Plumbers in Campbell, Texas

How they turn up, and why they matter

The signs are ordinary: a ring of stone or brick under the grass, a metal plate somebody laid across something, a patch of ground that stays soft, a concrete slab in an odd position. Old hand-dug wells are wide, sometimes several feet across, and the covers put over them decades ago were rarely built to last.

Two hazards, and the first is the obvious one. A wide shaft under a rotten cover is a fall risk for children, livestock and anyone walking across the yard, and it is the reason to act quickly rather than eventually.

The second is contamination. An open or poorly sealed well is a direct route from the surface into groundwater, and whatever runs across that yard goes straight down it: fertiliser, fuel, runoff from a pen. On a property where a working well supplies the house, an abandoned one nearby is a genuine risk to it.

Plugging one properly

Filling it with rubble is not plugging it. That leaves a permeable column straight down to the water, which is precisely the problem you were trying to solve, and it makes doing the job properly later much harder.

Proper closure means the shaft is cleared of obstructions and equipment where possible, then sealed from the bottom up with material that will not pass water, so the well no longer connects the surface to the aquifer. There are state rules covering how this is done and who may do it, and a completed plugging report goes to the record.

That paperwork matters beyond compliance. At sale, a documented plugging answers a question a buyer's inspector will otherwise raise, and an undocumented hole in the ground becomes a negotiating point.

In the meantime, cover it properly. Something heavy, secured, and impossible for a child to move, rather than a sheet of ply with a brick on it.

Cisterns, and how we work

Cisterns are the other thing found in these yards, and they are a different object: a storage tank rather than a hole into the water table. Some are worth keeping for irrigation, and an old brick or concrete cistern can be cleaned, repaired and brought back for that if it holds water.

Using one for drinking water is a much bigger conversation involving what it is made of, what has been in it and a full treatment arrangement, and it is rarely the cheapest way to get potable water.

We assess what is actually there, arrange proper plugging where that is the answer, and bring cisterns back into use for irrigation where they are sound. Campbell, Commerce, Greenville and Lone Oak are all inside our patch.