50th Anniversary Articles

Tasker's Well Company is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this month.

Tasker's Well Company, Inc., located in Northwood, NH, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this year. In 1947, Elmer D. Tasker (known as "The Man With The Tin Hat") founded the company. This is a second generation family business, now owned and operated by brothers Dan and Jeff Tasker. Tasker's Well specializes in drilling rock wells, gravel wells and the hydrofracturing of existing low-yield wells.

In its 50 years in business, Tasker's Well has drilled in over 135 towns in New Hampshire and Maine. They believe their success comes from 50 years of proven ethics, integrity and reliability in the water well drilling business. The company's slogan is: "Our business is going in the hole."

On October 4, 1997, approximately four hundred invited guests will have the opportunity to spend the afternoon visiting and reminiscing with the Tasker family to celebrate their success.

If you want to know about wells, ask someone whose "business is going in the hole." That would be Elmer Tasker or either of his two sons, Jeff and Dan.

Tasker's Well Company, Inc., celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is a family business, with the Tasker boys now running the day-to-day operations at the company their father Elmer founded with his brother Murray.

For years the company's trucks have crossed the state bearing the slogan, "We need your business - Our business is going in the hole."

In addition to the countless wells it has drilled for homeowners, it put in the well at the Four Winds restaurant halfway up the Bretton Woods Ski Area and a well in Sugar Hill for the late actress Bette Davis.

Tasker's operates two drilling rigs; each with its own crew headed by Dan or Jeff, and has a total of about 10 workers.

The drilling trucks, weighing 33 tons apiece, can bore through bedrock at a pace of between 60 and 70 feet an hour, depending on the hardness of the rock they hit on the way down.

The drills, actually pneumatic hammers with carbide tipped drill bits, are a vast improvement over the old cable tool rigs that Elmer had when he broke into the business. A modern rig can strike 1,500 blows a minute against bedrock, quickly chipping away in a steady drive downward. The old cable tool rig, also called a pounder or yo-yo, for it's up and down action, topped out at 60 strikes a minute.

Now retired 77-year-old Elmer Tasker still takes drilling seriously. He's known for wearing a brimmed, tin hardhat nearly everywhere he goes.

"We run a business, not a hobby," he says pointing out a neat trailer full of differently sized copper fittings. "Everything is organized."

He said he got into the well drilling business when he got out of the service after World War II. His brother Murray was working with a well driller and was ready to quit. Elmer suggested they buy their own rig and start a business. Then he headed to the bank, where he asked the man "with the most feathers in his hat" if he could borrow $2,500.00.

"He said he'd need to check our credit, so I said, 'I'll save you the trouble. We don't have any.' He did some checking around anyway and told us the next day we could have the loan," Elmer said.

This was long enough ago, 1947, that the company's phone number was 125 - that's it, just three numbers. The drilled wells, as opposed to dug wells, were known as artesian wells. These days, it's pretty much just a well.

Eventually, Elmer and his brother split the business and some land and parted ways, with Murray starting up his own excavating business. The two remained on good terms throughout, he said.

Elmer said he spent a lot of time looking down well holes over the years, by daylight, by twilight and floodlight. He's been on the job weekdays, Sundays and holidays, never wanting to turn down a customer's request or to leave one dry.

"There's not a lot of money drilling wells. Working eight hours a day is about the break even point. The time I'd spend after that was profit. I've worked 12 and 14 hour days most of my life," he said. But it wasn't all grunt work, either. "I tell everybody that just because I wear this tin hat doesn't mean I've got nothing under it," he said.

Like any successful service provider, Jeff and Dan Tasker said they take quality seriously in this business. Dan noted that the company's salesman recently completed a guidebook listing the local planning rules on wells in each New Hampshire community.

There's no divining rod approach to putting in a well anymore. Septic designs pretty much run the rest of the planning, Dan said. Once the septic plan is set, the well is placed, at least 75 feet from the septic system, and usually 75 to 100 feet from a property line.

Jeff said most people can expect to spend between $4,000 and $6,000 for a well. "Like I tell people, you've got to figure for the worst and hope for the best," he said.

The hole can go as deep as 520 feet on a residential well before he'll stop drilling. If a well isn't getting a flow of at least three gallons a minute at that point, he hydrofractures the well, forcing water into the hole at high pressure to fracture the bedrock and widen seams and veins through which groundwater runs. (His dad was a leader in the industry in converting the process, used by oil drillers, to water well drilling.)

At the other end of the spectrum, Jeff said he's drilled wells that have produced more than 120 gallons a minute, flowing up out of the top of the well casing.

Every foot of a well shaft holds 1.5 gallons of water, Tasker said. At that rate, a 500-foot deep well will hold enough water for a family of seven to use for a day, no matter how slowly it recharges. "That's why we go to 520 feet," he said.

Deep wells also tend to be fed by more reliable sources of water, less affected by surface conditions and without fluctuations in the chemistry, such as ph levels, iron or manganese.

Tasker's doesn't restrict itself to drilling new wells. The company also deepens existing wells, looking for new sources of water below the original shaft and hydrofracturing when necessary.

Over the years, he said, Tasker's reputation for quality has made selling its services easier, Jeff said.

"We do a lot of word of mouth work. With that kind of work, you name your price and do the job right. You usually don't get an argument over the price," he said

In 1983 Elmer Tasker was nominated by then-Governor John Sununu to serve on the state Water Well Board. When asked to submit a resume noting his qualifications, Tasker sent the following letter. It was printed on the company letterhead, which includes the slogan, "Our Business is Going in the Hole."

Governor John Sununu
State House
Concord , NH 03301

I was born September 29,1919, on a farm on Jenness Pond in Northwood, NH where I spent my boy hood years.

I graduated from Coe-Brown Northwood Academy in Northwood, NH fifteenth in my class. It was a small class (15).

I joined the United States Army in November 1940 and served until October 1945.

My wife Edith lost her husband in World War II and was left with two daughters. I met her when I was 30 and we were married in December 1949. My wife has been the best thing that ever happened to me and the only thing I ever got secondhand that was any good. I can assure you the old clich? that virgins make for happier marriages is a myth and an old wives' tale.

We now have three sons who work for me and have reached the age where they think I'm senile. I agree with them because I realize I get paid by the foot and not for arguing about mistakes they make. Now and then they listen and realize every mistake I help avoid through experience, helps the bank balance.

I have been in the same business for 36 years and have never had a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau.

In addition to well drilling, this company has installed many pumps, tested many wells for yield, drawdown, etc. on 72-hour pump tests.

I realize highway salt is one of the top polluters of wells in New Hampshire and all water that passes through and approved and controlled by the State Liquor Commission is polluted to the point it has caused more deaths and accidents than any war or major catastrophe, also more broken homes, wife abuse, child abuse, broken friendships and keeps the state hospital filled. The kick the water pollution is on at this time is the natural elements found in the ground, arsenic and fluoride. If you think these are false statements, contact New Hampshire College. I am sending some interesting articles to show how unimportant this kick is. I am 64 years old and have never heard of anyone becoming deathly sick or dying from drinking a glass of water in New Hampshire.

If you need a man on this committee that has more common sense than education, that understands cable tool and rotary drilling, working head or jack pumps, jet pumps and submersible pumps, I feel I qualify. If you need a yes man, a patsy or a faker, I don’t.