Well Inspection & Water Testing in Gilmanton, NH

Local Ground

Well Inspection & Water Testing in Gilmanton

Geology: Shallow till over granite bedrock, ridge and hollow · Typical depths: Commonly 250–450 ft · Belknap County

In towns where housing turns over quickly, wells get tested because a sale forces it — a buyer, a lender, an inspection contingency. Gilmanton does not work that way. Properties here pass down within families, sit with the same owners for thirty and forty years, and change hands privately when they change hands at all. There is no closing to trigger a test, so for a great many houses in this town the honest answer to “when was the water last tested” is that it never was.

The second thing that makes Gilmanton different is what these properties used to be. This is farm country — dooryards, barn foundations, old manure ground, pasture that was grazed for a century. Nitrate and bacteria are the tests that follow from land use rather than from geology, and they carry more weight on an antique farmstead than on a modern subdivision lot. On a good number of these places the barnyard sat closer to the house than the septic tank does now.

And the wells themselves are frequently not where or what people assume. Dug wells in stone-lined pits behind the ell, drilled casings buried under sixty years of regrading, caps replaced at some point with whatever was in the barn. On an undocumented Gilmanton property, finding and looking at the wellhead is a real part of the job rather than a formality.

What We Test For, and What You Do Not Need Us For

Two separate questions, and they are worth keeping apart. Water quality is what is in the water. Yield is whether the well keeps up under sustained demand. A test of one tells you nothing about the other.

On quality, the New Hampshire baseline is arsenic, radon in water and uranium — all naturally occurring in this state's granite bedrock, and none of them detectable by taste, smell or appearance. On a Gilmanton farm property we would add bacteria and nitrate as a matter of course, because the land-use history here argues for them and because a wellhead sitting low in an old dooryard has a surface route into it that a modern lot does not.

And here is the part we would rather say plainly. If all you want is a routine bacteria and nitrate test on a well you already know, you do not need a well contractor for it. Order the kit from a state-accredited laboratory, follow the sampling instructions carefully, and post it back. It is inexpensive, and it is not our work. What we are actually useful for is the harder version — a yield test held long enough to mean something, the wellhead and accessible casing on a system nobody documented, working out which well the house is drinking from, and telling you what the numbers mean once they come back.

Water testing alone runs $75–$350 depending on the panel, and the simpler panels you can arrange yourself through an accredited lab. A full inspection — sustained yield test, water sample and a written report — is $300–$600. That is money well spent on a Gilmanton property whose depth, age and construction nobody knows, and hard to justify on one where all three are already on file.

• Sustained-draw yield test, not a two-minute reading
• Bacteria and nitrate added where land use warrants it
• Arsenic, radon and uranium in the New Hampshire baseline panel
• Wellhead, cap and accessible casing actually located and looked at
• Old dug wells and buried casings traced on farm properties
• Told plainly when you can run the test yourself

In Gilmanton

Other Well Work in Gilmanton

• Well Drilling in Gilmanton
• Pump Repair in Gilmanton
• Tanks & Pressure in Gilmanton
• Everything we do in Gilmanton

Inspection & Testing Near Gilmanton

• Belmont
• Laconia
• Gilford
• Barnstead
• Tilton
• Northfield

Straight Answers

Well & Pump Questions in Gilmanton

Nobody has ever tested our water. Where do we start?

With bacteria, nitrate and arsenic. Those three cover the land-use question and the granite question between them, and a panel that size sits at the low end of the $75–$350 range. If it comes back clean and nothing about the property changes, you are into a routine bacteria test and not a great deal else.

Our family has drunk this water for fifty years and nobody has ever been ill. Does that not settle it?

For bacteria it is weak evidence, and worth something. For arsenic, radon and uranium it is no evidence at all. None of the three has a taste, a smell or an appearance, and none of them makes anybody ill this week. Fifty clean years tell you the well is not acutely contaminated. They tell you nothing whatever about the slow ones.

Do we need a yield test if nothing has gone wrong?

Probably not, and we would rather say so. A yield test earns its cost when something is changing — you are buying, you are adding bedrooms or bathrooms, or the well is already fading by evening. On a Gilmanton household that has run the same way for years with no symptoms, we would sooner you spent the money on a water panel, which is the test that can actually surprise you.

We think there is an old dug well as well as a drilled one. Which are we drinking from?

More common here than people expect, and worth resolving rather than assuming. Tracing the line back from the pressure tank usually answers it inside an hour. It matters, because a shallow dug well is far more exposed to surface contamination than a cased bedrock well, and because an unused well left open is a direct route into the groundwater and a liability that stays with the property.