The Ultimate Guide to Well Ownership & Maintenance

As a private well owner, your water is in your hands. That means well maintenance is indispensable. A little upkeep each year can go a long way to ensure your well remains a reliable and safe drinking water source for decades. Proper installation, regular testing and monitoring, and selecting the right water treatment device are all instrumental to preventing contamination and degradation.

In this ultimate guide to well maintenance, we’ll go over the essentials to keeping your private well system in top shape, including:

• Well Owner’s Maintenance Checklist
• Proper Well Inspection
• Proper Construction and Installation
• Protection
• Performance Monitoring
• Testing
• Treatment
• Retiring Unused Wells
• Bonus: Annual Well Maintenance Calendar
• What’s the Takeaway?

Maintaining Your Well Throughout the Year

The proper care and upkeep of your well is not unlike the care and upkeep of your vehicle. What you put in with regularity helps determine the quality of what comes out.

1. A diligent well owner will want to regularly survey their well with their own eyes and hands. This is similar to occasionally scanning your vehicle and making sure your tire pressures are correct, you haven’t spotted any leaks or loosening parts, and your fluids are in good shape.
   
   
2. Annually, you’ll want to have a well professional perform a well inspection. Each inspector follows a well inspection checklist to guide and standardize their practice. This is similar to taking your vehicle in for routine service where the chief mechanic will perform a standardized multi-point inspection every time.

Like your vehicle’s owner’s manual, there are a number of recommended practices that you’ll want to follow throughout the year to be sure you’re prolonging the life of your well. We like to call this your well maintenance checklist.

The well maintenance checklist includes everything from the basics of regularly surveying your well and protecting your well, to recommending certified well inspection and testing annually.

Homeowner’s Well Maintenance Checklist

The following checklist is a useful summary of all aspects of well upkeep throughout the year, including best practices, regular visual evaluations, annual professional inspections, and your well water testing routine:

• Use licensed or certified well drillers and pump installers when a well is constructed, a pump is installed, or the system is serviced.
• Regularly survey your well. Keep an eye on your well head, proper separation along your property and be aware of changes in your well and the area around it.
• Have a professional perform an annual well inspection, including a bacterial test.
• Drinking water should be tested annually by a laboratory, and any time there is a change in taste, odor or appearance, or when the well system is serviced.
• Protect your well. Keep hazardous chemicals, such as paint, fertilizer, pesticides, and engine lubricants far away from your well. Prevent back-siphonage: When mixing pesticides, fertilizers, or other chemicals, never put the garden hose inside the tank or container.
• Use caution around your well. A damaged casing negatively impacts your water quality. Don’t mow, pile snow, leaves, or other materials around your well.
• Keep your well records in a safe place. These include the well log, as well as any well system maintenance and water testing results.
• Have a qualified water well contractor decommission your well when it has come to the end of its serviceable life (usually ~20+ years).

We’ll be detailing many of these entries below. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find an annual well maintenance calendar you can consult to help guide your seasonal well work.

How to Inspect Your Well

As we mentioned, inspecting your well can refer to two equally important actions:

• Regularly surveying your own well, like when performing seasonal maintenance, which is one of your responsibilities as a well owner. 
• Having a licensed or certified well professional perform a formal inspection of your well.

How Should I Survey My Well? 

You should take a good look at your well seasonally (and at convenient points throughout the year). This helps prevent issues that might be setting your well up for more serious problems down the line. 

• Check your well head and well cap on top of the well casing regularly to ensure it is in good condition.
• Be sure proper separations are maintained between your well and other buildings, waste systems, or chemical storage facilities on the property.
• Keep the top of your well at least one foot above the ground. Slope the ground away from your well for proper drainage, and maintain that clearance throughout the year by preventing leaves or snow from building up near your well.
• Be aware of any changes to or in your well, the area around it, or the water it provides.

When Should I Have My Well Professionally Inspected?

You should have your well formally evaluated by a professional once a year—just like testing. Be sure pumps, pipes, and storage tanks are inspected as well. We recommend having your well tested and inspected at the same time each year if there haven’t been any unforeseen circumstances.

Over longer periods of time, cracks and other forms of corrosion can occur that compromise the integrity of your well and the quality of your home’s drinking water. That’s why it’s so important to pair testing with professional inspection.

Your annual well inspection should include:

• Visual inspection
• Valve inspection
• Electrical testing
• Flow test
• Recommended water tests

Additionally, If you’re looking to buy property with a well, you should also have the well professionally inspected prior to purchase. 

Well Inspection Checklist

The Water Systems Council has made the following well inspection checklist available for your convenience. It shows the procedure a licensed inspector will follow.

Entries include the well’s location and condition, component details, and performing a flow test.

Note: If the well falls short of ideal conditions, the inspector should recommend that the homeowner contact a licensed well contractor about a more rigorous evaluation, further water testing and/or the need for well repair or replacement.

Signs You Should Have Your Well Inspected

Always have your well inspected and/or tested when there are noticeable changes in taste, odor, or color, or pronounced changes in water pressure. Other signs include:

• Unusually high electricity bill
• Sputtering faucets
• Strange sounds from pipes or pump
• Damaged well cap

If you observe any issues, and/or if you’ve never had a professional inspect your well, you should contact a licensed professional well inspector immediately.

Is A Well Log Important?

Your well log is a document containing key information on the construction of the well and its geological and topographical profiles. It’s very important to keep one on hand as it will give you a clearer picture of how your well was built. Be sure to ask for all your well records when buying a home or property with a well.

Contractors must file well logs with their respective states upon completion of new wells, though specific well log requirements may differ from state to state.

Always use a licensed or certified contractor when a well is constructed, inspected, or serviced. Want to know where to find a well inspector? Find a well water service contractor near you.

How to Check Your Well for Proper Construction and Installation

If you’re moving onto a property with a well, there are a few things you’ll want to look into to be sure you’re acquiring a properly constructed well. Poor well construction can lead to issues, like sediment and contamination, that can affect the well’s yield and safety.

While investing in a professional pre-purchase inspection of a well is highly recommended, here are some components and features you can check on your own to make sure the well was built correctly:

• Well casing: The top of your well casing should be at least one foot above ground. This keeps unwanted pests and surface water from getting into your well. The space between the outside of the well casing and the borehole wall (or annular space) should also be fully sealed with grout.[1] 
• Well cap: A sanitary well cap is your first line of defense against surface contamination.[2] Regularly check the condition of the cap, making sure that it is securely attached and able to keep out insects and rodents.
• Location: Also be sure your well isn’t located in an area prone to surface runoff (e.g., a low-lying field next to agriculture or a busy road).
• Elevation: The ground surrounding your well should slope away from the well in order to prevent water pooling.

Additionally, you’ll want to make sure your well is properly distanced from key points on your property such as: 

How Do I Know if My Well Is Performing Normally?

Your well is performing normally when your well flow is consistent, there hasn’t been any irregular behavior anywhere along the line, and no noticeable changes to color, odor, or taste. Good maintenance helps sustain flow, or the amount of water you are able to pump from a well (also referred to as well yield or performance).

Well yield tends to decrease over time, especially if the well was not initially installed properly. While decreases in flow are sometimes caused by persistent droughts, more often decreases in well yield over time are related to changes in the well’s water quality.

This can include:

• Build up from mineral deposits and microorganisms (like iron bacteria)
• Sediment obstructing the well’s pump from the water source
• Damage from pumping sand and sediment
• Corrosion in the well screen or casing 

Various contaminants, both microbial and chemical, can cause these changes. Regular water testing and inspection can help you identify and successfully treat the culprit.

Why Should You Test Your Well Water?

Even if your well has been properly built, installed, and has passed all inspections, you should test your well water annually to ensure your water is safe to drink. Well water quality is susceptible to changes in the environment.

Additionally, you should test your water any time there is a noticeable or sustained change in taste, odor, or appearance, or after your well system is serviced.

Is Well Water Safe to Drink?

That all depends on you. A properly maintained well is a perfectly safe source of drinking water. Unlike city water, everything about your well water is your responsibility. It’s helpful to learn to identify different symptoms of contamination. However, it’s important to note that many pollutants don’t have easily detectable signs, so regular water testing is the only way to monitor water quality over time.

Groundwater is susceptible to a range of hazards—from microbes like coliform bacteria and organic contaminants like pesticides to inorganic contaminants like heavy metals and even radiological pollutants like uranium.

Ultimate Guide to Well Water Contaminants

Acidic Well Water

The results of a water test might reveal that you have acidic well water. Acidic well water is a relatively common issue. It can cause corrosion and a bitter, metallic taste while basic water can have a slippery feel, a baking soda-like taste and can leave white deposits on your fixtures and appliances.

Acidic water by itself doesn’t cause any health problems. However, the corrosion of your plumbing may release toxic heavy metals, like lead and copper, that have harmful effects. Read more about what to do about acidic well water.

How Often Should You Test Well Water?

You should test your well water annually. However, different contaminants should be tested at different frequencies. It’s also very helpful to get to know concerns that are specific to your region, like if you live near heavy industry or agriculture, or if your aquifer has naturally occurring geogenic contaminants like arsenic or uranium. Get in touch with your local health or environmental health department to discuss any contaminants of particular concern in your area.

The list below is provisional and based primarily on the most common problems for wells nationwide. However, groundwater is very context specific! It's important to take this list as a starting point, and do the required research on your local area to know what's most important to test.