We are actually dealing with an empty water well, as of June 28, 2026, to present. Campers are spending their last two weeks of summer camp at Daniel Shoki’s house. He is the co-director for UCLife. It is a temporary shut down rather than the end of the road.  

Caiden Sweeney, who has been drilling water wells for three years with the Castor’s in upstate NY, has been consulting us on what to do — which is to bury 800 feet of poly-pipe ($750) from the bunkhouse well. 

We are still waiting on a T-connector delivery from Amazon, a three-way fitting used to split the single bunkhouse pipeline into two separate directions or two additional home sites.

A chain trencher is a heavy machinery used to dig narrow, uniform channels through rock without disturbing the surrounding landscape. And I was just starting to like my wet, undisturbed yard.

Supplies and methods are different in NY than they are here in the south. Jimmy Peek, who drilled our original well in 2020, advised us to drop half a stick of dynamite down the well. That sounds exciting. I can see it now, a violent, high-pressure geyser that can launch heavy, unsuspecting dogs hundreds of feet into the air. Cloudy with a chance of hot dogs.

UCLife was charged $30/ft by well drillers in Chattanooga for the bunkhouse well. They dug 220 feet to release 12 gallons of water per minute, 

12 x 60 = 720 gal / hr

720 x 24 = 17,280 gal / day.

It sounds almost impossible for that much water to gush out of a single spot every single day, but the secret lies entirely beneath the surface. 

Mentone, Alabama, is about halfway between New York and Mexico, near the southern end of the North Temperature Zone, which puts Mentone in a semitropical zone. We don’t get seasons — we just transition from the sauna to the patio.

UCLife