Driving down well casing question

[FarmboyBill]

I was looking at a Lehmans catalog. It showed a sand point, screwed to 4ft lenths of pipe. Said for 2in pipe ID it used a 1 11/16 cylinder. Never saw one that small. What would be .12gal a min? A water glass full??

ANYWAY. I was wondering how a person driving one of those into the ground would know when he hit water?

[Cabin Fever]

I drove a 2" sand point well and used that exact cylinder....about 10 strokes per gallon.

You know when you've hit water when (1) the driving gets easier and (2) when you drop a weighted string down the casing and the bottom of the string comes back wet.

[FarmboyBill]

Yup. Hadnt thought of that. Thanks CF. Ive already got the parachute cord for that very purpose, sorda, with knots in at every 10ft down to 15ft I think. Place im looking at has a standing overflow pond fed by a river. We got 2 rains last week. When I went to look at it, the water has rose up to within less than a quarter mile from the place. Id think that water underground would be rather close to the surface.

[rambler]

The key is to find a gravely sandy vein that is both filtering and carrying the water in it.

In my clay soils with the glaciers scrapping all this clay off of Canada 10,000 years ago and dumping it here, the standpoints just rarely work. We needed bored 3 foot diameter wells to have enough surface around for the water to ooze into the well. The water is down there, just moves so very slow a little 2 inch pipe can't collect it fast enough.

Paul

[FarmboyBill]

Well, its sandy soil in Okla, to varying extents.

[rambler]

Nearly everyone around here has gone to deep wells, with a pump down near the bottom of the well. The shallow ones tended to be near water, and the water floods so bad every spring, the wells would be basically surface water for a couple weeks during snow melt, not so good.

In my neighborhood you typically hit water at 260 fee.

I hope so, my well just went bad last week, sucking air (we figure plugged screen, treated it about 8 years ago, they figure that only works 50% of the time so they hate to throw more money at the old one).

So, get to deal with that in the next 3 weeks.

Always something.

My old well ended in some very very very fine sugar sand down there, they said the new way of digging a well they can go through the fine sand and be in courser sand. The old way it was difficult to push through the fine sand, so they had to stop and put in such a fine screen, those are prone to mineralizing over as last time, or silting up, as they suspect this time.

He figures they can got 10-20 feet deeper in a new well and be in much easier sand to deal with. Old well was made in 1970.

Paul

[FarmboyBill]

Mine here was 187ft.

[Nimrod]

Paul,
You could try pulling the pump out of the well and firing a 22 round down the casing. The shock wave may dislodge the sediment plugging the screen and the well will let in water again. You have nothing to lose.

FBB,
They make sections of well casing longer than 4 feet. The special connectors for a driven sandpoint are expensive so use longer sections and fewer couplings.