With over 1million abandoned wells in the US I’m sure someone here has done it. Tell me about your adventures.
My mother in law still lives off well water but she got rid of the bucket method and has a pump affixed to the bottom of it now. Then she built a porch over it.
You know what would be crazy? If you were working on an old house, took out a kitchen that was once the porch of the home. Removed the floor of the porch because you were baffled by the moisture problem plaguing that floor. Stood over an access panel on rotted beams as you removed it thinking it was an access to the crawl space and found yourself staring down a 3’ x 20’ hole. Now that would be crazy. Just saying.
I take it you've never seen the pic of my MIL's house in WV Put it this way...when she bought it in 72ish they lived in a teepee. It was a shack when I first started coming around in 81. This is the improvement. It is beautiful...200 acres of unspoiled land in the middle of nowhere. The lean-to looking part on the far left is where the well sits under the patio.
As far as cisterns go, I have a 15 x 25 x 8' tall one constructed of one foot thick concrete on all sides under my patio. There is a manhole in my patio floor. Yeah, when I first bought the house and looked into it, the thing was downright scary. After contracting a company to cut a man door into it, I now have a badass shop and one hell of a bunker.
I've been waiting for the picture to show up since your first post in this thread. Good Lord, I love that photo.
I've never done it but do know that you have to do it properly, has to be sealed so surface runoff can't get down the hole and contaminate the water table.
I believe you RD400. I’ve seen some cool things in WV! So, if this cistern (research says cisterns are often parge coated and wells tend to be not but I’m sure that varies) needed to be filled. How would one go about doing that and possible costs if you had to hire someone. Would you just pour in bentonite and 3/4 clean? Top it off with clay and neat concrete after knocking it down to grade and call it a day? Just curious.
How exactly is your cistern constructed? This is a view from the inside of mine. It is basically a concrete box with a manhole in the top. It would have been hell to fill. Is yours different?
When we purchased our home last fall the well inspector said fill with sand and top with concrete. We have an old hand stacked stone well from the mid 1800's on the property that he gave the recommendation on.
Probably should check with your local authorities, there may be a law / prescribed way to do it. Our town did that a couple years ago after a big farm that was buying up everything they could get started knocking old dilapidated places down and just covering everything over with topsoil, not sealing the wells. They got in trouble for it, had to dig some up and do it right.