How deep are wells near me?

What the lookup counts

Drillers file a report with the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) for the wells they complete, and the board publishes the reports from 2003 onward as the Submitted Drillers Reports database. This lookup reads that public file, keeps the new wells marked for household use, and groups them by the mailing town and county the driller wrote down.

Depth means the bottom of the drilled hole as the driller recorded it. It is not the depth of the pump, the screen or the water. Wells for irrigation, monitoring and public supply are left out, and so are repairs and replacements.

Each row is one county and one mailing town. A Magnolia address can sit well outside the city limits, and a few mailing towns, such as Hockley and Spring, cross county lines, so they appear once per county. A row needs at least 30 reports to show. Houston, Katy and Baytown are left out because each is a huge mailing area that mixes dense city streets with rural lots, and this lookup is built for the north-county towns.

How to read the median and the bar

The median is the middle report: half of the new home wells in that town were drilled shallower and half deeper. The bar shows the middle 80 percent of wells, which leaves out the shallowest tenth and the deepest tenth so that one odd report does not stretch it. The black tick marks the median.

The state file also holds a few reports far deeper than the rest, and some are probably entry errors that no one has checked. That is why the lookup shows the middle 80 percent and leaves the single deepest report out.

Why the layer changes from Conroe to Tomball

The Layer column names the aquifer layer that most wells use near each town. The state's groundwater database records a layer for a smaller set of wells, mostly monitoring and older wells, so the lookup borrows it. For each town it takes the recorded wells within 10 miles of the town's typical well that were drilled to a similar depth, and reports how they split between layers.

Around Conroe, 83 percent of those wells are in the Evangeline. Around Tomball, 75 percent are in the Chicot, and around Cypress the figure is 90 percent. Near Hempstead in Waller County, 90 percent are in the Evangeline. The Chicot lies above the Evangeline. How deep are wells in the Conroe area explains how the layers stack.

Read the column as a description of the neighbors. It does not say which layer your own well would reach, and a town with fewer than 30 recorded wells nearby, such as New Caney or Kingwood, shows no layer at all.

What to do with the number

Use the median to start a conversation, not to set a drilling depth. These steps turn it into something a provider can price.

• Ask a neighbor for the driller's report on their well. It lists the total depth and the layer used.
• Look up registered wells near your lot. The depth guide lists where to find the public well map and the state records.
• Ask each provider which layer they expect to reach and why, and how the price changes with every extra foot. The cost guide shows why each extra hundred feet moves the total.
• Read well registration and permits before anything is drilled, because a district may set rules for your property.

What this lookup cannot tell you

A town median is an average of many lots. Your own lot may sit over a different part of the layer, and a well drilled next door last year may have gone deeper or stopped shallower for reasons the report does not show. The lookup also says nothing about water quality, flow or cost.

The reports show what the driller wrote down. The state says its file does not verify well locations, so a report filed under one town can describe a well on the far side of the line. Treat small differences between towns, say 10 or 20 ft between medians, as noise.

This site does not drill wells. It is an independent referral service that passes your request to a local provider, who sets the price and the schedule after hearing the details.