Right now I have 2 wells: the original well for the house, dating back to 1960, and a new one that was drilled 3 years ago. The original well is accessed by a cement cover about 6-8" below the ground and then there's a large tube-like enclosure buried in the ground from which one can access the well itself. Wires and a pipe run from inside the tube to the house.

When the new well was drilled, the driller buried a pipe and wires from the tube for the old well out to the new well location. There's a T installed inside the old well tube which allows water to be pumped out of either well and into the house. The driller advised doing it this way, as he said I could keep the old well for a backup in case the new well goes bad (there's a 2-way electrical switch inside the basement which allows me to decide which well to use). He also advised doing it this way, as it would save on the cost of installing pipe all of the way between the new well and the house.

To make a long story short, I've had a small leak in my basement and my filtration company came out today to install a new filter and fix the leak. It turns out the water was coming in through the wiring sleeve when the well pump was running. They called someone out from their pump division who spent several hours pressure testing the lines from various locations (which actually made the leak much worse), and he determined that the leak is between the old well location and the house, probably right next to the foundation (as the water is coming in from the wiring sleeve). He hooked up a garden hose which is currently supplying water from the old well location through my basement door (at grade level) and into the pressure tank.

A salesman also came out, and he is supposed to get a quote to me on Monday. His recommendation is to dig up and replace both lines, running them separately from each well location to the basement. They'll install the T in the basement this time, so a problem with one line wouldn't knock both lines out of comission. He also said something about putting in a spare in case one goes bad, but I'm not sure which location the spare would run to. Finally, he said he would give me a separate quote for raising the old well casing above grade to meet code. Unfortunately they won't have a quote until sometime on Monday and there's a 3 day wait before you dig, so it will probably be the week after Christmas before they can get to it. I live in CT and the weather's starting to get cold (probably in the high 30's tonight), so the salesman recommended leaving the water trickling overnight.

Overall, I would prefer to get any problems repaired correctly, but I also normally like to take my time to get a few different opinions & quotes. So I asked the salesman about just digging up the line near the foundation to make the repair, and revisiting the other work next Spring. He didn't recommend this because the leak might be in a different spot than they think, and also because it would be cheaper to do everything at once.

In any event, here are my questions:

- Does the approach the salesman recommended make sense?

- I have a 15 gpm continuous pressure pump system in the new well. Will leaving the water trickling overnight use up a lot of electricity?

- Right now there's a lot of chlorine in the water, as the pump guy opened up the wells and had to chlorinate them. Will this harm my new Katalox filter or my softener? Should I bypass them until the chlorine is out of the system? There's a lot of iron in the water, but I imagine the chlorine plus my acid neutralizer should take care of that.

- We're currently using bottled water for drinking. Is water coming in through a new garden hose (I just bought it today) safe to drink? I also ordered a drinking water hose that will be delivered Monday. Will the water be okay to drink once that is installed?

Thanks for your help.