I moved into a 1930’s house about 6 months ago, and have got some builders in renewing my guttering and downpipes. While they were looking at the various places to get rid of the water they lifted the manhole about 4 feet from the backdoor and found an old well that appears to be about 6 foot across! I’m not sure how deep it is yet, but the water is less than 2 feet from the top.

Anyone know what the problems/regulations are? Who will be interested? (Water company/Council/Building regs/insurance/Environment Agency etc.). It’s unlikely to be on our deeds as nothing was mentioned by our solicitor. The surveyor didnt pick it up either – is there any duty to report it? I’m assuming building insurance companies won’t like it much, especially so close to the house.

I’m going to check the cap is strong enough, but the edges aren’t too close to the structual walls of the house – just the lean-to at the back.

Options I’m currently considering so far are:
a)Pretending I haven’t seen it
b)Filling it in quietly (could be expensive if its deep).
c)Calling a structural engineer.
d)Calling the environment agency.
e)Making a massive garden water feature.
f)Rejoice at my new found supply of free water and build a pumping station.

Anyone have any experience of this? Have any other suggestions? If I’m filling it in it’s probably going to be a wheelbarrow job due to the location which is going to add to cost/my bad back. What would be best materials/methods to fill it? What would you do?

Sinkhole that has flooded? Posh foot spa?

Are you sure it’s not a failed/poorly performing soakaway?

As all your wishes will now come true,do anything you want.

Oh and don’t forget to build a gift shop beside it. 🙂

g) put some fish in it

On a more serious note I’d be pretty wary of a well so close to the house – but then the house hasn’t fallen down yet so probably fine. I think I’d want to fill it in but, as you’ve stated, that may not be as easy as it sounds.

Are you sure it’s not a failed/poorly performing soakaway?

Good point, but our soakaways are filled in but with loose stuff i.e. rubble, etc. to allow water to run down to the bottom and ‘soak away’

Neighbours had to reduce the size of an extension when they/building control found a well in their garden. True story.

f)Rejoice at my new found supply of free water and build a pumping station.

This. It wouldn’t be too hard to plumb it into the washing machine and toilet. I believe the water co. will still charge you for this (if you tell them) but it should be a saving over all. And as above, the house is 80 years old, it’ll be fine.

Watch out for scary looking Japanese girls wandering around your garden.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJn5Y65GAkA[/video]

1/ don’t tell anybody.
2/ Install a pump to a header tank and use it as grey water for toilet flushing, car washing, garden watering etc. If the water is good quality you can add the washing machine. You’ll save yourself most of your water bill.

the water is less than 2 feet from the top.

Are you sure it’s not a circular concrete or brick ring manhole ( like this one) that’s just full of water? Rainwater drainage blocked downline somewhere? Is there anything floating in it?

IF it’s really an old well, this would concern me a wee bit.
If i’m getting this right, the height of the water table is only 2 feet below ground level immediately adjacent to your 1930’s house which has, in all likelihood, 18 inches of engineering brick below ground level on top of a six inch thick concrete foundation.

Bit close for comfort for me. 😯

no to “d.” The Environment Agency aren’t interested.

At this stage I’m defintitely of a mind to keep it quiet until I do some more investigation.

I think it’s much to big to be drainage, and we’re in a hamlet in the middle of nowhere in the countryside so I can imagine the need for any drainage works on that scale.

It could “well” be mainly rainwater as that is one of the reasons I’m redoing the guttering – a good portion of the gutters were going into a nearby water butt with no overflow to drainage.

I’m going to get a bit of string and a stone and see how deep it is then, when it stops raining, maybe put an old fountain pump into it to see if I can lower the water level.

The water doesn’t look particularly nice at the moment, but judging by the difficulty of removing the manhole cover it’s been closed up stagnating for a very long time. If I start pumping it out it may well clear.

Any more ideas of what I should be looking for?

Sounds like a septic tank or manhole to me…

You’ll soon find out which. 😡

Could be a main sewer access point and the sewer is blocked somewhere.

What colour is the water?

You are not obliged to tell anyone about it (until perhaps you come to sell the house)! Occasionally SWW and/or the council try to make a list of private water supplies in my parents’ village – presumably so they can try and make some money out of it – so they get ignored or told to go away.

First thing is to check the depth and confirm whether it is a well. If so, if it was my house, I would then get a local well/borehole company out to have a look at it and get a general view on its stability etc. If it’s perfectly stable and has a decent cover – sounds like this may need upgrading from a manhole to a big concrete disc – then I’d leave it alone. If it’s at all dodgy I’d get a local structural engineer to have a look and advise on filling in or capping it properly as this will depend on your local geology.

b)Filling it in quietly (could be expensive if its deep).

Start rummaging down the back of the sofa

Have you found out how deep it is yet?

Most likely it’s a 1930s septic tank. We had one in our garden, the house was built in 1930. It was a simple manhole cover but underneath was a very large circular brick chamber with what looked like pale mud on the bottom and very pure water. Obviously sepsis had long died away. We kids dropped a load of old oil drums in and somehow managed to assemble them into a raft, I expect elf ‘n safety would have a blue fit nowadays.

We also had a borehole, which had a cap with a huge and scarey electric pump sitting on top of it. When we took it out the builder lifted it and torched the suction pipe, which dropped down the hole with a big noise.

Start Bottling it?

if the water is a bit mankey/stagnant then i would err on the side of drainage/septic tank. A well that was covered over “should” have clear water in.

Had to go to work, and it’ll be dark by the time I get home so no depth measuring today. Will let you know when I find out.

Builders seemed to think it’s a well, but a septic tank would probably be a lot easier to deal with if that’s what it turns out to be. The mains drains look very old, so it won’t have been used as such for a long time if it is.

Occasionally SWW and/or the council try to make a list of private water supplies in my parents’ village – presumably so they can try and make some money out of it – so they get ignored or told to go away.

possibly, but more likely to protect private water supplies from contamination from offsite sources. Part of risk assessent of contamination is evaluation of nearby potable water abstractions, if there’s none, then theoretically you can get away with more dissoved contamination.

23 posts and no “Are the police looking into it?”

pfft

Get a brick and piece of string to see how deep it is?

Turn it into a tourist attraction and ‘monetise’ it?

Disappointing that there hasn’t been any ‘childs face’ type reaction yet

Put a cat down it

Look inside for dead bodies…it might be blocked by bones and the like so has stopped draining away…

If it is a well, think carefully before putting anything in it (fill or otherwise) as you may contaminate the aquifer which the water stems from. And kill all your local farmers cows / local farmers 😯

Not an expert but recently had to deal with a well found on a construction site. When pumped out it was about 10m deep. Engineer was concerned it might collapse as it was emptied but it didn’t. Filled it with hardcore and capped it with concrete. Oh and don’t leave it uncovered.

It may also be a water storage cistern, friends found one just outside the back of a 1920’s property

They also had a septic tank as well at the other side of the property.

Some of the brickwork in the cistern was in a poor condition and they ended up breaking up the upper few ft of it and back filling

On a more serious note I’d be pretty wary of a well so close to the house

I wouldn’t. The cottage in Wiltshire that we lived in had a well in the kitchen.

On a more serious note I’d be pretty wary of a well so close to the house

It’s not that that’d concern me…

As above, bottle it, label it with words including where you live and ‘artisan’ and then flog it for £4.99 a bottle.

We found a similar thing in our garden when we had the patio done. Lifted the manhole cover & found a round hole about 6ft across & 6 deep, concrete lined with holes in, so it’s a soakaway. House is 19-20 yrs old.
Except ours had no standing water in it.

Our new factory has a mahoosive soakaway the size of an olympic swimming pool that we had to dig under the car park as part of the environmental thing, because they wanted surface water to soak away instead of running into an adjacent brook. It was lined with permeable membrane then filled with black plastic crates to make the void, shame really because the Victorians would have done it with beautiful brick arches or something.

On a more serious note I’d be pretty wary of a well so close to the house
I wouldn’t. The cottage in Wiltshire that we lived in had a well in the kitchen.

Pub in Bromham, on the way to Devizes, called The Greyhound, has a well inside! It was outside, until they extended the pub, and they made a feature of it, left the water in, put lights inside, let ferns grow on the brickwork and covered it with thick glass.

We’ve a well in our back garden, it’s about 12′ deep apparently. I’d say it’s less than 2m from the house, it’s came to no harm, the house dates back to 1890ish.

Long stick to measure depth or a brick tied to a piece of string drop it gently into water anwhen string goes tight youve hit bottom, then measure how long the string is.

Also it could be an air raid shelter from the swww.Just full of water.