I didn't live in my RV, but I did develop a lot from scratch on an island near the Olympic Peninsula and then my ex-wife and I moved a modular home onto the property.
1930 said:
I'm gonna soon be digging a well, Ive never experienced this and Id like to know what its like to hit water....how will I know. Shallow well, less than 30 feet deep.
You'll know, you'll start seeing muddy soil, then when you hit water it will seep into the bottom of the hole. You'll have to continue digging until there's enough water seeping in fast enough to create a pool at the bottom of the well that you can draw from. The water may start out muddy but should clear up as you draw water from the well and the loose soil washes out.
Have the water tested to make sure it's safe being that close to the surface. And be sure you're far enough from the septic field to avoid contamination - in our case the County required at least 150 ft. seperation between the well and the closest point of the septic field.
You'll have to line the well to prevent the sides from caving in or having surface water drain in and contaminate it. Usually this means running a pipe down the well large enough to let the well pump pass through to the bottom and pump the water up to the surface. You can't have the pump at the surface, at the most you can only suck water a few feet.
On rare occasions you may hit an artesian source, but this is usually only on deeper wells. Where we built was surrounded by salt water in Puget Sound and by talking to neighbors we learned there were two layers of fresh water. The first was at 30-50 ft. and was fed by rainwater falling on the island, the other was 200+ ft. down and was a glacial flow from British Columbia. In between was a layer of clay and there was a clay cap on the surface - there were only a couple of locations on the 5 acre parcel where the ground would "perc" enough for a septic leach field, i.e water would seep into the ground at an acceptable rate if you poured it into a hole instead of having it just sit there in a puddle.
We hired a well driller and they went down 210 ft. before hitting water, then the level in the well rose to 180 ft from the artesian pressure. We used iron pipe to line the well and it gave very good quality water.
On another piece of property on the island my wife's uncle "witched" the well location using a pair of divining rods back in the 1960s and hit the surface water layer at 30 ft. He hand dug the well and lined it with concrete sewer pipe capped by a cement floor in the well house. It was an excellent well, the water was a bit saltier than our 200 ft. well but it never ran dry and in fact produced enough water to help out a neighbor when their shallow well ran dry in the summer months.
