If the pump is running, switch it off at the breaker now. A pump in a dry well has nothing cooling or lubricating it and can destroy itself in minutes. Leaving it running will not bring the water back — it will just add a pump replacement to the problem you already have.
Confirm It Is Actually the Well
Recovery is the test. Turn the pump off, wait several hours — overnight is better — and then try briefly.
Water comes back
The well was drawn down and is refilling. That is a yield problem and this page is the right page. Your pump is almost certainly fine.
Nothing, however long you wait
Something has failed — pump, drop pipe, wiring or a control component. See no water instead; that is a different problem with different answers.
Other signs pointing at yield: air and sputtering before the water stopped; pressure that is fine for the first few minutes of use and then fades; the problem correlating with heavy household use, a full house of guests, or a dry spell.
Three That Work, One That Does Not
| Option | Typical cost | When it is the right answer |
|---|---|---|
| Storage system | $1,500–$4,000 | The well produces steadily but modestly. Frequently the best value, and the most reliable because it does not depend on geology cooperating. |
| Hydrofracking | $2,000–$4,500 | A marginal bedrock well that may connect to more fractures. Often a real improvement, never a guarantee. |
| Deepening | Drilling rates plus mobilisation | When there is genuine reason to believe there is more below. Worth thinking hard about first. |
| A bigger pump | — | Never. It empties the well faster and then runs dry, destroying the pump you just bought. |
Why storage is underrated
People instinctively want the well to produce more, and reach for fracking or deepening. But a great many low-yield wells produce perfectly adequate water over a day — they simply cannot deliver it fast enough during a peak. A storage tank fills steadily at whatever rate the well gives and delivers at household rates when you need it.
It is reliable, it does not depend on geology cooperating, and it works the first time. On the seasonal properties around Winnipesaukee where a house goes from four people to fourteen over the Fourth of July, it is very often exactly the right answer.
Why deepening is not automatic
It is the intuitive move — go further, find more. But you are drilling below the fractures that already failed to supply you, into rock that may be no more productive. It sometimes works well and it sometimes adds several thousand dollars to the problem. It is worth having the comparison rather than defaulting to it because it feels like doing something.
Wells That Run Short in Late Summer
If this happened in August, you are in good company. Two things coincide in a Lakes Region late summer: the water table is at its annual low after months of growth and little recharge, and the seasonal houses are at their fullest.
A well that comfortably serves a family of four in April can be genuinely marginal serving twelve in August, and on hill ground in Sanbornton, Bristol or Gilford the margin is thinner to begin with. It is not necessarily a declining well — it may simply be a well meeting its hardest week.
Which matters for the remedy. If it is a genuine annual peak rather than a trend, storage is almost certainly the right answer and fracking may be unnecessary. If it is starting earlier each year, that is a different conversation. More on the seasonal pattern →
Managing Until It Is Fixed
- Keep the pump off when there is no water rather than letting it run
- Stagger laundry, dishwasher and showers rather than running them together
- Note how long it takes to run out and how long to recover — genuinely useful data
- Note whether this is new, or has been getting gradually worse over years
- Keep drinking water on hand
- Avoid any outside watering entirely for now
Those first two observations — time to empty, time to recover — tell us more about your well than almost anything else, and they cost nothing to collect. Write them down before you call.
Questions
Does hydrofracking always work?
No, and anyone promising a guaranteed result is overselling it. Fracking opens fractures that already exist rather than creating water, so a well in genuinely poor rock may not improve much. On a marginal bedrock well it frequently makes a real difference and it is usually worth trying before drilling deeper. We will tell you honestly when a well looks like a poor candidate.
Will my well recover on its own?
Seasonally, often yes — a well that runs short in a dry August frequently returns to normal after autumn rain and through the spring recharge. What that does not tell you is whether the underlying yield is stable or declining. If the problem starts earlier each year, that is a trend rather than a season.
Should I just drill a new well?
Rarely the first answer. A new well is the most expensive option and it carries exactly the same uncertainty about yield that the existing one did. Storage and fracking come first in almost every case. A new well makes sense when the existing one has failed structurally, or when a genuinely better location is available on the property.
How much water should a well produce?
Rules of thumb vary, but a few gallons per minute serves a typical household comfortably, and rather less than that is workable with storage. The number people fixate on is often less important than whether it is steady — a consistent low yield plus storage beats an erratic higher one.
Could my neighbour's new well have affected mine?
It is possible in principle where wells draw on the same fracture system, though in practice it is hard to establish and rarer than people assume. More often, two nearby wells struggling in the same dry summer are both responding to the same regional conditions rather than to each other.