Inspect your well cap and casing
Annual · typically May
Why it matters
Everything between your aquifer and your kitchen tap depends on one piece of hardware keeping the surface world out: the well cap sealing the top of the casing. Caps crack in sun and freeze, gaskets age, bolts loosen — and the failure is silent right up until your annual water test (that's your other well card) comes back positive for bacteria that were never in the aquifer, just in the earwigs living under the cap.
Your freeze-thaw climate is hard on caps and on the frost-pitless connection below grade — spring, after winter has done its worst, is exactly the right month to look.
What skipping it costs
$300–$8,000
A cracked cap or a gasket chewed by weather is an open door: insects, mice, and surface runoff go straight down the casing into your drinking water. Best case that's a positive coliform test, a shock chlorination, and a week of bottled water. Worst case it's a contaminated well, a treatment system you never needed to need, and thousands chasing what a $60 sanitary cap prevents.
Two ways to get it done
Do it yourself
You'll need: Flashlight, Screwdriver (checking cap bolts, not opening anything).
- Cap: look for cracks, a loose fit, missing bolts, or a gasket that's brittle or chewed. The electrical conduit entering the cap should be intact and sealed. If your cap is an old loose-fitting style rather than a bolted sanitary cap, upgrading is cheap and worth it.
- Casing: should stand at least 12 inches above grade (more in flood-prone spots), plumb, with no rust-through or dents at soil level. Soil creeping up the casing over the years counts as a finding.
- Grading: the ground should slope away from the wellhead in every direction. No mulch volcano, no flower-bed berm holding water against it, no downspout discharging nearby.
- Keep-clear zone: fertilizer, pesticide mixing, fuel cans, and pet areas all stay well away from the wellhead. The casing is a straw into your drinking water.
- Anything breached — cap cracked, casing damaged, or evidence anything got in — plan on shock chlorination and a retest: it's the standard reset, your annual-test card covers the follow-up, and it's DIY-able with careful instructions or a modest pro visit.
Hire it out
$150–$300National fair range — local labor moves this number.
A well contractor's wellhead inspection runs $150–$300 and is worth folding in every few years or after any breach: cap integrity, casing, and usually a static water level check that quietly builds the most valuable well record you can own — the trend line.
The trade boundary matters here more than anywhere: licensed well contractors open wells, pull pumps, and chlorinate to spec. Plumbers own everything after the pressure tank (that tank has its own card). A general handyman has no business under that cap — sanitation mistakes at the wellhead go straight into what your family drinks.
Ask the tech
- Is the cap a sanitary well cap with an intact gasket, or an old-style loose cap worth upgrading?
- Is my casing height above grade to current code, and does the grading still shed water away?
- While you're here — what's the static water level and how does it compare to when the well was drilled?
Red flags you're being upsold
- A new-well conversation from one cloudy sample or one bad test. Wells get shocked, retested, and diagnosed before anyone talks five figures.
- Treatment systems sold at the wellhead visit — UV and filtration have their place, but the place is after a lab result says so, not because a truck was already in the driveway.
- Anyone but a licensed well contractor proposing to open the well or pull the pump. This is not general-plumber territory.
Second opinion time: Any quote over $2,000 that isn't a pump replacement with a load test behind it.
The call
DIY the annual look — it's five minutes of eyeballing. Anything that requires opening the well is a licensed well contractor, not a handyman, not a plumber.