The Water Issue
From James Donahue’s Journal
The well water at the Elk Creek Road house was salty. We could not drink it and we didn’t want to even use it for cooking. It was all right for showers, flushing toilets and washing dishes. But drinking it was out. It was while living at this house that we began buying bottled water to drink. We found that by putting the bottles in the refrigerator we always had cold fresh water to drink.
We tried water distilling systems. I bought one that mounted on the kitchen wall and took water directly from the tap. It worked all right for a week or two, then plugged with minerals, especially calcium, which we found almost impossible to scrape clean. We invested in a more costly “self-cleaning” distilling system that was so large we had to put it in the basement. It worked for about two weeks then plugged with minerals and calcium. Contrary to what we were told when we bought the machine, it did not clean itself. The scales of calcium were so hard to remove, and so difficult to reach inside a small hole barely large enough to get a human hand through, we had to give up on this system as well. We resorted to buying bottled water every week and drinking that. We soon discovered that distilled bottled water tasted best, and made good coffee without plugging the coffee maker. That became our custom from then on, long after we sold that property and moved on.
One fall, about a year after we moved into the house and were already deep into debt on mortgage and home improvement bank loans, our water well failed. I contacted a local well service company. The guy brought some heavy drilling equipment to the house, looked into the well head which was located in the back yard, and announced that the salt water had eroded the steel well casing. It had collapsed. We needed a new well. Then the fellow left for a week. It was opening day of deer hunting season and he announced that he would be back the following week to drill us a new well.
I could not believe what he had done to us. We were totally out of water, except for what we had in our refrigerator to drink. We had no way of washing our clothes, our dishes, or bodies or flushing our toilet. And he was leaving us in that condition for a week to kill deer before returning to drill a well.
Wayne came over and brought a hand-weighted spudder and some pipe. His idea was to spud our own well just by simply driving a pipe into the aquifer, which we calculated was at least forty or fifty feet down. We went to work, driving the pipe into the earth. All went well for the first ten feet or so, and then we hit hard rock. Wayne was not to be deterred. We went to the State Police Post, got a dynamite permit and bought a stick of dynamite. I remember standing back as Wayne lit the fuse and dropped it into the hole. It exploded deep in the ground, but the blast failed to open a way through the obstruction. It was now obvious that we were not going to spud ourselves a new water well.
A neighbor told me of a new water drilling business that was operating near Croswell. I drove over there, found the place, and met a young man with all of the water well drilling equipment parked in his yard. He was not a deer hunter and he was looking for business. He gave me a good price on the project, and I hired him. He had a well dug, struck a good water source that had so much pressure it was a flowing well. Unfortunately, it still contained salt. But we had water flowing through the pipes of our house by the next day. He also installed an outlet at the well head so we could water the garden, the lawn or wash the cars. While there, he had to work around the big drilling rig left parked in our back yard by the well guy that went hunting.
When the first well driller returned to the house and saw what we had done, he went into a rage. He billed us about a hundred dollars for his services anyway. I counter billed him the same amount for truck parking rental on my back yard. We never heard from him again. I also made sure a lot of people in the area knew what a bad character he was, so I am sure I cost him some business.
From James Donahue’s Journal
The well water at the Elk Creek Road house was salty. We could not drink it and we didn’t want to even use it for cooking. It was all right for showers, flushing toilets and washing dishes. But drinking it was out. It was while living at this house that we began buying bottled water to drink. We found that by putting the bottles in the refrigerator we always had cold fresh water to drink.
We tried water distilling systems. I bought one that mounted on the kitchen wall and took water directly from the tap. It worked all right for a week or two, then plugged with minerals, especially calcium, which we found almost impossible to scrape clean. We invested in a more costly “self-cleaning” distilling system that was so large we had to put it in the basement. It worked for about two weeks then plugged with minerals and calcium. Contrary to what we were told when we bought the machine, it did not clean itself. The scales of calcium were so hard to remove, and so difficult to reach inside a small hole barely large enough to get a human hand through, we had to give up on this system as well. We resorted to buying bottled water every week and drinking that. We soon discovered that distilled bottled water tasted best, and made good coffee without plugging the coffee maker. That became our custom from then on, long after we sold that property and moved on.
One fall, about a year after we moved into the house and were already deep into debt on mortgage and home improvement bank loans, our water well failed. I contacted a local well service company. The guy brought some heavy drilling equipment to the house, looked into the well head which was located in the back yard, and announced that the salt water had eroded the steel well casing. It had collapsed. We needed a new well. Then the fellow left for a week. It was opening day of deer hunting season and he announced that he would be back the following week to drill us a new well.
I could not believe what he had done to us. We were totally out of water, except for what we had in our refrigerator to drink. We had no way of washing our clothes, our dishes, or bodies or flushing our toilet. And he was leaving us in that condition for a week to kill deer before returning to drill a well.
Wayne came over and brought a hand-weighted spudder and some pipe. His idea was to spud our own well just by simply driving a pipe into the aquifer, which we calculated was at least forty or fifty feet down. We went to work, driving the pipe into the earth. All went well for the first ten feet or so, and then we hit hard rock. Wayne was not to be deterred. We went to the State Police Post, got a dynamite permit and bought a stick of dynamite. I remember standing back as Wayne lit the fuse and dropped it into the hole. It exploded deep in the ground, but the blast failed to open a way through the obstruction. It was now obvious that we were not going to spud ourselves a new water well.
A neighbor told me of a new water drilling business that was operating near Croswell. I drove over there, found the place, and met a young man with all of the water well drilling equipment parked in his yard. He was not a deer hunter and he was looking for business. He gave me a good price on the project, and I hired him. He had a well dug, struck a good water source that had so much pressure it was a flowing well. Unfortunately, it still contained salt. But we had water flowing through the pipes of our house by the next day. He also installed an outlet at the well head so we could water the garden, the lawn or wash the cars. While there, he had to work around the big drilling rig left parked in our back yard by the well guy that went hunting.
When the first well driller returned to the house and saw what we had done, he went into a rage. He billed us about a hundred dollars for his services anyway. I counter billed him the same amount for truck parking rental on my back yard. We never heard from him again. I also made sure a lot of people in the area knew what a bad character he was, so I am sure I cost him some business.