Endless surprises

There's a hole in our foundation wall. And not a little one; it's an 8" ceramic tile tube, 4' below grade.

Holy wall!

It leads all the way through to our basement. There's no light back there, and it's tucked under the stairs where the mice and spiders live, so we never noticed it before. Plus, it's never let light in before.

Into the most inaccessible part of the basement

Huh?


Turns out the digger dudes dug something up when they dug my hole: an old water well. It looks like the well for the house used to be ~5' away from the house right beside where the hole is. The digger dudes unearthed the well casing, which they had to expose and my contractor had to cut off.

The casing

The casing was cut off ~2' below the surface (and was under a patio, so safe from most digging except us) but it still had electrical wiring leading to it, and for all I know still has some other water connection stick up parts somewhere (my contractor took a photo, but I don't have it yet. I'll post it here when I get it). Wires and other material were unearthed that led into the house through the hole. The inaccessible little cubbyhole it leads to contains (surprise) our water pressure tank. 


Now, given that our well and hot water tank are on the opposite side of the house, it would have made sense to put the pressure tank over there, too. But now it makes sense. The house was plumbed from the old well we unearthed, and rather than re-plumb the water supply when the new well was drilled, it was easier to bring the water to the pressure tank's existing location -- also explaining the rather unique route the water pipe runs to the pressure tank.


Surprised? In this house, never.