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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Wells work fine for clean water as long as you put the outhouse/manure pile/compost heap/bird coop/septic bed a good distance away from the well and not uphill/upstream from it. My uncle made the error of building a new chicken coop too close to the wellhead and everyone in the house started getting sick. They had the water tested, the well cleaned and uncle moved the coop farther away. All kitchen water was bottled, filtered and/or boiled for a while until the system cleared itself out and the water tested clean. It’s a more dangerous problem with outhouses and septic beds. Overland flooding and heavy downpours are also a risk.
Recently moved to central Virginia and have a well. It is about 300 ft deep and a cording to the well drillers, is in a different aquafer then the niebors (they are about 150 ft.
Well is just a small diameter hole that has a cladding on the shallower parts, there is an electric pump near the bottom that pumps it up to a small tank in the house. The water is not usually “earthy tasting” although I have noticed three different “tastes” in the 8 months we have been here. Usually it is a bit sweet, but I have also noticed a savory taste and a more neutral taste as well, seems to be related to how much rain we get.
So my family has a cottage in northern Ontario that runs on a well on a spring kinda thing. We take the atv drive around a bunch of huge rocks and ridges , go through a muddy and small atv trail in thick woods , and load our atvs with jugs.
The water has a wood cover and we just lift it , and it sorts bubbles out of the spring into the jugs. It’s 100 percent heavenly spring water.
I’m scared nestle will read this and come and steal it
The other answer is that they did get sick. there are lots of times when they dug wells too near outhouses or animal waste. Church records tell the tale of families with multiple deaths because of contaminated well water.
I grew up on well water, and I’m middle aged. My mom had it tested regularly. It’s been long enough ago that I don’t remember how often it was, but I do remember her doing the little testing kits and sending them in.
The only thing was we didn’t have water whenever we lost power, because the pump didn’t work without power.
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Grew up on well water! I love the taste, it’s slightly metallic in our area from the iron content (I think). It’s used for everything, there aren’t water lines coming from the nearest town 5 miles away. It’s a bit hard from the mineral content, but not the worst. I have no idea how deep our well is.
The ground is a remarkably good filter. The only things that ground water can’t filter out is the pollution from the soil where there are things like huge farms leaching pesticides out into the environment. This is why protecting our freshwater reserves is so important. Groundwater is one of the few water sources that is endlessly renewable because all you need is a rainy day.
The “city” water in my county all comes from individual wells that the county maintains. They have pump houses in every subdivision. To your question though, there are filters in the lines, but that’s mainly for sediment not contaminants.
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