Well Pump Replacement in Morgan County, IN

• Requests are accepted from anywhere in Morgan County. The Census Bureau's 2020 places-by-county file lists the city of Martinsville, the towns of Bethany, Brooklyn, Monrovia, Mooresville, Morgantown and Paragon, and the Painted Hills census-designated place in the county.
• For a rural address, give the township and nearest road in the request, and say whether you can see the well head or think it is buried.

• Pulling and replacing a failed submersible pump in a Borden bedrock well
• Resetting a pump so the well keeps the available drawdown 312 IAC 13-4-3.5 calls for
• Pressure tank replacement inside the house
• Replacing a buried well head with a pitless unit that ends at least 1 ft above ground
• Chlorinating the well and sampling for coliform once pump work is finished
• Capping idle wells and arranging plugging of abandoned ones

• Pump type: NGWA distinguishes submersible pumps, which sit down in the water inside the well, from jet pumps on the surface close to the wellhead, and says a well's performance demands might favor one type over the other.
• Pump setting: 312 IAC 13-4-3.5 asks for at least 50 ft of available drawdown from the pumping apparatus in a bedrock well and at least 20 ft in an unconsolidated-aquifer well, unless the department approves otherwise, and does not apply to monitoring or dewatering wells. 312 IAC 13-1-3.2 measures available drawdown from the static water level down to the pump setting. DNR's water availability FAQ says 25 ft rather than 20 ft for unconsolidated wells, so confirm with DNR if that difference matters for your well.
• Bedrock yield: DNR's bedrock report identifies two systems in the county, the Borden Group and the Blue River and Sanders Groups (the latter limited to portions of western and southwestern Morgan County), and for both it says greater capacities have been reported in isolated areas, but higher yields are commonly associated with significant to complete drawdown.
• Parts beyond the wellhead: according to DNR's FAQ, Indiana's well drilling statute and rules leave unregulated the piping and electrical connections running from the well to the building, and well-related equipment inside it such as pressure tanks. Ask for those items to be priced separately from the pump.

• Who may do the work: IC 25-39-3-1(a) requires a license to act as a water well driller or water well pump installer, and anyone who installs or repairs water well pumps counts as a pump installer (IC 25-39-2-15.5). Each license expires on December 31 of the year for which it was issued, and a licensee who is installing a pump or operating drilling equipment has to carry the license and show it to a department representative on request (IC 25-39-3-1(c)-(d)). The fee in 312 IAC 13-2-2(a), readopted May 17, 2023, is $100 for a calendar year; DNR issues one card showing whether the holder is licensed as a driller, a pump installer, or both.
• Exempt work: under IC 25-39-1.5-3, the licensing chapter (IC 25-39-3) and the regulation chapter (IC 25-39-4) do not reach (1) a person putting in a personal-use well whose inside diameter is at most 1 1/4 inches and whose depth is at most 24 feet; (2) a plumber licensed under IC 25-28.5 who has also registered with DNR as IC 25-39-1.5-4 requires, when the wells stay within that same 1 1/4-inch and 24-foot ceiling; (3) a person who installs or repairs pumps or pumping equipment on a water well for personal use; or (4) someone working at a licensee's direction and under that licensee's personal supervision. 312 IAC 13-1-19.3 counts use as personal when the water supply well or pumping equipment sits on property owned or in possession of a person, as IC 14-8-2-202 defines person, or, for a public water supply utility, is possessed by a permanent employee of that utility.
• County office: the Morgan County Health Department's Drinking Water Wells/Water Testing page says private wells should be checked once per year, or more often if you are concerned about contamination, and links the state's recommended well standards, a state test kit order form and Indiana's certified drinking water laboratories. Its septic division issues septic permits. Before a well or pump job, ask the department whether any local requirement applies; its contact page is listed in the sources.
• Well head height: 312 IAC 13-3-2(a)(3) requires earthen material placed around the finished casing or pitless unit so surface water drains away from the well, with the casing or pitless unit finishing at least 1 ft above ground level. Inside a designated flood hazard area there are two options: a top at least 2 ft above the regulatory flood elevation, or a watertight pitless unit cap or well seal plus venting to an elevation at least 2 ft above that flood level. Subsection (b) excludes monitoring and dewatering wells.
• Well records: 312 IAC 13-2-6 gives the water well driller 30 days after a well's completion to submit accurate records for it, on a departmental form or one the division approves. Every required item is listed in that section, among them the pump type and pump setting depth where applicable. DNR's online database of over 400,000 Indiana well records can't be searched by owner name; its web viewer offers street address and zip code searches.
• Idle wells: if a well sits unused for longer than three months but has not been permanently abandoned, 312 IAC 13-10-1 requires it to be capped watertight at or above the ground surface, the cap welded, threaded, or mechanically attached, and maintained so it cannot become a source or channel of ground water contamination. IC 25-39-2-2 has two tests for an abandoned well: its original purpose and use have been discontinued for more than five years, or it is in such a state of disrepair that using it to obtain ground water is impractical or a health hazard.
• Plugging: when a well is abandoned after December 31, 1987, the person who owns the land has one year from abandonment to get it plugged. The statute, IC 25-39-4-6(b), says the plugging is done by a water well driller; the rule, 312 IAC 13-10-2(c), says a water well driller or water well pump installer, using an impervious grouting material. Under 13-10-2(f) the division shall be notified in writing of the abandonment within thirty days after plugging is completed (the rule does not name who gives that notice). A shorter clock applies to an uncased well drilled after December 31, 1987: the driller must plug it within 72 hours after drilling is completed (IC 25-39-4-4; 312 IAC 13-10-2(d)). Wells abandoned before 1988 fall under 13-10-2(a)-(b), and plugging materials and methods are set out in 13-10-2(e).

• Cover over the rock varies widely. DNR's unconsolidated report puts its total thickness at less than one foot where bedrock is shallow or outcrops along sections of White River tributaries, rising to an estimated 240 ft in the northwest part of the county.
• The Till Veneer / Dissected Till and Residuum Aquifer System, mapped throughout much of the county, covers thin glacial deposits in central and southern Morgan County and thin till, generally less than 50 ft thick, in the north and east. DNR says nearly all wells drilled there bypass the unconsolidated deposits in favor of the underlying bedrock, and that yields from this system are generally less than 7 gpm with significant to complete drawdowns reported.
• DNR's report counts registered significant groundwater withdrawal facilities by aquifer system: 14 facilities (41 wells) with capacities of 100 to 3000 gpm in the White River and Tributaries Outwash Aquifer System, 5 facilities (13 wells) with capacities up to 500 gpm in the related outwash subsystem along several White River tributaries, and 5 facilities (15 wells) with reported yields up to 650 gpm in the Martinsville Hills / Tipton Complex Aquifer System, which is mapped only in east-central Morgan County and has completed well depths of 80 to 185 ft.
• EPA's site profile for the Pike and Mulberry Streets PCE Plume Superfund site in Martinsville describes a 38-acre groundwater plume, contaminated primarily with tetrachloroethylene (PCE), that has affected one of Martinsville's municipal drinking water wells; the well field serves about 15,000 people. EPA says Martinsville has operated an activated carbon filtration system since 2005 to remove PCE, and that monitoring has shown PCE levels continue to increase.
• EPA placed the site on the National Priorities List in May 2013, chose groundwater and soil vapor remedies in a 2020 Record of Decision, began designing them in 2022, and in 2023 and 2024 installed several dozen vapor intrusion mitigation systems on homes and businesses at the site.
• Water lines: to keep them from freezing, the state health department's recommended standards list a 48-inch minimum bury depth for Morgan County, measured from the top of the pipe to finished grade.

Martinsville · Mooresville · Monrovia · Paragon · Brooklyn · Bethany · Morgantown · Painted Hills