Driving a well by hand

fishhead · #1 08/27/10, 03:36 PM

If the weather holds this weekend I'm going to pull my shallow well, clean and redo the joints and drive it again. I used an electric driver the first time but this time I'm going back to a post driver because I've used an electric driver for the last 3 wells I've pounded and it seems like the joints loosened too easily.

I was talking with a guy this week and he said he helped pound a well in with a fence post driver. He said the plumber he was helping only used short 12" taps to drive the well and it went in just as fast as when he was using full strokes.

Has anyone else had that experience?

**Cabin Fever** · #2 08/27/10, 06:06 PM

My brothers and I put in my sand point with a homemade fence post driver borrowed from a friend. The driver was made of thick 6" diameter steel pipe and about 2 ft long. I suppose we drove about 1ft per 5 or 6 taps....can't remember exactly, its been 14 years and the well is still working perfectly.

fishhead · #3 08/27/10, 09:57 PM

I'm wondering if the short less powerful taps might work just as well as the all-out bashing that I've done in the past. I'm going down the same hole so I won't get to find out this time.

**Cabin Fever** · #4 08/28/10, 08:18 AM

I dunno. But my intuition tells me short taps are not effective as long ones. Think about driving a nail into a board. You can drive the nail with short or long swings of the hammer. The nail will be driven home with two or three long swings, but it may take a dozen or so short taps to do the same job. I'm sure you can drive your sandpoint with short taps, it will probably just take more taps.

The joints in my well never loosened. I used 5-foot, 2-inch dia. pipe sections and special drive couplings. My late Dad was a plumber. He told me to use pipe dope on the connections and use the pipe wrench every couple of feet to keep the joints tight. I used a "sacrificial" short section of pipe to beat on. This section was removed once the casing was completely driven.

fishhead · #5 08/28/10, 10:57 AM

If I had waited to retighten every 2 feet I would have destroyed the threads. I think it was because the electric driver hits so many times in a short time period.