We have a shallow well and it's getting low

The well pump tripped last week and we found the water level is down about 25 ft. It's kinda scary because we don't want it to run dry and we don't know how long it will be before we receive enough rain to increase the water table. We had planned eventually to drill a deep well for household use and keep the shallow well for gardening purposes. Am I getting panicky about the shallow well before I should?

Nope... but being down 25 feet doesn't say how many feet are left, and the rate of flow... all major considerations!

Despite all the rain we have had in the western NC mountains this year, we are still considered to be in a drought, as we are using more water than we get. That could be the case in eastern VA, thus making a drilled well of significant importance. Being without water for even a few days is a major disaster...

My well is a dug well and its only 25 foot total.I'm so nervous about watering the plants.We've had 12 days of no rain and none predicted until maybe Friday.This may not sound too bad to some people but in this area we're use to a lot more rain.I'm just watering whats important,but worse comes to worse I can draw water out of the lake.Not everyone is that lucky.They showed local farms on the news this morning and a lot of their crops are dying ,they have no way of watering them.

We have two wells here on the farm, so we do like you we use one for the house and one for outside,but our water table is low as well. We have had some rain as well but none to the water table. The crops have used up the water before it got there.
So many towns are now on water restrictions around us, we are getting concerned. We have been filling up all containers with water to save just in case, but we only have drinking water for a couple of days.
Very scary!
Mike

Thank you for your posts. The water situation is a scary thing to me and I hope it gets better for all of us soon.
I took a weight and attached it to a string to see how much water is left in the well and it looks like I have about 25 feet. I was told to make sure I leave 5 feet in the bottom. I don't know how long it took to get down 25 feet, so I don't know how long another 20 feet will last. I am going to keep an eye on it, because I don't know when we are going to get a good soaking rain again - only scattered showers predicted for the weekend.
Let's hope we get some rain soon!
Carol

There are things you can do to conserve water: limit toilet flushes, save the water you run while waiting for the cold or hot water to come out of the fawcett, take shorter showers with sponge baths in between, mulch around your plants, don't water the grass just the flowers or vegies, take the laundry to the laundromat. We have a spring that used to have to do everything, this year we had a well drilled and now it supplies the house and yard and part of the garden. We considered it an investment, a good well increases the property value and we benefited from it right away. Check out the xeroscaping forum, you may get a few good ideas there.