The Well House

Here on the farm we have two older wells, one for the home, one for the fields.  The wells were dug long ago, but still function just fine.  Problem is the buildings they reside in.  Both wells are in the backyard area of the house.  Long ago someone built cinder-block buildings around them, complete with metal roofs and plywood doors.

There is absolutely no insulation in either well house.  Not that it would do any good, because the doors are thin and they don't shut very well.  It is not uncommon for the water pipes in them to freeze during the cold weather. Thawing frozen well pipes in the early morning hours when it is 10 degrees out is not an enjoyable task.

This past year as the GeoThermal heating system was being put in one of the little well houses got damaged.   It went up against a rather large excavator and lost.  Part of the metal roof was ripped off and a couple of the walls sustained serious damage.  Now I guess most folks would see this as an unfortunate accident, but I knew better.  I think the excavator driver (a.k.a.my husband) had a deep seated hatred for these well houses.  They were ugly, dysfunctional and right in the middle of the backyard.  We have over 60 acres here and they put them 20 feet from the back door...maybe that is so you don't have to go far when you need to thaw the pipes?  Anyway, I think the accident was more of an act of hatred.

Regardless of the reason we were now tasked with rebuilding the well house.  As is the case with all projects around here a simple rebuild was not in the cards.  If we had to go thru the pain and expense of building a new well house, we might as well build one large well house to take care of both wells, then we could eliminate both ugly block buildings.    The next day when I came home from my day job that second well house was completely gone.  I'm not sure, but I think that he used his deep seated hatred for the little building to rip it apart with his bare hands.

And so we began the creation of a new well house.  No real plans, just a general idea.  The location was going to be where the second building was.  The size was going to be roughly twice as long and twice as wide as the old building.  The siding was NOT going to be block.

We created concrete forms out of scrap wood from another demo project (what a painful task that was) and poured a foundation for the walls.  Then we poured the floor.  The original pad of the old well house is in the front left corner, the large rusty bullet is the well tank.

Our budget for this project was $400. LOL.  I think that was just the first drop.  We chose to use pressure treated 2x4s for the framing.   We didn't have to use this for everything.  They are a LOT harder to work with, very very heavy, and they will twist if you let them dry before you use them.  But the PT 2x4s were less than half the cost of regular 2x4s and we had a budget.

OSB for the sheathing.  The siding will eventually be cedar shakes, we have a lot of them left over from the house we built and they don't require painting.

We decided to put in 3 windows and a real door with a glass upper half.  This will give us plenty of light.  No windows on the back or far side because we plan to have shelving on those walls.  The size of the windows was based upon what the local discount store had on clearance (many of our design choices go this route).

The roof pitch was tricky.  I said not too steep but not so shallow it looks like a manufactured building. He figured it out :)

Next task, build the staging so the roof sheathing can be put on.