The Agri Industries Powell office has been expanding in recent years, branching out into residential and commercial electrical work, and soon, water well drilling. 

Nick Burke has been an electrician for 20 years and initially began working at Agri Industries wiring pivots. About four years ago the decision was made to branch out into residential, commercial and industrial.

“The push to become our own electrical company and do this was when Nick became a master electrician, that was a game changer,” location manager Pudge Fagan said. 

It’s been a gradual start, because not a lot of people associate Agri Industries with electrical work, Burke said.

Much of what Burke has done so far includes service work called in by realtors, as well as the wiring of some new homes among other jobs. In the commercial realm there is also a milk barn Burke has been upgrading and bringing up to code. 

“The one that we’ve been getting the most of as far as service calls, is realtors [or] renters and something goes down, they just give us a call,” Burke said. “And I think the reason that this particular [customer] has used us is because we got a really short lead time so we can get to them a lot quicker.”

There are handfuls of common things that Burke recommends homeowners watch out for or get fixed. Changing out electrical panels comes to mind.

“There’s so many old panels that one day or another it was the bee’s knees, now they’re proven to be fire hazards or overloaded, [or have] wrong breakers in them,” Burke said.

As an example, Fagan recalled when he ran two pieces of shop equipment on the same circuit which would cause the breaker to shut off.

“You can burn stuff up that way,” Burke added.

He also recommends homeowners look into ground fault interruptors and arc fault protection, “a lot of these older homes didn’t even require that, so getting that in, changed out, and installed correctly has actually been a game changer for safety.” 

The safety code actually undergoes changes every three years, something Burke has to keep up on in order to keep his master’s license.

“If you want to make sure your house is safe, give us a call. We can come check it out like an electrical inspection,” Burke said. 

The Powell offices’ foray into water well drilling is based on seeing a need in the region, with only two licensed water well drillers in the Big Horn Basin, not including Aaqua. 

So Agri Industries bought Aaqua Drilling out of Joliet, Montana, which is going to expand into the Powell area. 

Through Aaqua the Powell office will be able to offer well drilling and servicing.

“Anybody that’s building a new home out in the country, they’re going to need a well. Do they want to wait a year to get a well? We’re trying to offer another service here to speed that process up, same way with the electrical department,” Fagan said. 

Drilling a 100 foot well or less will take a day, said Chris Danielson, Aaquas’ vice president, while a 300 foot well or deeper with pump install will take a few more days.

Most of the area wells use submersible pumps that go into the bottom of the well and suck water out, Fagan said. 

Wells in the area can be as shallow as 30 feet deep and as deep as 1,300 feet, he said. 

Aaqua has 32 years of experience with its drillers, service tech Philip Botch said.

“We are a full term business, so if somebody just wants to make life easy, they can have us drill the well, they can have us install the pump, and that’s even the excavation in between point A and point B,” Botch said, adding, “On top of that, we’ll offer emergency service.”

While in-town residential properties don’t need a well, they can have auxiliary wells that can be installed for things like sprinklers and irrigation. 

Ahead of pump installation, it’s important the homeowner contacts the state and obtains a permit, Danielson said, as this can prevent waiting two to three weeks for construction to begin.

“It’s a neat deal. I’m really excited about it, to be able to have that here in Powell, because we’ve been getting calls for three or four years … because they see on our webpage that our other stores do it, but we didn’t,” Fagan said. “So it’s a game changer for this area, to have another well driller.”