Household Use Only
105,372 of Colorado’s 600,017 well permits are decreed for this — 17.6%.
What this use allows
Household Use Only means the narrowest domestic permit there is: water inside the house, and nothing else. No lawn, no livestock, no garden. It is the use most often misunderstood by a buyer who assumes a well means water for the land.
| Measurement | Median | 90th percentile | Colorado median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Depth | 250 ft | 560 ft | 148 ft — deeper here (72,178 permits, 68 %) |
| Yield | 7 gpm | 15 gpm | 10 gpm — lower here (42,266 permits, 40 %) |
| Static water level | 60 ft | 195 ft | 58 ft — higher here (68,614 permits, 65 %) |
Where they are
| County | Permits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Park | 14,356 | 13.6% |
| Jefferson | 13,857 | 13.2% |
| Teller | 7,077 | 6.7% |
| Grand | 6,408 | 6.1% |
| Larimer | 6,200 | 5.9% |
| Boulder | 5,582 | 5.3% |
| Summit | 4,534 | 4.3% |
| Fremont | 3,535 | 3.4% |
| Clear Creek | 3,399 | 3.2% |
| El Paso | 3,204 | 3.0% |
| Chaffee | 3,098 | 2.9% |
| Custer | 3,056 | 2.9% |
| Gilpin | 2,799 | 2.7% |
| La Plata | 2,545 | 2.4% |
| Gunnison | 2,538 | 2.4% |
| Douglas | 1,632 | 1.5% |
| Weld | 1,617 | 1.5% |
| Lake | 1,456 | 1.4% |
| Garfield | 1,443 | 1.4% |
| Costilla | 1,399 | 1.3% |
| Rio Grande | 1,399 | 1.3% |
| Alamosa | 1,102 | 1.0% |
| Pitkin | 1,064 | 1.0% |
| Pueblo | 983 | 0.9% |
| Saguache | 939 | 0.9% |
| Conejos | 920 | 0.9% |
| Archuleta | 776 | 0.7% |
| Delta | 756 | 0.7% |
| Mineral | 739 | 0.7% |
| Routt | 707 | 0.7% |
What happened to these permits
64,724 of the 105,372 permits decreed for household use only ended with a well the Division was told about — 61.4%. And 21,622 expired without one: 20.5%.
An expired permit is the trap in a rural sale. A seller can produce a permit that lapsed years ago, and a permit is not a water right — the two are separate, and a purchase turns on both. What an expired permit does and does not mean.
| Status | Permits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Well Constructed | 64,724 | 61.4% |
| Permit Expired | 21,622 | 20.5% |
| Permit Issued | 4,630 | 4.4% |
| Permit Canceled | 3,490 | 3.3% |
| Well Replaced - Abandonment Required | 2,683 | 2.5% |
| Application Information Requested | 2,569 | 2.4% |
| Well Abandoned | 1,639 | 1.6% |
| Application Denied | 1,178 | 1.1% |
| Application Withdrawn | 609 | 0.6% |
| Application Received | 607 | 0.6% |
Buying land in Colorado, or need a well drilled?
105,372 well permits are on the Division’s register in Colorado, 21,622 of them expired. This site tells you what a permit says; it does not drill, and it is not advice on a water right. Tell us where and we pass the request to drillers and water-rights advisers working in Colorado.
We take no commission and we recommend no driller. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.
The other decreed uses
- Domestic 243,096
- Monitoring/sampling 91,022
- Irrigation 47,689
- Stock 31,328
- Commercial 22,356
- Other 18,823
- Not stated 15,448
- Municipal 9,424
- Industrial 8,665
- Geothermal 3,815