Talk:Well

Ancient Chinese Drilling
I have read that drilling has been around for a long time, see link, may be a good idea to reflect this in the text

http://www.epmag.com/Production-Drilling/Ancient-Chinese-drilling_4266 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.195.113.2 (talk) 13:55, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Try "What links here"
"What links here" offers some suggestions for enriching this brief entry. Wetman 11:12, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wrong picture
The picture looks lovely, but it's not a well but a medieval Icelandic bathing pool which seems to me to be a significantly different thing to a well.--JBellis 14:44, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Ukrainian wells clean up
I had to clean up the last paragraph about the Ukrainian wells because it was horrible. I'm not certain it belongs here, even after cleanup. Jepace 18:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It needs to have a point. This person has a point, but goes over vaguely of his real intentions. His thoughts wonder. It is boring too. Anyone can make anything interesting to read if they put some tone into it. Intunewithsurroundings 23:59, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup and reorganization
This article is a big mess. It needs to be cleaned up and have some order put into it. Currently it is a bunch of pictures of hand dug wells, which are quaint but probably belong it an article called "pictures of hand dug wells". Some classification and structure is needed, as well as some discussion of modern wells. Any ideas regarding this? --kris 14:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I did a heavy restructure and cleanup. Take a look around, switch around changes you don't agree with, wiki your day away. -- Joshua BishopRoby 18:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

wiki links
Can't all those wiki-dictionary links be wikilinked to articles on wikipedia? SGGH speak! 21:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Term for the aboveground structure
Is there a comprehensive term in English for the aboveground structure on a handcrank-operated water well, such as those illustrating the page for wishing well? This would include the box- or ring-shaped structure at ground level, the upright supports for the shaft to which the rope and bucket are attached, and the characteristic little roof above. I've seen some construction plans but these only name the parts, not the whole. ''-- Thanks, Deborahjay 10:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)"


 * Would you call the "little roof" and the posts that support it a gazebo? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 18:16, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I would not call something an adult person couldn't shelter in 'a gazebo'. How about wellhead - or is that just an oil-drilling term ? --195.137.93.171 (talk) 21:51, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's some time since the question was asked, but the precise term, I believe, for the low, usually circular, wall around a well, to stop things falling in, often artistically decorated, is the curb of a well or a well curb, but I have seen it called a wellhead. Try googling it and various dictionaries give well curb.82.27.181.141 (talk) 12:17, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Misinformation and poorly written
Whoa. There is a lot of misinformation in this article and it is poorly written especially in spots. Iron and manganese are not considered carcinogens. An artesian well does not "usually" flow above ground surface - only occasionally and then it is called an artestian flowing well. Arsenic is not a common contaminant in the same group as the others - in some areas it is more common and it obviously depends on the concentration as to when it is called common. Minerals/chemicals that should be mentioned as naturally occuring under the Natural Contaminants section which is poorly titled are also calcuim and magnesium and sulphates though there are other frequently occuring chemicals also. When it says that Reverse Osmosis is often used to filter water - it very often is not used as it can be plugged by iron or other frequently occuring "contaminants" or just is not needed to treat the specific problems in the water.

Under the "Natural Contaminants" section again ... Coliforms are only a indicator test that harmful bacteria may be present such as E.Coli. which is only one type of coliforms. There are also different types of E.Coli. some of which are more harmful than others. We have non-harmful coliforms naturally occuring in our body. Are not references usually added in Wikipedia? I am not so familiar with it. I could go on but I don't have time. In the interim perhaps this page should be suspended. I don't have time to properly edit this page. November 2007 Shawn. 199.214.24.153 16:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. I read the drilling section and found it needed many more sources. I skimmed the rest and found sources to be scarce. I will work on this in the coming days, but I don't know too much about wells. And what about the whole "this page was going to be deleted but now its not" thing at the top of the discussion page? I don't think that it should be deleted, just worked on. Could we possible take that tag about deletion down? Killiondude (talk) 07:27, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Storage tank
In normal set-ups a storage tank with a pressure of 40-60 psi is also added to the system (so the pump does not need to operate constantly.

KVDP (talk) 16:15, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * In the article, it should be noted that an alternative to a storage tank is a system of elevation. In stead of using elevation to pump the water up and opening a valve when it is required (see the GROW water system and the system installed in Donnachad Mccarthy's 3acorn's house; this may be seen via the It%27s_Not_Easy_Being_Green-documentary)

KVDP (talk) 16:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Update, not sure whether the replacement is possible after all (aldough it should if the tank is placed at a higher level. This because the system noted (a rainman water harvester) works also by pressuring. See here. Another article to read is featured here

KVDP (talk) 18:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Driven Wells
I moved a duplicate chunk out of drilled wells, but deleted this
 * This is the cheapest and simplest type of water well known today, however it is only useful at relatively shallow depths (up to 75 feet) and for small capacity wells.&lt;!-- need a source that describes what capacity ? --&gt;

Seems like unreferenced OR. Arguably a natural hole in the ground (artesian well) is cheaper and simpler than pipes and drivers ...

Why the need for capacity and depths? A huge pipe could drain an underground pressurised lake hundreds of feet down extremely fast... It's a combination of technology & geology.

NB Siphon implies pumping will only work to 32 feet/10 meters above natural groundwater level - deeper it becomes a barometer with vacuum or water vapor at the top ! Again it is independent of the type of well. Interesting link, but seems to include unattributed images from the remaining link *Driving a well with a well point

--195.137.93.171 (talk) 22:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

No wells in USA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.38.71.187 (talk) 15:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Locating/Detecting Water Wells
The very relevant area covering methods (such as devining, sounding) and other techniques for locating water wells and sources in advance of drilling/boring/ digging does not appear to have been dealt with throughout the article Osioni (talk) 20:57, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * see:* Unconventional Water Detection - article from Journal of Scientific Exploration by Hans-Dieter Betz (1995)

Osioni (talk) 19:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Water Mine
In spain we have a lot of water mines, the one behind my house is dated 1680. The romans and greeks built them because they lived near the ocean, and when digging down they would reach salt water, so they dug sideways into the hillsides. I am not really clear on whether they should have their own article or should be a note in this article or even if they're considered a type of artesian well, since no pumping is required. to tell the truth, other than some great pictures, I can't really offer much info to fill out an article. Brinerustle (talk) 23:18, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Artesian wells

The article intro says that water needs to drawn from wells by mechanical means. Artesian wells usually produce water under pressure and don't need any means of drawing the water. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.212.220.228 (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Aljibe?
Aljibe redirects here, but I think that for encyclopedic use someone is more likely to look that up in its sense of cistern rather than well. - Jmabel | Talk 20:19, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Dowsing
Without desiring to add unscientific problems to the article, it seems to me that Dowsing should at least be in cultural references here. I'm reluctant to add it to there or to the siting section without some discussion however. It's a well-known concept in terms of water wells but understandably problematic for an article with specific scientific requirements. Would a better possibility be to move cultural references to a separate page and link from there? -- Kickstart70 T C 20:05, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think it would really fit in "cultural references". I think it might fit better into "well siting", as its own sub-section, as I understand that "some people dowse to site a well, but that there is no scientific proof that it gives better than chance ...".  Having said that, I've just edited the section to remove an obvious spam link, and the one that's left is to a short paper with bad spelling ("modelling", "moddeling" and "modeling") hosted by another probable commercial site; I'm not sure if the subject in the paper is much better than dowsing, but I haven't read it too thoroughly. Tim PF (talk) 21:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Edits regarding prevention of pollution
Dear User:DMahalko, thanks for your recent edits on this page. However, I felt that some of the content that you added was going into too much detail for this page and was better off on the related pages (groundwater pollution and onsite sewage facility). Therefore, I have shortened it and rather highlighted the links to the other pages. Also it would be good if you could provide references (sources) for the content you added? Thanks. EvMsmile (talk) 13:00, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 11 January 2019

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved. There is consensus here that the water well concept is primary topic for the term and that "well" is the common name for that entity. &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 14:52, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

– Water well would appear to serve as the primary meaning of the structure (and possibly a broad concept article) and apart from the adverb and adjective that probably would be difficult to assign an article to (however we do have a DAB at Wellness which may serve that function) this would be most people's understanding of "Well". See discussion at User talk:BD2412. The other types of wells appear to be less common and are known by their full name (eg Oil well). The other uses of "Well" are a few small places and a few "arts" topics that probably wouldn't be expected to be at the base name anyway. Water well shows up first in a WP search from Google.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 19:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC) --Relisting.  Steel1943  (talk) 05:05, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Water well → Well
 * Well → Well (disambiguation)
 * Support. Once the article is moved, we only need to slightly expand the lede to note that wells are generally used to access (or in some cases warehouse) liquid resources. We can add a paragraph to the body, and that will be our WP:DABCONCEPT covering all relevant senses of "Well". bd2412  T 19:23, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support. Clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and obvious WP:COMMONNAME. --В²C ☎ 19:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose - The current title is very naturally disambiguated and having NOPRIMARY means that we don't need to accumulate bad internal links to well for all the various meanings. Also, water wells hold a significant status in human society, and I don't want to see that article's focus get mussed with additions to make it a WP:DABCONCEPT. -- Netoholic @ 06:00, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe we should go back to my original proposal and look at creating a broad concept article at Well and leave this where it is (which I actually think makes most sense). If so maybe only do moving the DAB and redirecting "Well" to "Water well" pending a broad concept article.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 11:37, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * In conceptual terms, though, a "well" does have a primary topic, and a well used to draw water is by far the most common historical example of that topic. The issue is not that there are various meanings of well, but that there are various kinds of the liquid resource management topic called well. bd2412  T 14:57, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I have started a basic draft at User:Crouch, Swale/Well, but we might not need it.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 19:26, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think it just ends up being redundant to the classical meaning of a well. bd2412  T 19:46, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I think such a page just adds another barrier to people getting to the right page of this ambiguous term. Let me put it this way - is there any information about the concept of a "well" that is not included on any of the current articles about specific types of wells? If not, then I don't see the point of a CONCEPTDAB. There needs to be some sort of meta-information to form the basis of a CONCEPTDAB. If we're just communicating that there are several structures used to extract liquid resources, fundamentally that is already communicated by the section headers and descriptions on the current DAB page. -- Netoholic @ 08:07, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The article's content is currently focused on water, so "water well" is appropriate. The only "broad concept" that I see is with different types of water wells. Other types of wells (oil, salt, etc.) are different, and have their own article. The only broad concept that I see with all wells is borehole, which is written as a broad concept. + m t  20:56, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Not all wells are boreholes - some are just dug. bd2412  T 21:15, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Weak Oppose per Mwtoews. I don't think water well would be improved by adding a section on other types of wells (primarily oil wells). power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 18:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support. Clear primary topic. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:53, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Shorter is not always better.  The current title, unlike the proposed, is precise.  The short “well”, assumed to be a “water well”, relies on assumed implicit knowledge that mostly a “well” will be referring to a “water well”.  There is no benefit to assuming forcing the implied assumption on all readers.  —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:38, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * CONCISE is good, but concise doesn’t mean brevity, it is different when discarding important information (wells are about water). And even if good, taking a good thing to the absurd extreme is no longer good. “Well”, as a single word, and also a very common unrelated dictionary word, is simply too brief. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:08, 19 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Support. This is the primary topic for the term "well." Others, like oil wells, are often called by their full name.  Calidum   22:24, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
 * This is also the primary topic for the term water well. It is unquestionably the primary topic for water well, but there are some ambiguity issues with well. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:30, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There are ambiguity issues for apple too, but we don't call it a fruit apple, even though it would also clearly be the primary topic for that term. bd2412  T 23:46, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
 * We don’t use as a term “fruit apple”, but we do use “water well”. fruit apple, apple fruit, water well better. Other wells, oil, salt. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:49, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
 * What happens, though, when we isolate statistics for instances of "well" being used without "water" as part of the phrase? Orders of magnitude more references. It might legitimately be questioned whether those references to "a well" meant one producing water, but this seems to answer that starkly in the affirmative. I would also note that a salt well is a kind of water well, to the extent that water is being used as the catalyst to harvest salt. bd2412  T 00:32, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, the major weakness of ngrams for titling is that ngrams capture all uses, not just introductory uses, and titling decisions should consider usage in introductory contexts. My point was that “water well” *is* well used, easily well enough to be considered, and that in contrast “fruit apple” is not.  This means we can resolve the small but non-zero ambiguity issues with “well” by keeping the water well at “water well”, and explains why a similar solution is not available for apple. “Apple fruit” can’t be used because it is not naturally used.  “Water well” can be used because it is naturally used. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:42, 19 January 2019 (UTC) Apple fruit vs Fruit apple.  It is interesting how neither is natural, even thoug we have “apple leaf”, “apple blossom” and “apple wood” as perfectly reasonable.  In contrast, both “water well” and “well water” are both natural well-used terms with different meanings. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:47, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * "Well water" isn't describing a kind of well, though. It is describing a kind of water - specifically, the kind of water that comes from a well (since it is cultural knowledge that "well" refers to a source of water). It appears that "well water" alone is orders of magnitude more likely that "water well water". bd2412  T 00:53, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Is is considered good modern writing style to not repeat words, as in “water well water”, just like “oil well oil”. Also, google ngram also returns orders different results for comparing n words with (n+1) words. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:01, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment A note to the closer I don't fully support this proposal, it was BD2412's idea to have this as a broad concept article (which I though reasonable), however I do also support writing a new article at Well (my original proposal) as noted, which should address some of the opposes points.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 12:20, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't you agree, though, that for most of human history, and for most people on Earth, a well refers to structure dug into the ground to obtain water? bd2412  T 17:24, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes but if the alternative proposal was used, by creating a new article at Well then we would give much more wight to water wells than other types, which is maybe a kind of best of both worlds.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 17:30, 19 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Any such work on a DABCONCEPT should be done at Draft:Well so as not to disturb the present disambiguation page. Then a separate move request can be made and we'll see if people prefer the DABCONCEPT over the disambiguation page at primary. -- Netoholic @ 13:11, 20 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support. I agree that it is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME. Rreagan007 (talk) 05:36, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Support. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC especially when considering long-term significance. feminist (talk) 16:20, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Well screening
Add a little bit about well screen and the methods of installation of well screen. Btw iam athiyaman (talk) 05:37, 29 June 2022 (UTC)