Well my SO did  on a steep hillside, there's just a tiny trickle.

We dug it out a little and directed the water to a 16 oz gatoraide bottle that I punched holes into, wrapped with filter cloth on one side and attached some thin cheap tubing to and directed the trickle down the hiil to where it normally dripped and then to a collecting area where animals can drink and based on tracks they are.

We measured the drips by directing water into a gatoraide bottle for a minute or two and counting seconds and we are now getting about 15 oz in 2 minutes.

That doesn't seem like much considering the small trickle but the trench we dug was filled by the next day. At the measured rate that's about 3 gallons an hour or 70 gallons per day! I was surprised.

I put a game camera at the spring Wednesday and we carried a small laptop to it on Thu but the only pix were of us working there. So I put the camera closer to the water and we'll go back in about 2 more days and see if there are any pix. Fingers crossed.

Yesterday we were exploring slightly down hill and followed a game trail and ran across some kind of very large animal skeleton scattered about incl the jawbone.

Last week I tried boring into a flat area a different places to see if I could hit a water table. The auger is one of those H-F lightweight couple HP ones that have a 4 inch tool and it's only about two feet long. The holes did fill up with a couple inches of water after a day but I didn't know if it was from seepage just under the topsoil or percolating up from below.

This past week I made two extensions, a 4 foot and a 3 foot to try to get deeper but there is some sort of layer I can't get through.

Thursday I carried a digging iron down [how I'll get all this stuff back IDK] and tried to break up the sort of purple layer and couldn't do much. Haven't figured out what to do next to break through it.

Oh, I put some in my mouth and swished it around and swallowed just a bit.

It tasted pretty good. Did the same a day or so ago and drank a bit more. Still OK.

Have a sample tested by a testing company.  It would be nice to know wht you're drinking. Poisons don't always show up readily.

Just because its a spring, doesn't mean its safe to drink right out of the ground.

I have been drinking spring water for 50 years. I suppose you wouldn't want to if there was a lead mine nearby tho.

Good deal Expy. Think it will produce year round?

I found a spring on my property. Bought some of those concrete rings, and dug down about six feet. It's crystal clear, and you can see the sand bubbling at the bottom. Never had it tested, but it tastes great.

Helll, we'll take some heavy condensation...

Damn! I was hopig you found the one I lost while putting together my new lower.

Springs happen because underground water hits an impervious layer, and then runs downhill until it pops out the side of the hill. If you dig out a spring too deeply and punch through that impervious layer, the water can percolate down through it and you'll lose the spring.

If you have more of a "seep" than a spring, one method is to dig down to that impervious layer, clear a relatively wide area, and place a bunch of drain tiles (perforated pipe) and/or rocks to collect and store the water.

Springs are somewhat common around here because the water table is pretty high in many spots.

I used to live on a road in a ruralish area that just about every home had some kind of a spring. Most considered them a nuisance.

The guy that rented the house to me warned me about the springs under the pool. He put a new liner in one time and had to install a sump pump under the liner to keep water from accumulating under the liner just so he could get the liner in. The pump was just left there because he could not get it back out once water was put in the liner.

Many springs in rural areas are contaminated with e coli or nitrates from animal waste.

Too true...



 

Nice find!  I would also have it tested regularly.  County health departments often do it for a minimal fee.

Arsenic is pretty common in some places too.  The all knowing gov. lowered the PPM requirements during the Clinton era.

Most health departments just check for biological contaminants, they dont do a full test that includes metals and such.  Make sure you know what you are getting for a test.

I don't know. It seems to have been wetter this year than what I remember but I can hope.

Looking at Google Earth with much lower res as you go back, I think the dampness of the flow path is just discernable abt 10 years ago. It's really barely a spring and I had always hoped to find one and searched for a couple years from time to time. I always thought there might be something in this area.

The problem is carrying any water from it, impossible for us. Hauling water from town is much easier, 130 gallons at a time and that lasts quite a while. We topped off the storage in the past 2 weeks in two trips.

It's nice for the animals to have a place to drink but it might be an ambush point by bears and cats for deer. Deer already were there but nothing on the Walmart cam because it was positioned too far away. Fixed that the next day.

Anyhow a game camera is up and moved closer a few days ago so I'm anxious to see whats hanging around there. There was fairly fresh bear scat, didn't see any lion scat but we had an encounter not far away so there's a good chance of getting a pix of one too. And a lot of tracks some were puzzling, aggressive scrapes in the dirt [abt a hundred feet away] but couldn't tell what animal but it was big. No blood so maybe something mating? I followed the 20 feet or so of scraping, fresh, and found that trail and followed it and found the bones of a big animal that was killed in the last year I'd guess but don't know how to tell. Turns out my SO had found it a week or two ago and never mentioned it.

Regarding the mineralization and lead and arsenic, I completely agree not to drink a significant qty of it w/out filtering. I'd like to figure out how to test for those.

Wow that's a great find!

1. Put into bottle


2. Sell to Texas for $5 each


3. Profit

 

I found a few springs on the property behind mine.



I tested the water and drank it, but i had some gas the next day, so i wont be drinking anymore. I have a old fashioned well on my property thats much easier to aquire water from.





you can buy water test kits at hardware stores for cheap. for a full spectrum test i would buy the kind you send to a lab.

Here's a pic shortly after I started digging. The water is roiled up, ordinarily it's crystal clear as well as ice cold:



Here's a pic of the rings going in:



And the finished product:



I'm going to build a little springhouse over it, so it can be used for refrigeration as well as water.

I sure am glad you're back Rodent.
You have some really great things in your life.

All your stuff is so cool.

+1000

Now you know what I did with all my spare time after I got banned.  

That's a heck of a nice job and spring Rodent!

Would you tell us how you set the concrete rings and the approx flow?

And how you installed the rungs.

Also, do you remember some posts here ~5 years ago about a cannon like thing that was used IIRC to break rock?

I'm not sure where you're located, but these guys aren't far from me and do the kind of testing you need.  http://www.envirolabsinc.com/

the website makes them look a little like treehuggers, but I know one of the honchos is, or at least used to be, a pretty avid tournament fisherman and hunter.

our HD checks for everything as does the "extension office" which also will do any soil test you want done. not sure of the fees though.

Rodent, very interested in hearing all about the rings....how much, how heavy, how to install (boom on 3 pt?) how many people needed, etc....


DO TELL!!!!

Those rings come in different diameters and heights, and therefore different weights. I had them delivered to a nearby road, then borrowed a tractor to carry them to the spring and lower them into place. We just chained them to the tractor's bucket, We used a long stick poked through the chains to twist and turn them until they fit properly with the inside ladder steps lined up.

You get inside them and dig, and they settle lower with little "earthquakes". It's a pretty fascinating process. We stopped when we hit a pretty big rock, and the water was just too deep and cold to continue.

No idea what the flow is, I guess about what comes out of a garden hose turned on half-way.

Every time I go down there, there are a couple frogs. I have no idea how they get in there. An old-timer told me I should put a brook trout in it to eat them and any bugs.

When I was a kid a lot of people had trout in their springs.  I guy I know that just died a couple years ago used to keep a trout in the cistern in his basement.

I have some gravel in the bottom of my well now.  Once every five years or so I pump it out and clean the gravel as best I can.  Great water.

The best part about springs and dug wells is that water is available without electricity.  Put a pitcher pump over that well and you will always have water.

ETA:  I see your dog has not shrunk at all!