our technicians sprayed Dursban TC (termite chemical) too close to a customer's well while doing a pretreat for a new house.... the next rain caused contaminated water to seep in and it poisoned that family and both of their neighbors' wells. It was a multi-million dollar lawsuit that the families won. It was totally accidental on the technician's part, but he was still held responsible.
There are many different ways that people dig french drains, but I do it like this: Dig a trench between the pen and the well, dig it at least a foot deep. If the ground slopes, turn it towards the downhill area where you want the water to drain. Place field line or black plastic pipe with holes down one side in the trench with the holes facing upward. If it were me, I would lay plastic down in the trench before installing the pipe. Once you put the pipe in the trench, fill the trench in with gravel. The rocks should be large enough so as not to enter the holes in the pipe. Point the end of the trench far away from the well and this should solve your problem. Make sure when you dig the trench that you have a good slope towards the open end so the water will drain. If your ground does not allow for the proper slope for good drainage, you can dig a pretty deep pit at the end of the drain and fill it mostly full of gravel. Dump the end of the pipe into the gravel and you can cover the top back with soil so you don't have to see it. Good luck with whatever you do.
Jeff
