Well Pump Replacement in Brown County, IN

• Requests are taken from Hamblen, Jackson, Van Buren and Washington townships, the townships the Census Bureau's 2020 county subdivision file lists for Brown County, which take in the town of Nashville and the Cordry Sweetwater Lakes census-designated place.
• The Indiana Geological and Water Survey's 2017 Brown County State Park guide places the park in the Norman Upland, a south-central Indiana region of rugged topography and steep-sided valleys. If your well sits on a slope or down a long drive, say so in the request.
• DNR's 2003 report on unconsolidated aquifers says many county residents prefer public water from a system serving parts of the county. A June 21, 2022 Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor release described Brown County Water Utility, Inc. as a not-for-profit entity with approximately 5,780 customers in Brown County and portions of Bartholomew, Johnson, Monroe and Morgan counties. Ask the utility whether a main reaches you before replacing a failing well.

• Pulling and replacing submersible pumps in Borden bedrock wells
• Low-water cut-off controls that stop the well pump at a critically low level
• Intermediate storage: well pump to a nonpressurized tank, pressure pump to the house
• Chlorine disinfection and a coliform sample once pump work is finished
• Capping idle wells and plugging abandoned ones

• Pump depth: DNR reports Borden well depths from 15 to 380 ft, most completed between 60 and 175 ft, with static water levels commonly 20 to 60 ft below land surface (the full range is 0 to 300 ft). 312 IAC 13-4-3.5 calls for a bedrock well's pumping apparatus to provide at least 50 ft of available drawdown, the distance between the static water level and the pump setting (312 IAC 13-1-3.2), unless DNR approves otherwise; that section skips monitoring and dewatering wells.
• Weak yield: the Indiana Department of Health's recommended standards (guidance) say a residential well should have a stabilized yield of at least 5 gpm; when it falls short, the driller should inform the owner so additional storage and the proper kind of pumping equipment can meet anticipated peak demand.
• Replacing the well instead of the pump: DNR says attempts to get large volumes of water from Borden wells have generally failed, and that wells over 400 or 500 feet deep will commonly encounter nonpotable (mineralized or salty) water. It names depth and cost as two limiting factors for the deeper Silurian and Devonian carbonate system, where Brown County wells run 475 to 850 ft deep.

• License rules: no one may work as a water well driller or pump installer in Indiana without a license (IC 25-39-3-1), and under IC 25-39-2-15.5 anyone who installs or repairs water well pumps is a pump installer. A licensee installing a pump must carry the license and present it when a department representative asks, and licenses expire on December 31 of the year issued. DNR issues one card showing driller, pump installer or both; 312 IAC 13-2-2(a) sets the fee at $100 for a calendar year.
• Exempt work: IC 25-39-1.5-3 places four groups outside IC 25-39-3 and IC 25-39-4. They are (1) someone installing a personal-use well of 1 1/4 inches inside diameter or less and 24 feet deep or less; (2) a plumber holding an IC 25-28.5 license and registered with DNR, installing wells within those size and depth limits; (3) anyone installing or repairing a water well pump or pumping equipment for personal use; and (4) anyone working under a license holder's direction and personal supervision. Personal use, in 312 IAC 13-1-19.3, means using the well or pumping equipment for water supply on property the person owns or possesses, or, for a public water supply utility, possession by one of its permanent employees.
• County health department: the Brown County Health Department's service pages describe septic permits, inspections and contractor registration, and its fee schedule (Exhibit A to Ordinance 2025-10-01-001, recorded October 16, 2025) lists septic, food, pool, tattoo, clinic, ServSafe and vital-records fees. That does not settle whether anything local applies to well or pump work, so ask the department before the job starts.
• New wells: for rotary or augered wells, 312 IAC 13-6-1 requires casing to at least 25 ft below the surface and at least 25 ft of the borehole annulus pressure grouted with neat cement or bentonite slurry, each unless the division approves otherwise; a well penetrating bedrock must have the annulus pressure grouted from the bottom of the casing (or top of the formation packer) to the surface, or to 4 ft below it where a pitless adapter is installed. Monitoring, dewatering and public water supply wells are excluded, and cable tool, jetted and bucket wells have their own sections.
• Shallow rock: with unconsolidated cover south of Beanblossom Creek only 2 to 20 ft thick, note the state health department's guidance for rock wells: if rock is encountered within 25 feet of the surface, the hole should be reamed at least 4 inches wider than the casing's outer diameter to leave a 2-inch grout space, and the casing should extend at least 10 feet into rock or to at least 25 feet below the surface, whichever is deeper, with the annular space grouted.
• Casing above grade: 312 IAC 13-3-2(a)(3) requires earthen material placed so surface water drains away from the well, and a finished casing or pitless unit extending at least 1 ft above ground level. In a designated flood hazard area the rule adds a choice: the top sits at least 2 ft above the regulatory flood elevation, or it gets a watertight pitless unit cap or well seal with a vent reaching at least 2 ft above that elevation. Monitoring and dewatering wells fall outside this section.
• Well records: within 30 days after completing a well, the water well driller must submit accurate records for it on a departmental form or division-approved form (312 IAC 13-2-6). Check that section for every item the record must contain; one of them is a statement that the information is accurate, signed by the driller or an authorized representative upon an affirmation or attestation. DNR's online database of over 400,000 Indiana well records can be searched by street address and ZIP code, not by owner name.
• Unused wells: once a well has sat unused for more than three months without being permanently abandoned, 312 IAC 13-10-1 requires a watertight cap, welded, threaded or mechanically attached, sealing it at or above the ground surface, and upkeep that stops the well from becoming a source or channel of ground water contamination.
• Plugging duties: a well counts as abandoned under IC 25-39-2-2 when its original purpose and use stopped more than five years ago, or when it is so run down that drawing ground water from it is impractical or a health hazard. If abandonment came after December 31, 1987, IC 25-39-4-6(b) says the landowner must have a water well driller plug it within one year; 312 IAC 13-10-2(c) names a water well driller or water well pump installer as the one to plug it, with impervious grouting material and the materials and methods of subsection (e), and subsection (f) requires written notice to the division within 30 days after plugging is completed. An uncased well drilled after 1987 must be plugged by a driller within 72 hours after completion; older wells follow subsections (a) and (b).

• DNR's unconsolidated-aquifer report says the later Wisconsin glacial ice sheets stopped just north of the county line, depriving Brown County of aquifer materials common to counties farther north. No known wells produce from the unconsolidated system covering most of the county, and all domestic wells for which the Division has records produce from the underlying bedrock.
• South of Beanblossom Creek the unconsolidated materials range from 2 to 20 ft thick; north of it they are somewhat thicker, and in limited areas pre-Wisconsin drift occurs up to 50 ft thick on ridge tops. DNR has no records of wells actually producing from the Alluvial, Lacustrine, and Backwater Deposits Aquifer System along Beanblossom Creek and Salt Creek, which is less than 5 to 50 ft thick.
• Within the Borden, DNR says most of the water is found in the upper 100 ft of rock, though data are not sufficient to correlate yields with how far a well penetrates.
• DNR also flags water quality at depth: water containing hydrogen sulfide is common where the New Albany Shale overlies the Silurian and Devonian carbonates, and the 790-ft well drilled for the T.C. Steele State Historical Site tested at 50 gpm but gave highly mineralized water (2200 mg/L total dissolved solids and 1050 mg/L chlorides).
• Brown County appears at 48 inches in the frost table of the state health department's recommended standards, the depth below finished grade (to the top of the pipe) at which water lines should be buried to preclude freezing.

Nashville · Cordry Sweetwater Lakes · Hamblen Township · Jackson Township · Van Buren Township · Washington Township