THE WELL -- FORGET WATERING RESTRICTIONS

The property has a commercial quality well for both irrigation and swimming pool use.  Originally, the well was used for both drinking and irrigation.  It was built to the same standards used by municipalities for consumable water.  The well was drilled to about 1000 ft. to access an aquifer with both an abundance of water as well as water with the correct mineral content for use with landscape.  Several other aquifers were bypassed during the drilling. The aquifer in use was created from glaciers in pre-historic times and has been estimated to have thousands of years of future water supply available.

The aquifer is not an underground lake but rather consists of water mixed heavily in sand and gravel.  This limits the practical gallons per minute of pumping so as to make it impractical for use by a municipality, but at the same time more than adequate for residential purposes.
 

Neighbors have tried to minimize costs by drilling a well to a shallower depth which usually resulted in failure due to the mineral content of the water in the shallower aquifers which destroys landscape. The 1000 ft of well casing is protected from top to bottom to prevent either unwanted ground water or water from another aquifer being able to penetrate what is brought to the surface.

In earlier years, when the well was used for drinking water, tests showed a zero part per million count of bacteria  A reverse osmosis filtration system was installed to improve taste by removing unwanted minerals.  The use of the well for water consumption was discontinued after the city of Frisco changed their water source to acceptable tasting drinking water.  Nevertheless, although currently inoperable, the filtration system could be implemented again if the need arose .  Most of the equipment in the well equipment room was used for drinking water filtration.
 

The water from the well is pumped to a 5,000 gallon surface storage tank.  This allows the sprinkler system to run as needed without concern as to whether or not the pumping capacity of the well can keep up with the sprinkler system.  In addition, the automated sprinkler control has a programmable delay between sprinkler zones to allow for additional storage tank recovery.
 

The valve system in the well house has the flexibility to provide any combination of city and well water for use as irrigation and/or consumption water.  In situations where a well pump is in need of maintenance, a simple valve turn can change the irrigation source to city water.  Similarly when city water is periodically shut down, a valve change can supply the house with well water.

The cost of city water to irrigate an estate of this size is gigantic – about $3500 per month at current rates.  The well reduces the average monthly water bill from the city to about $60 per month.  During hot summer months, the landscape require almost 300,000 gallons of water per day.