Hi!

We are renting a house at the moment which has dug well. We are not convinced that is working as it ideally should (100 yr old house)! We have been here 10 weeks and have had to refill via delivery man 3000 litres to gain some extra water 3 deliverys of water.

We switch between the well and a cistern system which is fine if its raining lots, but we are being told by the landlords that they only had to get one water delivery last year.

Now I know it has been really hot the last couple of week and no rain, and the landlord is blaming this for the situation, is this right.

When we are using the well, (it isnt deep), we can empty it in 4 days, and this is only having showers etc no baths, to wait for it to fill up to the brim would take 6 days plus

We are leaving it for a couple of days to try and refill and use the cistern system, but its not doing anything.

Are dug wells completely reliant on rain

Sorry if all this sounds a bit dumb we are new to this.

How do we stand re the landlords on this? Should we have to keep paying for additional water ourselves?

Thanks for any info

Yeah I agree- I thought the idea behind wells is that they provide ground water, not rain water.

Sounds fishy to me...

I would check your lease carefully- personally if its a well he should be responsible- after all its not like you are paying for being on mains water.

When we rented a house the well pump was'nt working and we had no water,the owner was responsible for fixing it.

The well should be bringing you ground water NOT rain water. I am sure there have been a few threads on this a while ago - people in your area having trouble with wells running dry.

Do you know if your neighbours still have dug wells or whether they are on drilled wells now? It may be that this is what needs to be done but your landlords don't want to shell out the cash to actually get it sorted.

I'm not sure where you stand re paying for the additional water - does it say anything in your lease?

We are on a well Nikki and the only time we had to purchase water was to fill our pool the year we got it built. Other than that we have 2 adults and 2 teenagers so use lots of water. Personally I have never heard of anyone having to purchase water because their well run dry. The weather has only been dry for a couple of weeks.

If you know the well is not deep then it may need to go deeper underground or relocate to a different site.

Maybe I am off the mark here but one possibility if you have farmland around you is that the farmer(s) may be using a lot of water for irrigation.

My first port of call would be to the owner of the house.

Definitely doesn't sound right. We have a well and no problems at all

Firstly, wells are tapping into groundwater not rainwater. If you've had a drought then groundwater levels will be lower & that might mean a reduced flow to your well. 2 weeks of no rain doesn't sound like a drought! If your rented place has both a cistern and a well then it sounds that the well flow is inadequate to support normal residential water useage.

You need to check your rental agreement to understand who is liable for what.

If you owned the house then investigating getting a drilled deep well might be in order, but as a rental then clearly thats not an option. If your agreement has you liable for water deliveries or your landlord is not going play ball on getting anything changed, then you have to decide whether you want to stay in the place or not.

We have a low flow deep drilled well. Its a concern but surprisingly has not been a problem this year, despite a comparatively dry winter/spring/summer. Switching from a Top Loading to a Front Loading washer has made a difference in reducing water consumption. Turning the water softener off when we've had visitors has also helped as they use a lot of water during their backflush cycles.

Thanks everyone for the comments so far, we thought that was the case re lack of rain not being the issue here and that the well is likely had its day

In so far as the lease, I will check this later, but am fairly sure there is nothing specific in it stating that we are responisble for obtaining our own water in the event the well drys up I see it that as a rental the house should come with water if it uses a well so this is owners liability. We used the standard tenents lease for here in NS and there are no additional parts added, but will double check and let you know

I agree this will be an expensive thing that they will not want to fix, but at the minimum they should be reimbursing us the cost of the water.

They will have to deal with this as and when they want to sell the place any way which they do


hhmmm, just checked lease, states- Rent includes-

stove, fridge, dishwasher etc, these a re ticked, NOTHING is ticked against utilities ie cable service, heat and WATER. You would generally expect this though, not many rentals would cover all your utility bills

so, do wells count as a water utility or a basic part of the house?????????

In the same content as the furnace provides the heat, what happens if this goes wrong surely not down to us too??????????

Not sure if you've seen this link Nikki, but it is good for explaining rights of landlords and tenants in NS

http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/consumer/resten/


although the last couple of days have been hot and dry, this year has been a wet one so far for NS, so would expect water levels to be high.
Did you do the rental through a realtor? If so, might be worth contacting them to see what they say.

Nikki, this may be a starting point for you:

http://www.gov.ns.ca/snsmr/consumer/...aq/tenancy.asp

Not having water should surely be covered under health and safety - after all no water means no flushing loos and basic hygiene.

You may even be able to call Service NS and ask them. Good luck

I guess it depends on the depth and siting of the well, we have friends along the road who have to fill theirs every two weeks in the summer. Glad we have a drilled well!

No well, drilled or dug, is guaranteed to last forever, and changes in ground water levels can have a serious effect on the water supply.


The ideal well (if such a thing exists) will fill only with ground water, and be at a level where its firmly in a nice deep fast flowing aquafer layer with a great flow rate. Ground water should be virtually bacteria free having filtered through the rock, and a deep aquafer will be less affected by changes in groundwater levels. Wells that fill with surface water (like mine does in part, through a hole about 15ft down the casing ) pick up whatever crap the water runs through on the way to the well, hence why we have a UV system.


Over time the cracks that the well fills through can seal up, affecting flow rates. There are various things that can be done to help remedy that, none cheap. Re-drilling, Descaling, Hydrofracturing etc. That's all great as long as the ground water level has not changed. We descaled ours and the flow level more or less doubled, but that cost us about a grand as I recall...

Unfortunaltely in very long dry spells (months or more), or if there is some industrial water hog extracting too much water, the ground water level can drop below the level that your well fills from (assuming it ever was into ground water). There are quite a few properties around here where the wells have run dry in the last few years because of changes in the local ground water level, leaving the option of trucking in water, or drilling a new well ($$$) and hoping to hit a good aquafer...

Sounds to me like the OPs well is reaching the stage where a new drilled well should be considered. The fact that the house already has a cistern / trickle tank indicates you are not the first person there to experience a shortage of water. So the landlord is aware of the problem and I think should be rectifying it one way or the other, but what your lease says may be different...

I agree. I know someone with a dug well and they are always getting the water truck to deliver. That's near Enfield, NS.

We live on a sub division "out of town" and we are all on drilled wells, some have excellent quality and flow rates others close by have really poor quality and flow rates. The re generation rate is important too ~ We can run ours dry by watering the garden, topping up the pool and washing to excess but an hour later we have a flow that can once again keep up with general usage.

No idea about the liability of the water in your case Nikki, but when you eventually buy a place, if it has a well then like we did be sure to put conditions on your purchase (like building inspection) that include well inspection. Our man was superb, we got well depth, flow, pressures, content, re-generation, sulpher, salt, ecoli, and all the other stuff that you need to make an informed desicion.

We own a little house that we rent out.
It is in town and so is on town water and sewage.
As landlords we are expected to pay the property taxes and the water bills.

If the principle carries through than your landlord should be responsible for paying for water issues.

Is there a rentalsmans office in NS? Maybe a call to them would be informative.