Before West Windsor had anything like a commercial water supply system anywhere within its boundaries, house owners had to rely on well water for drinking, cooking, and all the other things you use water for. The old wells took many forms.
First there were the so-called “dug” wells. That is wells that were simply a hole in the ground. These were about three or four feet in diameter and as deep as necessary to strike a layer of water in sufficient quantity to supply your needs. The water was removed by lowering a bucket into the hole and hauling it up. You then took the bucket to the location of your water-using activity. Or you might have stored it in a large tank or cistern.
A major improvement on this was when the bucket was suspended from a hoist above the ground that allowed you to lift the bucket more easily or to use a larger bucket. The water in such wells could be clean enough to drink and use for washing, but it had a good chance of also being muddy or filled with what we call today “pollutants.” These could be any manner of undesirable substances that might make the water dirty, smelly, or dangerous to your health. You had to be sure it was clean before you used it for cooking or drinking.
A major improvement for wells like this was when they were fitted with “well rings” made of concrete or lined with bricks. These methods kept the sides from caving in. Some of these wells were capped off underground and some were allowed to stick out a foot or two above ground, where they were covered with a concrete slab.
My house had both types during our first years here in Grovers Mill. The water had to be raised from the well with an electric pump, which also supplied the water pressure inside the house. Fortunately, our water was clean enough for all of our uses. At least none of us got sick from drinking it.
Much longer ago some wells had a water “tower” above them that consisted of a storage tank and a means of pumping the water from below the ground for storage in the tank above. Before electric pumps were available a windmill was used for this purpose.
The most famous water tower-windmill combination in West Windsor — or maybe anywhere — is that behind the farmhouse in Grovers Mill that was mistaken for a Martian in 1938 by a nearby resident who hit it with a shotgun blast after hearing about it on the Orson Welles radio show. The water tower/Martian is still there. From the tower the water could be piped to the house under pressure due to gravity and used for more purposes than if it were poured from a bucket.
Another water supply that is frequently used locally is the “drilled” well. Such a well is drilled from the surface much farther down than is the dug well. It depends on water veins far below the surface that have high purity water in sufficient quantity to reach the surface under enough pressure — sometimes aided by an electric pump — to be useful in the house. In the West Windsor area quite a few drilled wells like this are used.
Our own experience with our dug well proved to be quite frustrating at first. It was one of those that was lined with bricks and was about 15 feet deep. It had an electric pump in a small ground-level enclosure next to the outside of our kitchen wall. Whenever you ran water you could hear the pump running, since there was no pressurized storage tank in this type of system.
The well worked fine until two things happened at the same time. First we decided to build an addition to the house, and second we underwent a severe drought. The house addition had to be built over the location of the well, but it was clear that it would be feasible to have the addition cover the well in a way that would not interfere with its use. The electric pump would have to be moved, but that did not seem to be a problem. In fact, the pump would now be in an insulated area next to the house. Its original location was subject to freezing temperatures, and we used electric heating tape on it occasionally.
But just a few months after we completed the addition we realized that we had sustained a long dry spell: a very dry summer and fall. In fact we noticed that at times the water pump was sucking air instead of water. Obviously, “the well was running dry.” That old expression took on a special meaning for us. The only choice we had was to have a new well dug.
In those days the township well expert was Ken Conover from Edinburg. He came over and told us where he thought the best location would be. Although a choice like that is usually the job of a professional “dowser,” we trusted Kenny to make the right decision. It was simply to locate the new well about six feet from the old one, but outside the wall of the house addition, and make it five feet deeper.
The new well was “dug” with a four-foot diameter earth auger mounted on a flat-bed truck located in our neighbor’s driveway. As the augured hole got deeper, concrete well rings were added from the top to keep the earth sides from caving in. About a week later the new well was done and working. We even treated ourselves to a new electric pump. Our water situation was very good until we were able to hook up to the local water company that came into the area many years later.
Over the years water towers like the one that remains in Grovers Mill were located in several places in West Windsor. One of the most prominent and useful was the one in Penns Neck near Wilder Avenue. At one time this tower supplied water for the entire Penns Neck community. There are still some in the area who remember it.
But when the first commercial water company came to West Windsor from Cranbury, it got off to a shaky start. Not long after installing its main under Cranbury Road, I noticed that there was frequently a puddle on the side of the road about 200 yards from what is now Carlton Place. The puddle was right in front of one of the houses on the south side of the road. Since I drove past that location every day on the way to work and home, it was easy to see.
When I mentioned the puddle to the township, they told me the water company had checked and said the water was due to yard runoff from one of the nearby houses. Since I knew something about hydraulics, I thought their explanation was very doubtful. Yet when I talked to them directly, they said they had used their latest instruments to show that it was not their water leaking out of the main.
Then some months later some unrelated sewer work required that the road be opened up at that location. Guess what they found. The water main had a leak in it.
