Most of the wells we ship into older neighbourhoods are replacements. A galvanized well installed in the 1970s or 80s has usually had four decades against wet soil, and the failure is rarely where you would look for it.
How galvanized steel actually fails
The zinc coating is sacrificial — it corrodes so the steel underneath does not, and it does that job for decades. What ends it is sustained contact with wet soil, and soil is on the outside of the well.
So the failure runs from the back forward. A well can look serviceable from inside the basement and be perforated along the buried face. If you can flex the wall with a hand, or a screwdriver goes through anywhere near the base, it is done.
Patch or replace
Worth patching: surface rust on the exposed face, a bent lip, one loose fastener.
Not worth patching: perforation anywhere, a well that has spread at the top, or a base you cannot see because it is below the silt. In all three cases the cost of the steel is small next to the cost of doing the excavation twice, and you are already going to have the hole open.
Do not measure the old well
This is the part that catches people. A well that has been in the ground twenty years has usually spread at the top where the soil pushed it, settled at the base, or racked out of square. Its current dimensions record how it failed. Ordering to match reproduces the failure.
Measure two things instead:
- The window opening — for width, with clearance past the frame on both sides, and for projection, so the sash clears.
- The excavation — once the old well is out and the hole is cleaned back to solid ground, for all three numbers.
Take the second set after removal, not before. Pulling the old well usually reveals that the hole is larger than it looked, because the old well had been holding back soil that has since slumped. How to take each measurement.
While the hole is open
A replacement is the one chance you get to fix the reason the first one failed. Almost always that is the base.
Dig out whatever is down there — usually packed clay and silt — and rebuild with six to eight inches of clear crushed stone, tied into weeping tile if you can reach it. Then backfill behind the new well with stone as well, not the clay you took out. A well set in stone and draining properly is a different product from the same steel set in clay, and the first one is what lasts forty years. If it kept filling with water, work out which of the three causes you had before you close it back up.
Consider upgrading the size
Two upgrades are worth pricing while the hole is open, because doing either later means digging again:
Projection. If the room is now a bedroom, or might be, a 30″ projection meets the 760 mm clearance the National Building Code asks for in front of an egress window. Most older wells are 16″ to 24″ and do not — see the egress-ready sizes.
Height. If the original well sat below grade and collected runoff, a taller well that finishes at or above grade fixes that permanently.
Finish
Mill galvanized is what most replacements go back as, and it is the cheaper and entirely durable option. Gloss black powder coat costs more and adds one to two weeks because it is finished to order, and it buys an extra barrier over the galvanizing plus a well that reads as deliberate rather than utilitarian on a visible elevation. The finish comparison goes through the trade in detail.
Doing the whole house
If several wells are the same age, they are likely in the same condition. Freight is charged once per order rather than per item, so replacing four at once costs the same to ship as replacing one — and you only rent the equipment once. Shop all 213 sizes.