How to plug an artesion conditon? 1

[oldestguy]

Fellow testing firm drilling crew on a bridge replacement job entered into an artesian flow conditon with test borings just off the existing appproach fill top. Artesian zone is about 40 feet down under layered sand and silt river deposits.

In my past experience any time we ran into this, we were able to set casing with a Tee on top with a discharge pipe off to the side and let it run.

The standard method used to plug bore holes with bentonite pellets did not work and new "springs" developed.

My advice is install a casing and let her run.

On foundation recommendation with rock at 60 feet, I advised that all piles seat on rock, since atleast two bridges that I know of lost side friction and piles settled.

Any nice ideas for a commonly equipped test boring crew, not in the well drilling business? It looks like quite a mess can occur here with time.

 

[Stego1]

We've decommisioned redundant artesian groundwater boreholes (up to 10m above ground pressure head) before by backfilling to an agreed level with inert gravel, installing a precast concrete plug on the gravel then pressure grouting to surface (or near) and a concrete cap installed on top.

Its a wet job, so not much fun this time of year!

Otherwise if nobody objects, your suggestion to let it flow seems OK, maybe the water can be put to some use?

 

[fattdad]

Tremie in some grout to seal.

Just an idea from afar. . . .

f-d

¡papá gordo ain’t no madre flaca!

 

[Prepakt1]

Depends on the flow.Suggest droping a grout pipe then large gravel 3 " or so untill the gravel stops dropping, then try 1" gravel and grout from bottom up. Grout will not hold unless the flow is minimised. There is also some expanding crystal chemicals you can drop that will help plug.
If water is left flowing its going to erode something.If you are getting flows from other areas you will need to drill at 3ft or so centres and use a permeation grouting technique.

Intrusion Prepakt /marineconcrete.com

 

[fattdad]

stick a pipe into the upper interval of the hole and see how much head there is above the ground surface. If it's only a few feet, tremie with the riser in place.

Just brainstorming. . . .

f-d

¡papá gordo ain’t no madre flaca!

 

[soiledup]

Sorry I'm late answering with this one, but if it is a strong flow then consider using a sacrificial infaltable packer. If it is only a weak flow then try using bentonite pellets in ladies stockings. Prepare several of them to make almosta torpedo shape then simply push them down the boreholes. The weight should hold teh torpedo in place until the pellets can expand. Cheap / quick / reliable.

 

[xscapes]

I'm quite new here, so please bear with me...

Are any of you familiar with the recommended distance between groundwater levels & basement flooring?
I live in Fox Lake, Wisconsin if that helps.

I think the builder nicked into an artesian well the DNR orderd capped & it's running through our sump pumps at over 20,000 gallons an hour. That's ALOT of milk jugs! Not that anyone would want it because it's suppossed to be full of nitrates and/or nitrites. Which, I would have to believe at this point, is safer floating down the roadway than contained as was ordered.

It's not due to the current thaw because this happened in January when we experienced a ZERO DEGREE cold snap. They ran until they froze, of course, which was another adventure altogether.

I'm in contact with the DNR about this as well & am awaiting a reply.

 

[dgillette]

Holy mackeral, xscapes! That's a lot of water, like 60 or 80 garden hoses going full blast? (A garden hose is typically 5 gal/min +/-, or 300 gal/hr.) The power costs for pumping must be killing you. Is this your house?? How are you pumping that much water? That sounds like several 3-inch pumps. Any chance you slipped a decimal? If the 20,000 gal/hr figure is correct, it isn't plausibly infiltration from snowmelt unless the whole county drains toward your house.


BTW - We are always requested/demanded not to post email addresses here out of concern that it will draw spammers, phishers, recruiters, and other such riff raff.

 

[xscapes]

No decimal slip here.

One sump pump is cycling every 25 seconds, the other every 32. They expell 3.5 gallons per cycle.
I'm no scientist, but, even doing the rough math......

Yes, this is our house. When we first saw it February of 2007, we had a flash thaw, so of course the water was running. The problem was it didn't stop till what, August?

We're running one 1/2 HP in what we refer to as The Big One, because it cycles faster. The Little One we are unsure of, the info is not legible, but it would seem to be at least 1/3 HP.

It's a long story...and getting longer I'm afraid. The thing is, as we lived here we learned things from the neighbors and such that we didn't have any idea of to begin with.

Thanks for the heads up on email. Will be more cautious in the future.

So then, if it's not just the thawing process, can someone out here that knows give me a clue please? If they DID hit the aquifer, are they not responsible for this somehow??

There were some disclosure issues with this place & believe there may have been more.

 

[xscapes]

Oh man.....

I see now....
It's over 20,000 per 24 HOUR

My error...so much for cut & paste

 

[dgillette]

Whew! Just 2-3 GHU (Garden Hose Units - a precise and scientifically sound unit of measure used for eyeballing small flows). Much easier to deal with, but still a lot of cycles of the sump pump to disturb your sleep, and still an interesting problem.

The next step is to look at topography (Are you in a locally low area? Does the yard drain toward your house?), soil/bedrock conditions (pervious or not, layering), signs of wet ground in surrounding area (seeps, phreatophyte vegetation), etc. Do you know what sort of drains are around your footings? Can you reach an apparent water table with a hand auger on different sides of your house or in the neighbor's yard? (Tell him you'll stick a rose bush in when you backfill the hole.) Those are the sorts of questions that would need to be answered if the source of the water is to be verified. Obviously, I can't give you good, definitive answers at long distance and without study of geology and such. (I can easily give you wrong definitive answers, however.)

 

[xscapes]

I can check on some of these.
Yes, we are in a lower spot than some other parts of town, but similar houses across the street are pumping far less than even 1/2 what we are.

There are drain tiles, I guess is what you want to know. They come through into the sump bucket about 4-inches below the basement floor. Apparently they had to sink the second sump because they were taking on water at an alarming rate. (Another wonderful piece of information we gleaned AFTER the fact!)

Disturb my sleep?? What? Sleep? Oh yeah, I can remember now.....
I'm sorry, but if you don't know what it's like to sleep over 20,000 per 24 Hour. At first you don't sleep because they run. Then you don't sleep because they may NOT run. So you lay there & listen.....okay, still running. Then you TRY to go back to sleep.....This should be almost as unconstitutional as water-boarding!

I appreciate ANY answers at this point! I've pretty much gotten all the wrong one's already.

 

[oldestguy]

xcapes:

Are you planning to get the builder involved? It would seem that his insurance might be in the picture also. An attorney should be involved right now also. This thing can be very costly down the road even if you do solve it some day.

I'd be fearful that that flow is eroding support from under your house at those flow rates. The obvious is that you cannot continue this way and it must be solved.

A good local geotech is what you need, but I am not allowed to recommend a name here. First see what his experience has been with soil drainage problems and ask for references. I say this because not all geotechs are versed in these unusual problems. Go to the Wisconsin Society of Professional Engineers and ask for listings of specialty firms. I see that they have a web site and leads to chapters and other information (WSPE).

What are you doing to find that well? Can any of the workers on the job advise as to where that water was first noticed?

You might as well plan on jack hammer work or other demolition to reach it and do the capping.

See the many posts to my first question on this subject.
However, even if you do succeed in capping the well, I'd look at who ever you bought the site from as to their hiding the fact the well was there. You may well find more problems later due to that seepage alongside the well casing that can occur.

 

[xscapes]

Wonderful.
Here this place was an investment to put us through old folks assistance or whatever, ya know?
(Insert explitive here. A couple times.)

The developer signed off to the city.
And now a different realtor is selling the properties. Or planned to until I decided to start with all of this. We'll see where it goes & how far I can chase it, I guess.

I hadn't thought about the erosion underneath, but that WOULD go toward explaining that hollow sounding spot on the basement floor, wouldn't it.

One lawyer asked it we had sustained any damage. Material, no. Mental...define damage.

I don't know if I can find the workers myself unless the city has it on record.

Thanks for the headsup on some help. Greatly Appreciated. Will look into it tomorrow.

It was your first post that brought me to this site!

Thanks Again!

 

[oldestguy]

On getting a geotech engineer involved, I'd look for one who also has drilling crews on the staff or at least frequently uses a larger test boring drilling firm. They are likely to have had experience in abandoning wells and doing service like that. I'd not get a well drilling firm involved, at least at the start.

Those that also are involved with installing monitoring wells for landfills also would be quite the experienced types that I'd use there.

On using the Wisconsin DNR, don't expect any help. About the only use I'd expect is getting the copy of the well abandonment that may have been filed. Did you try their WEB site? Some these things maybe available there.

You'd be lucky to get anyone to answer a phone Besides, once you find the well, they may cause you all sorts of red tape problems. I speak from experience with them. A good test boring drilling firm will know how to file the proper abandonment papers, if and when you do that.

 

[fattdad]

p.s., I also use GHU's. Mine are calibraded to 7 gpm v. 5 gpm.

Interesting discussion!

f-d

¡papá gordo ain’t no madre flaca!

 

[oldestguy]

On the subject of locating that old well, Not that I have had to do that, but here are some thoughts.

In some of my jobs it has been possible to hear flowing water. When all is quiet (no furnaces or sumps
running, etc.) I'd try a stethoscope as used for auto repair and listen on the floor at various places to see if you could find the source or at least the most noise

If no go, then I'd core some holes in the floor, as large as practical, to watch the flow direction. Hopefully it will show flow leading from the well, but of course the flow may follow the paths of least resistance and that may not be a straight line.

On some outside jobs, when trying to find where to place collection sub-drains, I have used a high potency dye. Using different colors in cloth bags placed at various possible source areas, this may be of assistance in this search I can't recall where I got them, but they were very powerful dyes, such that one quart of the powder would be enuff to color a whole lake.

There may be food dyes that will work for you or things like beet juice. Be careful not to saturate the whole area, but use a slow, step by step approach to try to narrow down the source area. It may take many days and many core holes.

With two sump pits, I'd do this using only one pump at a time to try to get two vectors, that might triangulate to the source.

In your search look also for flowing of fine soil grains. Rapid flow may tend to move them along the flow lines.

Of course, it also may be that the well is outside the building, be prepared for all sorts of possibilities.

Does your discharge dump where it might recirculate back and mess up this study? If so, extend that as far as possible away.

Also, if you have relatively good surveying equipment, the top of the water table elevation might be a hint as to direction of flow. Water flows in the direction of that water surface slope. The elevation would be highest near that old well. This would take rather fancy gear, not carpenter levels. You can do a leveling job that is not too bad for rough work, using a garden hose with two clear plastic tubes (one on each end). fill with water with no air bubbles and stand the tubes side by side. Water levels should be the same. Then with two yard sticks along side the tubes, this is a way to do some low precision leveling work around corners, etc. I'd try this first.. Keep a map of the readings and plot contours of elevation change, if you possibly can. Water flow is at right angles to the contours.

Outside the house it would take something like a test boring crew with monitoring wells.

You can see, my thought is you just can't leave this go and run pumps for the rest of your time there. What happens with power failures?

These thoughts may not do it, but perhaps others have ideas alos.

 

[oldestguy]

It appears that site location details are too specific for the manager. Erasure of notes has taken place. Less site specific is the rule.

 

[rickecs]

We ran into a similar condition but with less of a flow rate. Had a contractor come in and inject an expanding polyurethane grout (see mountaingrout.com ). Worked like a charm.