Sinking a shallow well

[NEOhioSmiths]

Hi everyone. I'm a relatively newbie to posting (took multiple attempts to register) but have lurked for awhile.

I have a question about sinking a shallow well. Our home has well water which is great. I would like to sink a shallow well in our back yard to be used with a hand pump for watering an expanded garden area. We have 2 rain barrels (75 gallons each) that we use for our 13 raised beds, but we are expanding the garden area and know that the water barrels won't be enough. In fact, that 150 gallons goes fast - enough so that in some hot weeks we were stetching hoses from the house to water the garden.

Is this something that can be done by hand? How much might it cost to have a professional come out a sink a shallow well? We don't need the water tested or anything as it would be used strictly for the garden.

Thanks for any opinions/experiences/advice.

[JayinCT]

I am interested in the replies you get here too. The water table at my place is only at about 8 feet, and I have often thought about doing this myself. I know I have to go deeper than that in order to have enough water in the well pipe to pump without sucking air after the first gallon, but other than that, I'm lost.

Jay

[wy_white_wolf]

How deep do you need to go?

What type of soil/rock is there?

A sandpoint can be driven by hand in softer soils. If it's hard rock than it'll need drilled.

[SteveD(TX)]

Here's an interesting site for you:

http://www.fdungan.com/well.htm

[fishhead]

I've pounded down several sand points by hand. Now I rent an electric pipe driver for $40. It's like a jackhammer you see construction workers using to break up sidewalks but with a different bit.

The vibration will unscrew the pipe so you have to stop every couple of minutes and tighten the joint.

Fill the pipe up with water and when it disappears you should be in the vein.

Even if your well water level is 8' the sand point can still be a long ways down. My well is at 60' but the standing water level is 11'.

[Cabin Fever]

I posted this is an earlier thread: http://homesteadingtoday.com/showpos...91&postcount=6

[watcher]

The well at our home site when I was a kid was 18' deep and we drove it. We made a 'oversized post driver' out of an old pipe with some scrap steel welded in one end and some lead poured on top (well really the bottom) so that the soft lead hit the cap on the well pipe.

Later on we had a 2" PVC 40' well "washed" down. Had a guy come out with a pump on a gas motor. He dug a hole, poured in about 10 gals of water into the hole, dropped the pickup for the pump in the hole, attached the other end to a piece of pipe and used the water to force the pipe into the ground. When the water stopped coming out of the pipe he knew he hit water. Pulled that pipe out and dropped the screen point and 2" PVC pipe down.

I don't see any reason you can't do either of those yourself. AAMOF, I plan on washing down a well to use for the critters and/or garden in a few years.

[shadowwalker]

Ok you got me wanting to tell one way I dug a well. I only went down about 22 feet. I got one of those old type post hole diggers that you turned one way to dig/drill. I rivited pieces of car innertube to the inside of the side and down onto the top of the digging openings. I made a extension onto the top of the actual digging head. I rivited a cut piece out of a metal five gallon bucket onto it, and rivited the sides of the bucket. So I had almost 2 more feet to fill on top of the length of of the head. I also broke loose the threaded piece of the handle and the straight shaft of the digger. I got a close match of metal well pipe OD to ID. I then drilled a hole and put a 3/16 bolt through and had a double nut on the other side. I then witched the well and we took turns at the "handle" we measured the setup at the head and got a approximate distance of how far to drill the head until it was filled. The second piece of metal pipe to attain the desired depth, screws onto the frist pipe, but needs a hole drilled onto it for the handle.
How it works. As you turn the handle the head slowly twists down and the dirt fills into the inside of it. The rubber tubing flexes inward to allow this. It then falls flat into the inside of the head to keep most of the dirt from falling out. Even when you get to sand/water mix. I felt bad, kinda. I had about thirty bucks into the whole setup. I sold it for seventy five when we had a yard sale to move to tennessee.
Backwoods home magazine has a way to drill a shallow well with plastic pvc pipe and a small water pump. It is in a issue a few years back. I used that at my house and on another well before we left wyo. Worked good too. Cost about 85 dollars to go 40 feet, pipe and all. I had the gas water pump.

[Ralph in N.E.Oh]

I saw a guy dig straight down with a "extend-a-hoe" back hoe. It was about 18 feet. He then put lime stone in the bottom. Then took a driveway culvert plastic pipe, bored some 1/2 inch holes into the sides at what would be the bottom of the well, put the culvert pipe in and back filled around it. The pipe stuck out of the ground about 30 inches. He built a deck around the pipe about 3 foot by 5 foot. They mounted a pitcher pump on the deck. Works well

[moopups]

In my younger days we put in shallow wells by hand, here in sand soil. Because there was water available already we just took 5 foot pieces of metal 2 inch pipe, notched the entry end and attached a garden hose to the top. Pressure on, we twisted the pipe with pipe wrenches.

Once the pipe started to sink rapidly we attached a rope so it would not sink out of sight. The water caused the sand to come to the surface. Once the pipe started sliding freely we went another couple of feet and then attached a hand (pitcher) pump.

The pump had to be rinsed very often and spare leathers were present, usually 2 to 3 sets were consumed as a cylindrical cone of sand appeared below the hand pump. About 3 feet high. Once the underground cavity was established we dug down to the upper coupling and attached the corrected length as was needed.

Allow the pipe a couple of days to 'cure', before attaching the draw pipe connections.