>>1730799I’m the wellfag, and you’re absolutely right anon. A pitcher pump isn’t exactly sanitary enough for drinking water, and they do require a bit of maintenance, the leather seal inside of them needs to be replaced every couple of years as it will dry out and you can no longer maintain enough suction to draw the water out of the pipe. There are other sanitation considerations with a very shallow well, often they aren’t deep enough for any foreign chemicals like fertilizers or pesticides to be completely filtered out by the soil, and if there were ever any septic tanks in the area you run the risk of bacterial contamination. Just like you said, they’re fine for watering the garden but not really meant to supply drinking water. Just out of curiosity I took a sample in to a local lab that tests well water and had a Bac-T test done, the water is safe to drink, it is quite iron-heavy but it’s cold and it tastes breddy gud considering. I’d have no qualms drinking it in the case of an emergency, there are ways you can “shock” the water by pouring chlorine down the pipe and letting it sit for a day or two, that’s not really recommended but you can of course boil the water or use water purification tablets, etc. I grew up on a farm and drove in many sand points with my old man, we used to put one in every pasture so that we always had a way to get water to the cows/horses if needed. It was just kind of a fun project and it came in really handy last year when we had a drought, saved me a ton of money not having to pay for irrigation.
