Where the Well Ends and the Plumbing Begins: A Baldwin County Scope Map

The boundary is the pressure tank. Everything from the aquifer up to and including that tank — the borehole, casing, grout, screen, cap, submersible pump, pitless adapter, pressure switch and the tank itself — belongs to a licensed well contractor. Everything downstream of the tank is house plumbing, and that is ours: supply lines, shutoffs, fixtures, the water heater, drains and vents. Knowing which side a symptom sits on before you pick up the phone is worth more than any advice about what to do next.

The handoff, in order

Follow the water and the ownership changes exactly once.

Water enters through a screen in the borehole, rises inside the casing, and is pushed up by a submersible pump. It leaves the casing through a pitless adapter below the frost line, runs underground to the house or a pump house, and arrives at the pressure tank. The pressure switch on that tank tells the pump when to start and stop. Downstream of the tank is a main shutoff, then the house.

That is the whole map. Ten seconds to read, and it settles the argument in most service calls.

Lillian is one of only 10 of the 22 communities Streamlined Plumbing serves with no registered municipal community water system (private wells). So are Fort Morgan, Magnolia Springs, Stapleton, Stockton, Montrose, Point Clear, Perdido, Rosinton and Bon Secour. Ten of twenty-two — nearly half the map we cover — and every one of those addresses owns the whole left-hand side of that diagram personally.

No water at all — who do I call?

Go and look at the gauge on the pressure tank before you do anything else.

Gauge at zero, pump never runs. Well side. Check the breaker first, because a tripped breaker is the most common version of this and costs nothing to rule out. If the breaker is fine and the pump is silent, that is a pump, pressure-switch or wiring problem, and it needs a well contractor.

Gauge reads normal pressure, taps still dry. House side. Something between the tank and the fixtures is closed, frozen, split or blocked. In late December that list starts with a frozen line — whether to drip your faucets in Baldwin County covers when that risk is real here — and continues with a failed main shutoff or a supply line that has let go somewhere out of sight. That is emergency plumbing and it is ours.

Gauge cycling rapidly, pump starting and stopping every few seconds. Well side, and usually a waterlogged tank that has lost its air charge. It will wear the pump out if it is left alone.

Pressure that has gone bad rather than gone away

The same fork applies, with different tells.

Well side: a tank that will not hold pressure, a pump that runs constantly, a system that was undersized for the house from the start, or a well whose yield has changed. All of that is a well contractor's diagnosis, and a plumber guessing at it is doing you no favours.

House side: a failing pressure-reducing valve, a main shutoff someone left half closed after a repair, galvanised pipe that has narrowed with corrosion, aerator screens fouled by iron, or a leak large enough to be stealing supply. Low water pressure as a whole-house symptom with a healthy pressure gauge is a plumbing job, and the leak version of it is the one worth catching early — leak search and repair is cheaper than the damage it prevents.

What Alabama actually puts on the well side

This is not a matter of custom. It is written down.

ADEM Admin. Code r. 335-9-1 governs water well construction in Alabama through the department's Water Well Standards Program. Anyone proposing to drill files for a water well driller's licence on or before September 30 each year. A driller must show at least two years of water well construction experience and score at least 70% on an authorised examination. Before work starts, a Notification of Intent is filed; within 30 days of completion, a Certification of Completion — and the board notifies the local health authorities within seven days of receiving it.

The construction standards are just as specific. Casing extends from one foot above ground level down to a suitable impervious layer and is sealed there, and in no case is the casing less than 20 feet. Wells with casing larger than eight inches inside diameter are grouted to 20 feet or more. Every well is left with a secure cap. Abandoning a well is a procedure too: it is filled with puddled clay containing 50 ppm of chlorine to within 20 feet of the top, and the top 20 feet is filled with cement grout or concrete.

Nothing in an Alabama Master Plumber licence authorises any of that, MP-4462 included. It runs the other way as well — a driller's licence is not a plumbing licence.

What is ours, on a well property

Everything past the tank, without qualification. Supply lines and repipes, shutoff valves and stops, water line repair and replacement, fixture and valve work, water heaters and tankless units, drains, vents and sewer piping, camera inspection and jetting, and hidden-leak location. Water chemistry does not change what we do, only how fast the parts wear — which is why the well-water posts on iron staining and acidic groundwater and copper are about fixtures and pipe rather than about wells.

Distance is a genuine factor out here and worth mentioning on the phone. Lillian is 33.9 miles and about 56 minutes from the shop on Morphy Avenue in Fairhope, and the Perdido Bay shoreline, Spanish Cove and rural Lillian all add gate, drive and outbuilding time on top of that. Telling us the plant is 200 yards behind the house turns a two-visit job into one.

What we never do — said once, plainly

We do not drill, service, pull or repair wells or well pumps. We do not service pressure tanks. We do not pump septic tanks or service field lines. We do not sell or install water treatment, and we do not test water. We do not repair appliances or garbage disposals, we do not perform certified backflow testing, and we do not do gas work.

That list is not modesty. On a topic like this the temptation is to blur the edge and let a homeowner assume one call covers it, and that assumption is what produces a wasted afternoon and a second bill. A well contractor, a treatment company and a plumber are three trades. Out in Point Clear, Montrose and along the bay, most well owners already have all three numbers — it is worth having them before December rather than during it.

We answer around the clock at (251) 423-7654. Brandon Byrd, Alabama Master Plumber MP-4462.

Sources. ADEM Admin. Code r. 335-9-1, Licensing and Certification of Water and Water Well Construction Standards (Water Well Standards Program) — rules .03, .04 and .06. USGS Open-File Report 96-487, Ground-Water Resources Data for Baldwin County, Alabama (Robinson, Moreland and Clark, 1996). EPA SDWIS registered community water systems for Baldwin County, retrieved 2026-08-01. OSRM driving route, 59 Morphy Ave, Fairhope to Lillian, retrieved 2026-08-01.