Well maintenance is well insurance for Richmond homes and offices – winter or summer

Imagine your well technician coming out to turn the water back on in your Richmond home on a day such as this.

The snow and cold are coming. After all, it’s winter and it’s Richmond, Illinois. How cold? How much snow? The answers to those questions are still shrouded by the shadows of what is to be. But, rest assured, they are coming.

There is no good time to turn on a faucet and discover you have no water. Certainly, that’s true in the winter. If you’ve done a good job of maintaining the well at your Richmond home or office, you won’t have to worry about that. If you have had your well maintained on a timely basis, you probably called your well technician out to your home or office during the warmer months.

It’s easier for them to perform well maintenance on your well when the sun is shining and it’s 80 degrees. On the other hand, not only are the weather conditions harsher for the well technician, the process is increasingly difficult in the winter.

Well maintenance includes chlorinating the well. To do this properly, requires flushing the well, too. When flushing a well on an 80-degree day, the water tends to merely soak into the ground. When it’s below freezing, however, the water doesn’t act the same.

The frost line won’t allow the water to soak into the ground. And, water standing on the surface, on a below-freezing day, tends to harden – it turns to ice.

Additionally, if there is snow on the ground, the well technician may have to spend time locating the well under all that snow.

Here at McHenry Water Well & Pump, we understand what it means to go without water. Customers facing that dilemma call us all the time. You can’t cook. You can’t bathe. You can’t even flush the toilet. Water is a vital fluid that runs through a home or office. Turn the water off and other processes tend to atrophy.

Good weather or bad, warm or cold, when called, we’re on our way as soon as possible. We treat a lack of running water as an emergency because that’s how our customers see it. We’ll come out and get the water running as quickly as possible – that’s our promise, our commitment.

We just don’t like to see people families without water. Knowing that the difference between a well that works and well that doesn’t is almost always a matter of proper maintenance, we encourage our customers to have their wells maintained on a regular basis. It’s inexpensive well insurance.

If your Richmond well hasn’t been maintained in a while, give us a call. Call somebody but, please, don’t wait until the water stops flowing.

You and your pipes are liable to groan if your Spring Grove well isn’t maintained

You turn the faucet at your Spring Grove home and the pipes bang a bit and groan. Finally, a trickle of brownish water drips from your shower head. This is not what you would call good news when your head is full of lather.

What happened? Where did the water go?

Chances are, the water is right where you left it – in your well. Most likely, the problem isn’t a lack of water but something broken with your water delivery system.

With a private well, as is common with many Spring Grove homes, the ‘delivery system’ includes several integral parts. All of these parts have to complete their intended operations while working in unison. If they do, they’ll move the water through your pipes and out of the faucets and shower head, or into the washer, dishwasher or ice maker.

The parts of your well ‘delivery system’ are common for wells in Spring Grove or almost anywhere else. They include:

• The well – if it was drilled properly, you’ll have years of reliable access to water, assuming the rest of the well works properly.
• The well pump – some well pumps are better than others but, if they’re maintained, they should all provide years of service.
• The well tank and internal bladder – a good quality bladder is essential to the reliability and service of your well.
• Electronic switches and parts
• A sealed well cap – if the well cap doesn’t seal correctly, the water may flow but who knows what’s in it.

These parts will generally operate without failure for quite some time. However, if not maintained properly, that length of time is shortened appreciably. In fact, the likelihood of a problem with your well ‘delivery system’ increases significantly without regular, scheduled maintenance.

In either case, whether you require emergency well repairs, or if you want to maintain your well to avoid emergency well repairs, the key is to do the job right. Your best bet there is to call in a professional.

A qualified, licensed well technician will ensure that your well is operating correctly and, therefore, will do so longer without problem. If you require repairs, they’ll have your well back in running order, and the water flowing, in no time.

A qualified, licensed well technician will also help to ensure that the water your well ‘delivery system’ provides is clean and safe. On an annual basis, they’ll properly chlorinate your well and have the water tested as appropriate.