Well Drilling in Wake County, NC

• Requests are accepted from anywhere in Wake County. The towns of Apex, Fuquay-Varina, Garner, Holly Springs, Knightdale, Rolesville, Wake Forest, Wendell and Zebulon each have a Wake County row in the state's 2020 Census place-by-county file. Wake Forest also has a Franklin County row, Zebulon a Johnston County row and Fuquay-Varina a Harnett County row.
• Flag a no-water or failed-pump problem as an emergency on the request form. Provider availability varies by area and day.
• Before hiring, ask whether the company holds this year's Wake County registration; the county's Well Contractors page links a list of registered well contractors.

• Diagnosing and replacing a failed submersible pump
• Pressure tank and pressure switch replacement
• New private wells, from the county permit through the grout and wellhead inspections and the required water samples
• Uranium, radon-in-water and gross alpha and beta testing, with treatment where results call for it
• Hydrofracturing a low-yield well, an activity the state certification chart places at Level B
• Extending a buried-seal well's casing at least 12 inches above land surface during a repair, as county rules require
• Closing old wells under a county abandonment permit, with an inspection of each closure

• Depth: our estimator takes the depth you type, applies a per-foot band keyed to rock type and adds generic permit, pump and tank lines based on national cost pages rather than Wake County bids. In Wake County the 2022 USGS report found that yield generally rose with depth to about 200 feet below land surface and fell beyond that, and that shallower wells tended to produce more water per foot of total depth than deeper ones.
• County permit fees: check the county's well permits page for current permit fees and its tests page for lab charges. The new well permit fee covers pre-construction contamination source review, inspections, sample collection and laboratory analysis by Wake County; an existing well serving new construction may need further testing fees. A reinspection fee is charged when a wellhead fails inspection or when samples cannot be collected because the well has no power.
• Added tests: for new wells and existing wells serving new construction, county rules require testing for site contaminants within 1,500 feet of a listed contamination source or where G.S. 87-97(e1) notice applies, pesticides within 150 feet of the foundation of a building built between 1948 and 1987, gross alpha in the rock units listed below, and any test the county specifies from evidence of land use on or next to the property.
• Treatment risk: gross alpha tests on a new well take 3 to 4 weeks, and the county's steps page says they have a 1 in 7 chance of requiring treatment and re-testing.

• Authority: under G.S. 87-97(a), counties must operate private drinking water well permitting, inspection and testing programs through their local health departments. In Wake County, the Groundwater Protection and Wells Section of Onsite Water Protection enforces the county's ordinances on constructing, repairing and abandoning private water supply wells, and permits are applied for on the county Permit Portal.
• New well sequence (county steps page): the builder, owner or authorized agent submits the application, a site plan and the fee; county staff evaluate the lot for well and septic suitability, and a suitable lot gets a Construction Authorization (CA), which the well contractor needs a copy of before starting. Where a septic system is also required, both permits issue on the same site plan.
• Permit life: the county says a new well permit is valid for five years. Its regulations add that, unless the department specifies otherwise in writing, a permit becomes invalid and the fee is forfeited if construction is not completed within 60 months of issue.
• Inspections: the certified well contractor builds the well and contacts Onsite Water Protection for the grout inspection. After a certified or licensed pump installer chosen by the homeowner sets the pump, the installer or applicant must request the wellhead inspection within 72 hours of completion, and the page states that calling it in is the pump installer's responsibility. If the permit requires closing an old well on the lot, the new well permit is not complete until that closure is inspected and documented.
• Before occupancy: bacteriological, inorganic and nitrate/nitrite analyses must meet the county's water quality standards before the Certificate of Occupancy is issued, plus any added samples the county deems necessary because of prior land use or that state rules require. Sampling follows 24 hours of chlorine contact and a 24 to 48 hour flush; the builder or applicant may instead use a private certified laboratory that reports results to Onsite Water Protection.
• Location and casing: on top of 15A NCAC 02C .0107, the county sets minimum separations, unless otherwise specified, of 10 feet from a property boundary and 50 feet from another well that exists or is permitted when the new well is built. Section X allows a written request to the Local Health Director or designee for a variance from any construction standard; read it for the required findings and conditions. Black steel casing pipe is disallowed, and 15A NCAC 02C .0107(d)(5) ends every casing at least 12 inches above land surface.
• Repairs and closures: the county inspects any repair to a well and every permanent abandonment. Repairing a well whose wellhead ends below ground (a buried seal) must include extending the casing at least 12 inches above land surface, either with a tapered sleeve inside the casing, welded or bonded, or a sleeve heated and forced over it, each reaching at least six inches below the old top. A newly lined well is tested for coliform bacteria and inorganics. County rules allow 30 days to repair or permanently abandon a well that acts as a source or conduit of groundwater contamination, counted from receipt of the department's notice or from commencement of the construction; state closure methods are in 15A NCAC 02C .0113.
• Records: whoever completed or abandoned the well certifies the job on a Division of Water Resources form, GW-1 for a new well or GW-30 for a closure, and has thirty days from completion or abandonment to submit it to that Division under 15A NCAC 02C .0114; for a water supply well a copy also goes to the health department for the county. The rule itself lists everything the record must include, and a record given only to the county or some other party leaves the Division filing undone.
• Who may do the work: under G.S. 87-98.4(a), state certification is required to perform, manage or supervise well contractor activity; exempt persons and activities are listed in subsections (b) and (c), among them a person who constructs, repairs or abandons a well on land that person owns or leases. Wake treats breaking a well seal to install, replace or repair pumps and equipment, or to disinfect, as needing Level D certification, except when exempted in accordance with Session Law 2009-418. Well contractors working on irrigation, private or semi-public domestic wells register with the county every July 1-31 and deposit $10,000 or post a continuing $10,000 performance bond the county may draw on to remedy work inconsistent with its rules; businesses installing, replacing or repairing pumps or other equipment in wells register in the same window. Geothermal heat exchange injection well drillers must also be certified by the International Ground Source Heat Pump Association or its equivalent.

• Rock and yield (USGS 2022): Wake is mostly Piedmont, with about 35 square miles of the southeast in the Coastal Plain. Yields were highest in metavolcanic rocks of southern and central Wake, second highest in metaigneous rocks of central Wake, and lowest in the compacted Triassic rocks of the western basin, which the Jonesboro Fault bounds on the east. Mapped maximum expected yield for new wells was lower in the southwestern and northwestern parts of the county.
• Radioactivity: "In Eastern Wake County we expect one in five wells to have unsafe levels of contamination," the county's naturally occurring contamination page says. Its regulations require gross alpha testing for any well built where the North Carolina Geological Survey designates these units: Rolesville Granite, Lake Benson Pluton, Wyatt Pluton, Avents Creek Granite, Raleigh Gneiss, Falls Leucogneiss and other units lying within them, plus gneiss, schist and argillite in the easternmost portion of the county.
• State lab data: NC DHHS's Wake County table, built from private well samples the State Laboratory of Public Health analyzed between 1998 and 2010, shows iron above the 300 µg/L secondary standard in 612 of 2,560 wells (23.91%), manganese above the 50 µg/L secondary standard in 583 of 2,570 (22.68%), lead above 15 µg/L in 172 of 3,188 (5.40%) and arsenic above 10 µg/L in 16 of 2,591 (0.62%). DHHS notes that county averages may not reflect the groundwater in a single well.
• Falling water levels: the county's well interference regulations, adopted August 27, 2009 and in force from October 1, 2009, record the board's recognition that regional competition for groundwater was already occurring in northern Wake County in the Falls Lake watershed, impacting private wells in the Norwood Oaks and Bayleaf Trails subdivisions and surrounding areas. The county still lists that ordinance on its well regulations page, and the December 2024 construction regulations do not address well interference.
• USGS report SIR 2010-5219 studied a subdivision of about 11 homes on 1- to 2-acre lots in unincorporated Wake County, documenting from March 2008 through February 2009 regular dewatering of the fractured-bedrock aquifer, with water levels in many wells between 100 and 200 feet below land surface, against 15 to 50 feet reported from the 1980s through the late 1990s; shallow wells, with total depths of about 300 feet, had temporary failures until the aquifer recovered.

Wake Forest · Rolesville · Knightdale · Wendell · Zebulon · Garner · Fuquay-Varina · Holly Springs · Apex