Hello!
People are often surprised as they move out to central and western Massachusetts that there are a significant number of properties with wells. Massachusetts is blessed with lots of rain and natural aquifers, and as a result, the cheapest way for many homes to have water is drilling a well. So there are lots of them! While that may not be everyone's first choice, well water is often safe, free of chemicals (unlike public water), and free! (But you do have additional equipment that needs to be maintained and replaced over time.)
Most home buyers though, have very little (usual none) experience with wells, and unfortunately, many agents do not know what they should about wells. While modern wells have been tested for today's safe water standards, many older wells have had limited - or no - testing. Additional, home water wells can degrade over time, as the cracks in the aquifer fill with sediment. This brief primer covers the top recommendations for home buyers who are taking the plunge and kissing their water bill goodbye!
Transctipt of this video:
I think a lot of people who might be checking out this video will be thinking about buying a house that has well water, and they want to see whether or not that's a good idea. I think for most people it is a good idea If It's the right house for you. I don't think well water's all that much to be concerned about, but you definitely want to make sure that you have good well water.
As you get into more rural areas and sometimes even in highly populated areas, you're going to find more wells. In my area about 20 of the houses have wells, so they are fairly common right and generally they're not a big deal, 20 of the people can't be wrong, right? The main message of this particular video is you want to, you want to make sure that it gets tested and we're going to talk about what do you need to test it, and how you need to get it tested. What you're looking for is the results of those tests and who should be doing the testing.
It does cost for a little bit of extra money to properly test a Well Yes! But this is your household water afterall, so you definitely want to do it. And if something is found that needs to be fixed, proper well testing is going to save you a lot of money down the road. Make sure that you're including in those purchase offers that you're going to test that well.
For those who haven’t met me I’m Matt Heisler, I am the broker owner of Vanderbilt properties, and I've sold many homes with Wells. So even though I'm not an attorney and a lender, I feel like I can help people make sure that they're being careful, when buying Wells properties with Wells on them.
Why do some homes have Wells? Usually, it's because town water for that particular location is too expensive to do. Sometimes they couldn't get the city or town supply (when it was bullet) but now they can. And then you have an opportunity to hook up. But just because you have an opportunity to hook up, doesn't mean it's going to be cheap, right? So that's something that you want to price out, if that's your plan to hook up (to town water supply). So a lot of times people think it's going to be like two thousand dollars and it's like 25 -35,000. Running pipes from the street all the way up to your house, not a simple thing to do, they had to bring out heavy equipment, they got to put it below the frost line, it's expensive! So don't think that it's going to be cheap, and don't let someone tell you that hooking up is your (inexpensive) solution in case the well's not working. Most of the time wells are in place because installing a well was cheaper than hooking up to the nearest water line and that may still be true today.
First thing that anyone who does a well test that you can do as part of your whole inspection test property which you should definitely do, should definitely have a home inspection and you should definitely have a well test. I will tell you, I have a reminder at the end of this video. Most home inspectors do not specialize in wells. They usually encourage you to get an outside expert to do them. When they do test wells, sometimes they only do a limited test and you want to make sure that they're going to test all the things we're going to talk about in this video. But a specialist, someone who installs Wells and tests Wells, they're going to examine the pressure tank, they're going to examine the plumbing setup and they're also probably going to try to do what they can to check out and make sure that your pump is okay. Best way to do that is we do a pressure test that tests both the pump and it makes sure that the aquifer is flowing, freely and filling up the well, at a certain rate. These pressure tests are really exhaustive. They really push the well, they use a lot more water than a household typically used in a day. They use hundreds and hundreds of gallons and they make sure that it's coming out at this particular speed. So, it's a very serious test and the well probably has not been under this kind of, pardon the pun, pressure. Because a typical homeowner won't (push the well volume). This is the kind of pressure, you put on it if you had like a two acre lot and you were watering it with well water.
Which is a big benefit of well water. Well water is generally free. So, you know, once you pay for the equipment and the setup, there's no water bill! It's a really big Advantage for wells.
If that if the pump isn't isn't good, some Wells are only 75 feet deep or 100 feet deep. It's not too expensive to replace the pump there, but some Wells are 300 feet. 400 even 500 feet deep. Those pumps have to be a lot stronger. A lot bigger. They have much bigger cables that they have to run down to them. And ultimately, those pump replacements can be very expensive. You really sort of want to know how deep that well is, how old the pump is, although that information is usually very hard to get. And then make sure that you have some idea of what that might cost when it's time to replace the pump.
Water Softeners are in place sometimes and other kinds of water filters. Usually a good Well Tech will at least go over them. Make sure that you understand them, what kind of Maintenance might be required with the softeners are pretty common to see in this area because Massachusetts has very hard water but by no means necessary. A lot of people I know have no filters and no softeners and that's probably the usual case. That's normally what you see when you go with well water in Massachusetts.
I will tell you that, well, equipment lasts a very long time, a lot of times, most of the stuff, the warranties from the pressure tanks are all rated for 10 years or more that don't require a lot of me, unlike, you know, maybe a boiler or eating equipment or any of that kind of stuff. So it's not uncommon to see that nobody has done anything at this equipment for a very long time. Sometimes it looks like it hasn't been touched in a couple of decades and that's fine and there's nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that you want to make sure that you're looking to make sure nothing is just about to break, you know, you want to make sure that you've done as much of a due diligence to make sure that the setup is okay.
OK, again, well equipment can cost a lot of money to replace, you want to make sure that you've given it as rigorous a test as you can before buying a house. But the second thing we want to check is we want to make sure that the water is potable. Potable is a fancy water word, fancy real estate word. I mean safe to drink. For me, making sure that the water is safe to drink involves testing for arsenic which is often naturally occurring. It's not You know, it can it can just be there. And you want to sure you're not drinking it because arsenic and people don't don't mix, right? It's dangerous.
Also want to check for radon. Massachusetts has a standard for Radon but I, I think personally it's probably a little low (too conservative). But, people can have lots of different opinions about that. There is no National Standard for radon in water, it's all set by States and you'll see that there's a lot of variants state by state. This is something they're still trying to figure out. But in Massachusetts, if there's radon in your well water, you can usually get the seller to fix it. Same with arsenic. Now, these systems are not inexpensive. $6,000 is, uh, pretty much the run rate for each one of those systems. So if you had a well that had arsenic and radon, it's a $12,000 fix there. It's not inexpensive equipment. Those things you want to make sure someone else is doing it and you're not doing it, right? That's why we're having this video.
However, the most common problem that we run into is that there's bacteria in the well and you don't want to be drinking that that water. You might say, well, “how come the sellers’ don't get sick?” If there's bacteria in the well and the answer is they did get sick when they first started drinking it but their bodies have gotten used to it and, uh, they don't even notice it anymore. That's the typical case and that happens quite a lot. But you're, not used to it. So we want to make sure that there's no bacteria in your well! The good news is that is a really easy fix and it's inexpensive and any, well guy can fix it in a couple of hours. So that's not really something we worry about, but it's definitely something we want to test for
There's also organic compounds. Not everyone tests for organic compounds, it's a good idea to do it just as a fail safe. But truthfully in most of my area there are not a ton of places where it's likely that the aquifer has organic compounds. Organic compounds are usually, where people that had factories from a long time ago, were dumping chemicals into the ground. Some of them may have leaked, into the aquifer, that's not common, in my area, but it could be common in your area. So, depending on how common that is, you want to make sure that you're checking or not checking for those kinds of things, they do lots of other tests on well water where you submit it to a lab. Those tests are inexpensive. So they just sort of include them. I I'm not going to go over all of them here, they're not usually things that we fix. And it doesn't make your water any less potable or, drinkable. But without a doubt, when buying a house, you want to make sure you've got clean safe water for drinking, cooking, and showering in pools. This is the way that you check that, right? You make sure the equipment's good, you make sure that the water's safe and now you're good to go. In fact you're gonna have some of the cleanest water you can get!
I will say as I close out this video that all wells are different, this has been intended to cover the vast majority of things that you need to think about and talk about when buying a house with a well but there can be others, right? So there are other situations where you might want to have a more in-depth discussion about your well. You do have questions and I can answer them. Feel free to reach out in the video and I’ll do my best, but a lot of times we need to be on site in order to sort of figure out what the setup is.
Again, make sure that you're not just relying on your home inspector. And if the home inspector says, “yeah, don't worry about it. I'll go over the well”. Ask him, is he going to do a pressure test? Is he going to do a potability test? A lot of home inspectors in this area , they'll do one or the other and some of them will do none at all. So, You definitely want to make sure that a full well test is going to happen and that's simply because doing that test before you move in, can save you thousands and thousands of dollars. Most of the time these tests nothing comes up but then you know then you know the water is safe and the equipment is good and I will tell you it is worth the peace of mind just to know that. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you would like to see more home ownership videos, feel free to subscribe and I'll try to keep them coming.
