Anybody dig their own well?

Snal~

Snal~

I Run A Tight Shipwreck (Tragic Boating Accident)
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Something that would supply "occasional" water not necessarily potable?

Watched a video of a guy driving an iron pipe down, first short section was perforated and pointed (manufactured for this purpose) and subsequent sections were added via threaded couplings.
He went 25 feet.
 
How exactly did he drive the pipe down? Does he own a crane and access to that hammer thingie they use to drive piles at the beach? Clay really sucks I can't imagine him doing that by hand.

But no I've never built a well I just have questions lol.
 
heard of it being done the exact way you describe. you'd want to do it in an area where you expect the water table to be very close to the surface.
 
Snal~ said:
Something that would supply "occasional" water not necessarily potable?

Watched a video of a guy driving an iron pipe down, first short section was perforated and pointed (manufactured for this purpose) and subsequent sections were added via threaded couplings.
He went 25 feet.
Click to expand...
Was it this guy?

 
We did this in Missouri for cattle water. Some 25ft some up to 80ft. While a workout. Not as bad as one might think. Iirc the average we got was something like 40 gallon/ hr.

The key was to keep filling the pipe with water to soften the dirt below the pipe being driven.
 
papa_smurf said:
heard of it being done the exact way you describe. you'd want to do it in an area where you expect the water table to be very close to the surface.
Click to expand...
Not sure if it'll make a difference but this is within a few hundred yards of the lake (not my property between me and the lake or I'd just pull from there).
There is more than 25' in elevation above the lake though.
I did find one spot that looked an awful lot like there was a spring there at one time.
 
Put a wellhead on a 5’ pipe and screw a coupling on the pipe, then use a pump driver. I have my granddaddy’s and it is an old tractor axle with a weighted section and a 3’ long tapered pin under it. Thing probably weighs 50-60 pounds…
You put it in the pipe, pick it up about 2’ and drop it. Remove it, take off the beater coupling, put a new coupling on, add another 5’ pipe, repeat until you get water….
 
Snal~ said:
Something that would supply "occasional" water not necessarily potable?

Watched a video of a guy driving an iron pipe down, first short section was perforated and pointed (manufactured for this purpose) and subsequent sections were added via threaded couplings.
He went 25 feet.
Click to expand...
People did that a lot around Norfolk and Virgina Beach when I lived there in the 1970s-1980s. The sandy soil and high water table made it relatively easy.

Drive a Sand-Point Well to Save Thousands of Dollars – Mother Earth News

Homesteaders with a shallow water table and sandy soil can save thousands of dollars over the cost of a drilled well by driving a sand point themselves for a secondary or primary water source.
www.motherearthnews.com
 
I did one on the coastal plain in sand. It was pretty easy. I used 3/4 inch pvc pipe. It had a cap on one end and a garden hose fitting on the other end. I drilled five 1/32 holes in the cap. I hooked it up to the garden hose and blew down my well casing. Used a ladder and did 10 foot sections until water quit coming out the top. Went down an additional 2 feet and pulled the water hose section out.
I cut the casing to about a foot and inserted the pickup pipe that had slits in the pipe. Hooked it up and gtg. I decided later to make everything below the surface to protect from freezing. Built a small subsurface well house about 3x3 out of brick and mortar.
Worked great until the development behind my hood was built. They dug ponds all around their beautiful treeless vision. The water table dropped and the well went dry. My neighbors well 30 feet away went dry too.
It was about 25 feet deep.
The pvc water hose setup is also good for putting pipe or electrical wire under sidewalks and driveways.
 
My dad used to drive them in the woods to water the mules that pulled the logs onto the deck of his portable ground sawmill.
The first pointed perforated section was called a “well point”.
I never drove one, but I did get called occasionally to open a clogged well point. How? With my short barreled 12 gauge single barrel shotgun we kept for that purpose. 1950s.
Don’t ever remember dying of lead poisoning?
 
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My dad drove a well at our cottage that was on a pond in Plymouth MA.
The soil was mostly sand and he drove the well about 30 ft from the water edge near a tree.
he start with a well tip and 5 ft sections of pipe.
The end had a screw on cap to protect the threads on the pipe and he used a weight with a pulley connected to the tree to drive the well. The weight had a guide pipe the went thru a hole in the cap to keep things aligned.
pull drop. Pull drop etc
it took him two days to go 35 ft deep And a few days of pumping to get all the sand out of the system.
 
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