Finding Water, Is It Magic? | Wasilla Real Estate News, Valley Market Real Estate

Finding Water, Is It Magic? January 20th, 2007

Categories: Wells

Most building lots in the Wasilla and Palmer areas do not have water lines available to them. So if you buy a lot you are going to have to drill a well. Where will you put that well? Is it better in the back of the lot or the front?

Before you even purchase the lot you need to do a little research. If you go down to the Department of Conservation, (DEC), office on Bogard Road armed with the legal address of your prospective property, you will find some very good information. The people there will help to find well logs in your area that show the depth of the wells and the amount of water each well produces. If all the neighbors have good wells you know your chances of getting water are very good. It’s not a guarantee however, you are always taking chances when you drill.

In some areas people have drilled two or three wells before finding one with good water. The dry holes are usually not reported to DEC but are just abandoned. So it is possible that the neighbors could have one or more dry wells on their property without DEC knowing about it. For that reason, it’s a good idea to dig a little more. Talking to the neighbors is an excellent way to find out about wells in the area. They will normally tell you if they had a hard time getting water. I am a little surprised about buyers reluctance to talk to people in the neighborhood as part of their due-diligence in purchasing property.

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Written by Marty Van Diest 4 Comments »

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 20th, 2007 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Wells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Wasilla Real Estate News » Wells in the Mat-Su Valley, Part Three said at January 25th, 2007 at 9:13 am
[...] In two previous articles we looked at possible contamination in your well water and at finding water. This article will deal with how to use and maintain your well. [...]
Wasilla Real Estate News » Water Treatment in Palmer and Wasilla said at February 2nd, 2007 at 5:24 pm
[...] For more on wells check out parts one, two and three in this series. [...]
David said at June 19th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
I’m curious as to what the well flow, or yield standards are set to by most lenders today in Alaska? Is it still the 3 gpm for 2 hours?
Marty said at June 19th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Hi David. In most cases now, there is no minimum well flow. There needs to be enough water for normal family usage.

Usually an offer is made that allows a buyer to review and approve the current well flow. If it’s too low the buyer may back out of a deal.

The old FHA standard was 3gpm for 4 hours but you could use storage to do that. So technically, a well could produce 1 gpm and still pass if there was a storage system