Well outside front door, problem?

Property & Home
1

The property we are looking to buy has a well right outside the front door. Has anyone else had this and is it a problem?


Thanks


John

2

Be very careful with asbestos roofing. Make sure the quote and contract you sign have include its removal from site rather than just the roof or you could be left with an expensive waste problem as apparently decheteries do not take asbestos.

3

We have a well and to be honest it has proved its weight in gold. In the dryest parts of the year we still have water to irrigate the garden, that saves us €€€s. We just have a well pump that we service once a year and MOH's next project is to renovate the well-head. Our neighbour uses the water to top up his pool, which works well (excuse the pun) so we have a screen and a gate for them to access it. When our garden natural pond flooded a couple of years' ago, we stuck a pump in the pond and pumped the (much!) excess water into the well as the drains could not cope. Needless to say, we don't use it for drinking water!

4

Sorry first reply went off in my hand meant to add…over the use of the well, rights to draw water and possible rights of access to the well.
In total shouldn’t be a problem. First house I had in France had a well in the garden and coincidently straight outside the front door. We had to provide access, so a simple gate in the wall sufficed and to my knowledge in the sixteen years I lived there, none of the neighbours exercised their right to draw water.

5

I would simply reiterate what has already been said and ask your notaire to thoroughly investigate any servitudes or rights other neighbours may have.

6

John, we have one complete 'wing' of the house (above me now) roofed in Eternit with a high asbestos content. It is cracking and must go. Quotes of your higher figure are what we have had for a complete re-roof there to include removal. The 4-5K sound closer to the mark.

7

Thanks for your reply David the maire lives in the house opposite and has 5 grandchildren who his wife adores. Think he may well play by the rules on this one

8

John your well is an asset. Who knows it might even provide a source for a water to water heat pump. As to the asbestos cement roof -surely that blew away in the last gale. I only quote my local maire who assured me that the 8 cubic metres of masonry that appeared in my garden must have slipped down in the frost rather from his unplanned terrassements.

9

Thanks to Veronique & Brian for their replies we are about to pay our deposit to buy and couldn't see any problem with the well. Its in the limoges area so I think it will be down in rock. I do know the neighbours have the right to take water from it.

The house also has a part asbestos roof and I have had horror stores of 20 000 euros to remove but have had two estimates of 4-5000 euros.

John

10

We have a well a couple of metres from the back. It is 18m-ish deep (SFN-ers will remember when I dropped my BlackBerry in it early last year :-( ), fed by a spring that apparently emerges to feed a stream at the bottom of the valley we are on the slope of. It never dries out (has never done so yet, even last year). We use it a lot. It too is dug into rock and is deeper than the cellar, so no problem.

11

Hi it rather depends on the well - I have one about a metre away from a door into the kitchen, it is about 15m deep & half-full. it used to have a pump but the pump froze long before I bought my house & wasn't worth repairing so I had a little lid made for it so nobody could fall down it, now you wouldn't know there was a well there at all. It desn't cause any trouble eg damp even in my cellar which is about 20 metres away, they are both dug out of the rock which I suppose accounts for it.