An Inexpensive System to Measure Water Level Rise During the Bouwer and Rice Slug Test

Abstract

An inexpensive wiring probe and automated computerized system for measuring and analyzing rapid water-level rise during a Bouwer and Rice slug test is presented. The wiring probe system was tested in the laboratory against a commercially available pressure transducer (In-Situ PXD-260) at three different flow rates. The probe system was found to accurately measure the rate of water level rise (within approximately 2.2% of rate measured by the pressure transducer system) for a fraction of the cost (less than $40 for the wiring probe, versus approximately $1,250 for the pressure transducer). Slug-test results obtained with this system were used to estimate saturated hydraulic conductivities for a sandy, shallow, unconfined aquifer in Manatee County, Florida. Multiple slug tests from a network of 12 monitoring wells indicated that estimated saturated hydraulic conductivity values were reproducible on a given day, but varied slightly among test dates for some wells. Saturated hydraulic conductivity values ranged from 1.6 m/day to 11.4 m/day (5.25 ft/day to 37.4 ft/day) with a site average of 4.9 m/day (16.1 ft/day).