So what is it? root cellar?, well?,

[RCW]

So the property I just bought has a Spring Box well feeding the old house. Which is about 1000ft from the house. Installed a sallow well pump and boosted the pressure up to 55 psi, water is clean and clear. All old school technology.

Yep - exact set-up I grew up with at our dairy farm.

I worked in Health Departments not far south of you for many years, so saw a lot of them, both for houses/farms and villages. Had a village whose only source were springs 6 miles from town, and on the other side of the river.

Problem with any shallow water source is it's periodic susceptibility to contamination due to the weather, primarily biological contaminants like bacteria and parasites. Some of those cannot be treated with simple disinfection to make it safe (e.g., Giardia).

All I can suggest is routine simple coliform tests as a basic gauge that your water is safe to drink, and also anytime your water quality or characteristics change.

I could tell stories that would curl your hair. Won't do that, but I strongly suggest that you at least get a coliform test done.

 

[Daren Todd]

Spring Box/Dug well or cesspool/outhouse pit.

Oddly, pit construction can be similar but they work in reverse. Spring box or Dug well will be in a high groundwater spot, and you pump water out. Cesspool or outhouse would be in a low groundwater spot, and you put "water" in...

Given the high water, the black tubing for piping, and the apparent hinged top (they sometimes need screens cleaned, snakes and mice pulled out, etc.), I'm betting spring box or dug well.

In theory, someone would find a true groundwater "spring" seep and construct the box around it. Sometimes, there can be artesian pressure, which is confined groundwater under slight pressure that will make them overfill the box.

Truthfully, most I've seen over the years were really just a low/wet spot, they dug a hole and laid something up for a dug well.

I wouldn't drink the water out of any of them....

My bet would be an old spring. We had two of them on my grandfather's and dad's property in Vermont. Both had similar covers. Spring on dad's property fed our house with water till he had a well drilled in 1990. The spring on gramps property was the water source for his house from the 30's when my great grandparents bought the house, till the late 60's when gramps had a well drilled.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[CaveCreekRay]

How's the water taste?

 

[SidecarFlip]

Bet it makes some water. They can get silted in, especially open like that.

I used to deal with a big brick one, maybe 12' diameter and 25' deep. Would make almost 200 gpm through 2 submersibles hung down in it.

Little baffled by the elevation...usually a dug well or spring box is brought a block or 2 above grade to avoid flooding, but I've also seen some pretty poor workmanship...maybe that's all the block the previous owner could get from the City he worked for?!?!?

Coach - does it have a concrete bottom you can see? If it does have a concrete bottom, can you see inlet (outlet) pipe or pipes in the sides, and what size? I see the block is parged up...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One of the farmers down the road went all out on a dug well. He took his Hydra Hoe and dug a pit 20 feet deep, set a drain culvert vertical in it and backfilled the pit with river stone. That sucker makes water big time. Fills his in ground pool with it, waters his lawn and runs his irrigation system too. He don't drink it however because around here, the fertilizer leaches into the ground water. Only good water here comes from deep underground from cased well. Mine is 165 feet deep.

 

[Tughill Tom]

Yep - exact set-up I grew up with at our dairy farm.

I worked in Health Departments not far south of you for many years, so saw a lot of them, both for houses/farms and villages. Had a village whose only source were springs 6 miles from town, and on the other side of the river.

Problem with any shallow water source is it's periodic susceptibility to contamination due to the weather, primarily biological contaminants like bacteria and parasites. Some of those cannot be treated with simple disinfection to make it safe (e.g., Giardia).

All I can suggest is routine simple coliform tests as a basic gauge that your water is safe to drink, and also anytime your water quality or characteristics change.

I could tell stories that would curl your hair. Won't do that, but I strongly suggest that you at least get a coliform test done.

Oh know I agree, I was a Facilities Manager in Bio-tech and have run and managed some big HPW and WfI Water systems. Its all about the testing I had to do it on every shift, 3 times a day.
We had our testing lab on site.

 

[RCW]

Oh know I agree, I was a Facilities Manager in Bio-tech

Gotcha - - you know all-too-well. I used to cover a couple large pharmaceutical plants with their own water sources, and dealt with the folks in your role.

FDA Certified, and they were VERY protective of that for good reason. Had iron issues, and their chosen polyphosphate additive was essentially dropped by the manufacturer from NSF certification.

Went to a similar formulation from same company, just not same product ID#....caused them so much heartburn due to that simple change. Bet it was 18 months of planning & execution....

In a city/village water system, no one would have blinked an eye......

 

[Yooper]

Check for signs that the Knights Templar have been there. The Holy Grail might be at the bottom or a treasure chest of gold. The Lagina brothers might be interested in a whole new show on History Channel.

For those of you that do not watch Oak Island on the History Channel, I apologize for this blurb.

 

[Tooljunkie]

Ice house?
I only knew of one, cut ice from river and place it in a hole,then cover it in sawdust. Used right into the 70’s. Would put a bunch if dry ice in there to to keep the wet ice frozen. Mid-summmer there was still lots of ice.

 

[GeoHorn]

I own an old hunting lodge with guest-housing waay out in the country. These resemble the 1940's era cesspools we drained and re-directed into grey-water. (New septic tanks were installed solely for toilets. All showers, sinks, tubs run to the old cesspools/grey-water systems and are absorbed by the surrounding land.)

The old plastic pipes laying around the OPs pools were likely associated with drain-fields. Ours used 4" ceramic-tile pipes.