Shallow Well

I have a shallow well, it's part of countrylife, this is how I improved my well water.

It's hard to believe that even though I live in an area called the Lakes District, with beautiful lakes around every corner and rivers flowing straight from glaciers, that ground water in this area is not very good.

This is my first property with a well, and this shallow well went unused for a number of years, these few simple steps I took greatly improved the quality of my water.

Rural living allows me to use resources close to home, I first went to a river nearby and got a small load of clean river rock with some sand and gravel mixed in, be sure not to disturb any wild life or fish habitat.

Then after replacing the old pump and fixing any leaks to the main water line, I pumped out as much water as I could to reduce the volume of water to improve.

I took a bucket and attached two pieces of rope, I lowered the bucket full of gravel into my shallow well to the bottom, then pulling the rope I had attached to the bottom of the bucket I could empty the bucket without much sediment disturbance. This worked well, I repeated this until I had about a foot of natural filter of rock, gravel, then sand at the bottom of my well.

After adding the gravel filter I left the well alone for a week or so to settle and refill, then I added some bleach to shock the system.

I poured in the suggested amount for my volume of water

using this link.

Once the bleach has been added, open each tap until you can smell the bleach, then shut off water and let the whole system sit for approximately 24 hours.

I will repeat this process every year or two, this greatly improved the quality of my shallow well.