Most people who search for how to dig a well are picturing a shovel, a ring of stones, and a bucket on a rope. That well exists, and there are a few hundred of them still scattered around Chelan and Douglas counties, but almost none of them are anyone’s drinking water source anymore, and you are not going to build a new one.
What you are actually asking about is how a modern water well gets put in the ground, what it takes to get one on your property, and whether you can do any of it yourself. That is a fair question with a genuinely useful answer, so here is the honest version, including the part where a licensed driller has to be involved.
If you are weighing a new well against fixing the one you have, call us at (509) 300-5151 before you commit to the expensive option, because the cheaper one is available more often than people expect.
Can You Actually Dig Your Own Well in Washington?
Short answer, not for a drinking water well.
Washington regulates water well construction, and constructing a well is work for a licensed and bonded water well contractor. The state also requires a driller to file a well report, the log we referenced above, which becomes the permanent record for that well. A hole you dug yourself with a rented auger has no log, no verified seal, and no legal standing, and it will cause you a serious problem the day you try to sell the property.
There is a narrow exception people latch onto. Washington allows certain small groundwater withdrawals without a water right, commonly called permit exempt wells, and homeowners sometimes read that as permission to go drill whatever they like. It is not. The exemption is about the water right, meaning your entitlement to use the water, and it has nothing to do with who is allowed to construct the well or how it has to be built. We laid out how that works in permit exempt wells in Washington, and it is worth reading before you make plans.
Driven sand points and shallow hand dug wells for non potable irrigation sit in a murkier area, but if the water is going to a tap somebody drinks from, use a licensed driller.
Dug, Driven, and Drilled: Three Very Different Wells
The vocabulary matters because it determines what is possible on your ground.
A dug well is the classic wide hole, historically excavated by hand or backhoe, lined with stone, brick or concrete tile, and typically shallow at ten to thirty feet. They draw from the shallowest groundwater, which means they go dry in drought years and they are extremely vulnerable to surface contamination. Nobody builds these now.
A driven well is a small diameter pipe with a screened point hammered down into loose sand or gravel, usually less than fifty feet. Cheap and quick where the geology cooperates, useless in rock, and limited to shallow water. You see them on river bottom ground.
A drilled well is what gets built today. A rig bores a hole, steel or PVC casing goes in to seal off the upper formations, and the well is finished to a water bearing zone that can be well over a hundred feet down and sometimes several hundred. Around here, depths vary enormously by location, which is covered in how deep wells run in the Wenatchee area. This is the only one of the three worth building for a home.
How Do You Know Where to Dig a Well?
This is the question underneath the question, and the answer is less mystical than the internet suggests.
Drillers site a well on evidence. The strongest evidence is neighboring well logs, because the Ecology well log database shows what other drillers hit nearby, at what depth, and how much water they got. If three wells within a quarter mile all found decent water at 180 to 220 feet in the same formation, that is a real prediction rather than a guess.
Next comes geology. Fractured basalt, alluvial gravels and glacial deposits all behave very differently, and a driller who works this valley regularly knows which side of a ridge tends to produce and which tends to disappoint. Surface features help too, since springs, seeps and vegetation lines say something about where water moves.
Then come the constraints, which often matter more than the geology. The well has to clear the septic system and drainfield by the required separation distance, it has to sit away from property lines, fuel tanks, animal pens and chemical storage, and it has to be somewhere a drilling rig can physically reach and set up level. That last one eliminates a lot of otherwise appealing spots. Between setbacks and access, most rural parcels have fewer real candidate locations than the owner expects.
You will hear about water witching or dowsing, and plenty of respectable people in this valley swear by it. It has never held up under controlled testing. Use the well logs.
The Permit and Licensing Side
Before a rig shows up, paperwork happens, and your driller normally handles most of it.
There is a notice of intent filed with Ecology before construction, along with the applicable fee. There is the water right question, which for a normal single home on a permit exempt withdrawal is usually straightforward but is not automatic, particularly in basins with instream flow rules. Water availability in this state is not a given, and water rights and wells in Washington covers what to check. Local health jurisdictions in Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties also have a say, especially where a septic system is involved.
After construction, the driller files the well report. Insist on getting a copy for your own records, because that document follows the property and the next owner will want it.
What Drilling Day Actually Looks Like
A rig, a support truck and usually a two person crew arrive and set up over the staked location. Expect noise, expect mud, and expect the access route to take a beating, so think about where the truck will drive before it drives there.
The rig advances the borehole, most commonly with air rotary in our rock, blowing cuttings out as it goes. The driller logs the formations by hand as the material changes, which is where the description on your well log comes from. When water is encountered, they note the depth and estimate the rate.
Casing is set to seal off the upper ground and any shallow contaminated zones, and the annular space around the casing gets sealed, typically with bentonite or grout. That seal is the single most important part of a well for water quality, because it is what keeps surface water from running down the outside of the pipe.
A straightforward domestic well is often drilled in one to three days. It can run much longer if the first hole does not produce, and that possibility should be in your contract in writing before anyone starts.
From Borehole to Working Water System
The hole is not water in the house. What you have after the driller leaves is a cased, sealed borehole with water standing in it.
The well then gets developed, which means surging and pumping it to clear fines and open the formation up, then yield tested to establish what it will actually deliver over time rather than in the first exciting minute. A well yield test explains what that number means and why it drives the rest of the design.
Only then does the pump system get designed around the real numbers. Depth and yield determine the pump size and setting depth, which is covered in well pump sizing. Then comes the pitless adapter at the casing, the buried supply line to the house, the pressure tank, the switch and the wiring. That is the part we do, and what happens on pump installation day walks through it.
Finally the well gets disinfected and the water gets tested before anybody drinks it.
What It Costs Around Wenatchee
Drilling is generally priced by the foot, with the pump system quoted separately, so total cost tracks depth more than anything else. A shallower well in favorable ground and a deep well in hard rock are very different bills, and nobody can quote you accurately without knowing the target depth.
The honest planning advice is to budget in ranges and to treat the driller footage estimate as an estimate. We keep local numbers current in well drilling cost in Washington, and the pump side is broken out in well pump replacement cost and pressure tank cost.
Two costs people forget. Site access work, if the rig cannot reach the spot without a road being cut. And the dry hole risk, since you generally pay for footage drilled whether or not it produces, which is why the neighboring well logs matter so much.
When Deepening Beats Drilling New
Before you spend new well money, check whether you need a new well at all.
A large share of the properties that call us convinced they need to drill actually have a pump problem, not a water problem. A worn pump, a failing check valve, a clogged intake or a pump set too shallow all produce the same complaint, and those fixes cost a fraction of a new well. Signs your well pump is failing sorts out the symptoms, and a well running dry covers the difference between a well that is out of water and a system that cannot lift it.
If the aquifer genuinely is the limit, deepening the existing well is often cheaper than starting over, since the upper hole and casing already exist. Deepening a well versus drilling new walks through when each one wins.
We work throughout Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Cashmere, Leavenworth, Lake Chelan, Quincy and Moses Lake. If you are staring at a new well quote, call us at (509) 300-5151 and let us check the cheap explanations first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I legally dig my own well in Washington?
Not for a drinking water well. Washington requires water well construction to be done by a licensed, bonded water well contractor, and requires a well report to be filed for the finished well. A hole you put in yourself has no filed log and no verified sanitary seal, which creates both a water safety problem and a real obstacle when you sell the property. The permit exempt well rule that people cite is about whether you need a water right for the volume you use, not about who is allowed to build the well.
How do you know where to dig a well?
Drillers rely mostly on neighboring well logs from the state database, which show what depth and yield other wells nearby actually found in the same formations. Local geology and surface features refine that picture. In practice, though, the location is often decided by constraints rather than by geology, since the well has to clear the septic system and drainfield by the required separation, stay off property lines and contamination sources, and sit somewhere a heavy rig can physically reach and level up.
How long does it take to drill a residential well?
A straightforward domestic well is commonly drilled in one to three days, but that is only the drilling. After the hole is cased and sealed, the well still has to be developed and yield tested, then the pump, pitless adapter, supply line, pressure tank and wiring have to be installed, and the water has to be disinfected and tested. From first day on site to water at the kitchen tap is usually a matter of weeks rather than days, longer if a permit or a parts order slows things down.
Is it cheaper to deepen my existing well than drill a new one?
Often yes, because the upper borehole, the casing and the sanitary seal already exist, and you are only paying for additional footage rather than starting from the surface. Deepening is not always possible, since it depends on the existing casing, the construction of the well and what lies below the current bottom. It is worth pricing both, and it is worth confirming first that the problem really is the aquifer and not a pump, check valve or intake issue that costs a fraction of either option to fix.