Drilling your own well

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HoosierLawnGnome
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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 4th, 2014, 1:45 pm

Well, I hope to start drilling tomorrow.

My plan is to dig down a few feet with the post hole digger, then start with this 4" drill pipe, fashioned with my bench grinder in < 1 minute:
Image

Here is the handle I'll use, which will be fastened to the 4" pipe with a few pipe hangers, bolts, washers, and wire nuts for easier adjustment up the pipe as I drill downwards:
Image

Finally here's the drill head with two hose attachments:
Image

Once I get the 4" pilot hole down to about basement level, I'll switch to a 2" drill pipe until I reach 25' or hit water, whatever comes first. I will fashion a drill bit from a 2" male, galvanized pipe nipple I picked up for a few dollars - much stronger than PVC.

Then, drop the 1 1/4" well pipe with inside couplings.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by andy10917 » July 4th, 2014, 1:56 pm

What's your plan for if/when you hit a rock?

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 4th, 2014, 2:35 pm

andy10917 wrote:What's your plan for if/when you hit a rock?
Obviously that is a concern with hand digging.

If it won't come out and the metal bit wont break it up, drill another hole.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 5th, 2014, 9:42 pm

Spent and hour or so on the well today.

Started off digging with the post hole digger down a few feet. Hit hard clay, which is really rough on the drill bit.

Here is my handle - wing nuts for easier adjustment upwards:

Image

Image

After I got as much as I could with the post hole digger, I started water drilling with the 4" pipe and PVC drill bit (jagged edge) - the clay was murder on it and it was very slow going. After 6 inches the PVC bit was rounding out a fair amount.

Image

Here's the 2" metal drill bit I fashioned out of a galvanized steel, male pipe nipple:

Image

Notice the very important set screw:
Image
The set screw is not through the PVC pipe - only through the PVC and flush with the inside edge of the metal pipe nipple.

The PVC drill bit just wasn't cutting through the clay very well, so I switched to the 2" pipe and things went much more quickly.

Anyways, I will be hitting this tomorrow some more.

Sand and clay are what I'm in so far. The clay is really hard to cut through. Yay for metal pipe nipple drill bit.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 6th, 2014, 9:31 pm

Got a decent amount of drilling done tonight, down to about 8'.

From 0-8' it was clay.

At 8' it looks like I've hit some black sand.

8' is at the basement/foundation level, so I'm hoping to start seeing some ground water soon.


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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 8th, 2014, 10:40 am

So, when I drilled into the sand the other night, I popped the PVC pipe and cover over the hole to see if we had water. Went out to check yesterday and this morning, and there is still water at the bottom of my hole. We've had rain, so I'm not 100% sure - but I'm wondering if I've hit the static water level. Either way, I will need to drill down at least 10 feet past it.

I bought 2 PVC well screens that I'm going to couple and submerge several feet below the static water level. This should give me a better flow rate. Either way I'm going to drill well past the static water level and monitor the well for a while to see if it shifts any so I know if I need to keep drilling deeper.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by JustAGuy » July 8th, 2014, 10:45 am

HoosierLawnGnome wrote:So, when I drilled into the sand the other night, I popped the PVC pipe and cover over the hole to see if we had water. Went out to check yesterday and this morning, and there is still water at the bottom of my hole. We've had rain, so I'm not 100% sure - but I'm wondering if I've hit the static water level. Either way, I will need to drill down at least 10 feet past it.

I bought 2 PVC well screens that I'm going to couple and submerge several feet below the static water level. This should give me a better flow rate. Either way I'm going to drill well past the static water level and monitor the well for a while to see if it shifts any so I know if I need to keep drilling deeper.
How deep do you think you are now?
You will probably have to do a pump test to see if you hit the water table.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by Tony alony » July 8th, 2014, 10:57 am

HoosierLawnGnome, One thing I haven't seen you mention is how will you test the water?
Or is that not an issue since you are using it for irrigation only?

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 8th, 2014, 11:20 am

I'll rent or buy a pump to test. Not too hard.

Once I'm pretty sure I've surpassed the static water level - hook up pump, get a 5 gallon bucket, see how long it takes to fill it up. Do that multiple times and average it.

Then, try to pump the well dry and see how long it takes, see how long it takes to recharge it, etc.

That should validate whether or not it will supply the volume and rate of water I need. Basically this well will have no storage capacity so it will need to supply a constant rate of 20 GPM. Basically, I need to be below the static water level or I won't have a well.

ETA: It's pretty easy to send in a sample to the County to test, but I'll wait a few weeks to do that. Not too concerned as this is an irrigation-only well - but it would be nice to know of course.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by LoneRanger » July 8th, 2014, 8:11 pm

What did you base your 20gpm calculation off of?

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 8th, 2014, 10:23 pm

LoneRanger wrote:What did you base your 20gpm calculation off of?
Installer says I need 16-18 GPM. So, 20 is my goal.

----------

I attached the second 10' section of 2" pvc drill pipe tonight and got down another three feet very quickly - it was sand. I wasn't able to get much deeper as I hit something that slowed progress tremendously - felt rocky - so I may be in some rocks or shale - and I didn't have the time it takes to work through that.

I'm going to let the water sit again. If it looks like I've hit water bearing sand in that 8-11' range, I'll try to drill down another foot and then drop a well point and pipe. I'll measure that before I do anything else. It wasn't too hard to drill down that far - it would be easier to drill a second well and tie them together if it has any sort of production than take a gamble on a deeper well or a completely new location.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by LoneRanger » July 9th, 2014, 6:37 pm

HoosierLawnGnome wrote:Installer says I need 16-18 GPM. So, 20 is my goal.
How many heads per zone?

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 9th, 2014, 7:56 pm

LoneRanger wrote:
HoosierLawnGnome wrote:Installer says I need 16-18 GPM. So, 20 is my goal.
How many heads per zone?
I don't know what they plan to install per zone. I expect it to be lower than their normal yard given I have a pretty small area.

I'm trusting them to make a well-thought-out recommendation. The owner is the one who gave me the specifications. 16-18 GPM and a 1 1/2 HP pump. I'm shooting for 20 GPM and a 1 1/2 HP pump.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Checked the well tonight - water looks to be at the same level as previous days, even though I dug 3' deeper yesterday. So, it's looking like I've reached the static water level!

Next evening I have free, I will flush the well, drill down another foot or two (if possible), flush flush flush - then set the well screen and test GPM with a pump.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 10th, 2014, 8:00 pm

Water still at the same level as previous days, so I'm counting that as the static water level.

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by Othertime » July 14th, 2014, 10:40 pm

So you drill any more or you give up and just tap into county water :)

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by andy10917 » July 14th, 2014, 10:43 pm

He's on Vacay...

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by tlinden » July 15th, 2014, 7:40 am

Who is sitting the lawn then!?

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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 15th, 2014, 9:17 am

I'll test flow rate this weekend.


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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 15th, 2014, 6:32 pm

tlinden wrote:Who is sitting the lawn then!?
haha

I can see the lawn via my high def IP camera system. Yes I actually verified how long it rained the other day and zoomed in on a few trouble spots with it lol.

I applied PGR and cut it a wee bit shorter right before we left. Held off on the milo. With temps in the 70s and upper 60s for the week it won't need cut too badly. I also did a nice application of serenade. Hopefully the rust will be going away.


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Re: Drilling your own well

Post by HoosierLawnGnome » July 15th, 2014, 6:32 pm

tlinden wrote:Who is sitting the lawn then!?
haha

I can see the lawn via my high def IP camera system. Yes I actually verified how long it rained the other day and zoomed in on a few trouble spots with it lol.

I applied PGR and cut it a wee bit shorter right before we left. Held off on the milo. With temps in the 70s and upper 60s for the week it won't need cut too badly. I also did a nice application of serenade. Hopefully the rust will be going away.


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