First up: the permit. Your local government wants to make sure you’re not drinking toxic sludge, so they’ll charge you $50 to $500 for the privilege of paperwork. Then there’s the well casing—a steel or PVC pipe that lines the hole so it doesn’t collapse into a muddy regret. That’s extra, usually $20 to $40 per foot.
Domestic Water Well Diagram
Oh, and the grout? That’s the cement they pump around the casing to seal out surface bacteria. Yes, you pay extra for cement. I’m not making this up. And you’ll also need a water test (another $100 to $200) to see if your prize liquid has too much iron, sulfur, or radioactive radon. Nothing says “fun investment” like testing for invisible gas that might give you superpowers or cancer.
If your luck is tragically average, you’ll also need a cistern or storage tank. Some aquifers produce water at a trickle, so you need a tank to hold a day’s worth of supply. That’s an easy $1,000 to $3,000 extra. You are now the proud owner of a high-tech rainwater collection system that also costs money.
The Brutal Geography Lottery
Location, location, location—except here, it’s about aquifer depth. In the Florida Panhandle, you can often hit clean water at 20 feet for about $2,000. In the Rocky Mountains, you might hit water at 600 feet and pay $18,000, plus a bottle of whiskey for the driller. In parts of Nevada, drillers have gone 1,000 feet deep and found nothing but dry dust. Imagine paying $40,000 for a very expensive nature sculpture.
One shocking statistic: the deepest residential well in the U.S. is over 2,000 feet deep. That hole cost more than my college education, and it just sits there, being wet and judgmental. The average well depth in the U.S. is about 100 to 300 feet, but your neighbor’s experience is about as useful as a fortune cookie for predicting your own results.
Dug Wells - Inspection Gallery - InterNACHI®
