eli5: When people used wells for drinking water, how did they not get sick? Was there some type of filter or was the water just naturally clean?
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I have 2 wells. Still drink, shower,cook,etc from one of them, the other one dried up several years ago. Been used since 1967, hasnt made anyone sick yet.
Still do. The water is healthy and tasty. Built in 1982 on a family farm. Limestone bedrock filters and cleans the water.
FINALLY! A topic I can comment on!!!
You realize millions upon millions of people in first world countries still use wells right? In America alone there’s 15-20 million residential wells. My town municipality doesn’t have town water. Every house in my town is on their own private well.
The ground water is filtered through the dirt, rock and sand it naturally passes through. Once they find a vein of water in the ground they drill and sleeve the hole with a pipe. The water fills the pipe and a pump that’s placed on the bottom of the well pumps it into a pressure vessel in your house. The pressure vessel is essentially a holding tank that has an air bladder in it to push against the water to keep it pressurized, when you open a faucet the water gets pushed out of the vessel and out the faucet. You do need a sediment filter to filter out any sand and silt but bacteria isn’t normally a concern because the well is sealed and cleaned no critters can get in. Once the well is drilled The first thing they do to a new well is test the water before allowing it to be consumed. They test for viruses, bacteria, mold, etc and if they detect anything they know how much and how long to shock the well with chlorine. Once the water passes and the chlorine is all flushed through the water is safe for consumption.
Shallower wells use the same concept however the pump is placed inside the house next to the pressure vessel rather than at the bottom of the well sleeve. That style pump is called a jet pump.
It’s also a very good practice to have the water tested every year or two
My boyfriends uncle has a spring fed well on his property and the water is delicious and soft… your skin is so nice after you shower there…. And then I have chlorinated city water and it smells like chlorine too…
“When they used to use wells” What?
Also, for everyone talking about “water from everywhere else but wells” there IS NOT GURANTEE the “clean” water you are getting is actually that clean.
The standards for treating water are crappy all over the world, sadly. Thankfully in 1974 the SDWA(Safe Drinking Water Act) in America went into effect and since the standards of drinking water has been high.
Now, obviously like Flint Michigan, someone not giving a fuck can certainly be a hazard to the people being served this water but…
Just always remember: when you turn your faucet on in America, 99.99 percent of the time its safe and drinkable…doesn’t mean its gonna be enjoyable though.
I prefer well water.
I live in an area that uses well water for the most part. The small cities use treated water but not in rural areas. A well company comes in and will drill a hole 100 to 500 feet down until they hit the aquifer and the perc is enough to sustain a household. They cap it and attach a pump. Fresh, clear, cold well water is the best. No taste of chemicals which is what notice most when drinking treated water anywhere. Especially chlorine. It’s like drinking pool water. Gross.
Note: perc = the gallons per minute the well produces without a pump i.e. natural water pressure from the aquifer
Other answers here are somewhat incomplete.
Old hand-dug wells did make people sick sometimes.
Drilled wells like you would find since the late 1800s generally did not because they are far deeper and the water takes years longer to filter down to that level.
It also matters what you are putting the well into.
A shallow well into the gravel of a spring is far safer than into gravel only holding water because the flow of the spring hold much of the potential contamination back and flushes it away if it does get in.
Even a drilled well is more susceptible to contamination if the rock being drilled is heavily fractured and the covering soil drains quickly.
Flood silt with a lot of organics mixed in like you find in many riverside cities will allow some potential contamination to thrive a lot more than rock, sand or gravel.
You can make deep or shallow wells that are safe, but doing so with limited choices of where to dig and no way of testing the water is a gamble at best.
I have a well. I do not live in the sticks, just three miles outside San Antonio city limits. When my development was laid out in the 70s the city was still almost ten miles away but has since blown past us.
Our well water comes from the same place as city water does, the Edwards Aquifer, which is basically an massive underground lake. The limestone that makes up the geography of this area acts as a natural filter, so the water is safe to drink straight out of the ground. The city treats the water because of all the plumbing it must go through between coming out of the ground and reaching people’s homes which can introduce contamination. Water at my house goes ten feet to a reservoir and then thirty feet to the house.
That said, sometimes there are contaminates in people’s wells, up north where I’m from there is a certain bacteria that can found in the groundwater so you might have to pass it through a UV light filter. Other places probably have other things they might need to contend with.
Humans have been purifying water for [1000s of years](https://www.lenntech.com/processes/disinfection/history/history-water-disinfection.htm. most contaminates have been diseases fromm humans or animals. Someone already mentioned cholera in another comment. Ex. If you have cholera and your human waste gets into the ground water, anyone who gets water from a nearby well could get cholera.
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