East Coast Exploration drilled an environmental exploration hole today, which is a fancy way of saying they went searching for water! 

My 30-acre parcel is quite unique for Maine. It is off of Intervale Road, which literally means a low tract of land along a river. Intervale Road runs long the Androscoggin river through several Maine towns. The bottom portion of my parcel encompasses some of the intevale which abuts a substantial 200ft+ hill.

River typically have sandy tracts of land that hold abundant amounts of water which can be easily extracted with a relatively shallow screened well. Since my property is so close to the river and showed signs of a substantial sandy layer over the bedrock, I decided to research the geology of the land a bit more. I searched the Maine Well Drillers Database for information on neighboring wells and looked at geology maps of the area.

One neighbor has a 360ft deep bedrock well with 55ft of overburden, which can be characterized as some type of soil. Another neighbor has a large diameter dug well that utilizes surface water. The last neighbor across the street has a 430ft deep bedrock well with 155ft of overburden.

With all this information in-hand I had strong-reason to believe a sand screen well may be a great low-cost option. So, I had Chris Palmer from East Coast Exploration (207-798-1106) drill a 2″ environmental well to determine the soil types below-grade and sample the water.

The first 19ft showed high-potential with course gravel and sand, but below that fine sand and silt emerged which will not support a sand screen well. Bedrock was hit at 54ft.

While the outcome was not as hoped for, Chris and East Coast Exploration was fantastic. If you are trying to determine if your property will support a high-yield sand screen well, looking to determine your soil geology, or need to install a monitoring well for some other reason I would highly recommend East Coast Explorations.