Taming Needle Eye Mountain

Our next major taming feat is water. No rural water is available so that means we have to drill a well. Ummm take a guess at how long the wait is for a well…. The range is anywhere from a few months to next year”’ish”

Lucky for us we found a well driller as soon as we bought the property and were added to “the list”… well 6 months later we are still not at the top of “the list” and the shed-do-minimum is about 3 weeks out from finish so what now?

Scott started calling every company that is credentialed to drill in Arkansas. So far we are on 3 lists and waiting for 5-6 return calls.

Scott sat down with me and went over the options…

Option 1: The people who lived on the land before us used a spring on the land for their water source. The spring sits about 300 yards from the old house and has flexible tubing that runs from the spring to a cistern . The cistern sat above the old house which was gravity fed from the cistern. The spring appears to be now dry. We’ve been told the old owners relied on the spring but also hauled water when it didn’t produce.

The Cistern … you might be thinking …what’s a cistern?… I know I was…. It’s a receptacle for holding water usually rain or ground water.

The connection that runs from spring to the cistern.

The water in the cistern…. Um … nope!

Option 2: There is also an old well that we assumed wasn’t viable. It does have water in it so could we sink a pump for at least a temporary water source? The well pump guy asked Scott “how deep is your well” when we didn’t have an answer, he told scott to drop a rock into the well and time how many seconds before the splash to determine the depth. This helps to estimate the cost of pipe and pump installation. He also told Scott older wells were often dug just until water was first hit and they may not produce sufficient volume for modern homes.

In the middle of the night I woke up with The Bee Gees song in my head… it went something like “how deep, how deep, how deep is your well.. I really need to know…”

Option 3: Haul in water. As Scott walked me through the details of how that would work the conversation went something like this.. we would use a bucket to flush the toilets… we would have to heat water for a shower… I blacked out after that… something else was said about bottled water blah blah blah.

Option 4: Stay in the rental until we have a working well. Ding ding ding… we have a winner. For those of you who have read the rental house post… I’ve never been more ready to stay in the rental!!