Hand Digging a well
 

The water table around here is between 60, and 100 feet. Im always asking my dad, who is 64ish, how people did things 100 years ago. He grew up on a very poor farm and did a lot of things the old way.

I asked him one time how people hand dug wells. It wass pretty obvious to him....and to me after he told me,lol. They dug a hole big enough for the digging person to fit in it. WHen the digger got down 4 feet or so they build a wood or brick support to hold the dirt from caving in...and they just kept doing that...sending th edirt up in a bucket...for however many days it took until they got water.


I met this young couple who want to live as old fashioned as they can once they get some land. I was thinking today that I would like to help them hand dig a well. As I ran it through my mind, I got into a day dream...I saw myself in the bottom of the hole, looking up as my full bucket was being pulled up. I got to thinking....do these things ever cave in while being dug?

I tell ya what, that thought will snap a guy out of a daydream! lol

So does anyone recall any grand parent or great grand parent stories about digging wells?

Id like to hear them

Unfortunately, many a well digger met an untimely end by exactly as you imagined. I'd strongly suggest against it.

I don’t have any stories, but the idea of digging and being lowered into a well that deep does spark the imagination. Some scary images! Lol
:eek:

michiganfarmer.I've done this in sandy soil.The method is to get cement well tiles.These tiles are about 5 foot round.DIG Hole about 5 feet deep. Set first tile.Under mine first tile by digging deeper. Set 2nd tile.Continue to dept you need.I only had to go about 25 feet.The weight of the tile pushed the casing down as I went.At 60 feet I would think the hole at the top would look very small.

I'd rather chew glass than climb into a hole even 10 feet deep. LOL That would be a LOT of work. I'm certainly not opposed to physical labor, but when you factor in the risk and the options.... AND you gotta figure out what to do with 2000+/- cubic feet of clay, rocks and God knows what else you might dig up... Then you still have to get the water out - hand crank a 3 gal bucket? That's 25 lbs plus the weight of the bucket how many times a day? I'm gettin' tired just thinking about this... Wouldn't need a health club membership though...

Take pics if you decide to do it!

Max, yeah it can cave in. It also is none too sanitary if it is left uncased. I was never so glad as I was the day we got off our 25-foot, 70-year-old hand dug well and got on a cased drilled well. The difference in the water is unbelievable. This is a good time to "go modern," as it will affect your friends' health and well-being if they use an uncased hand-dug well. I mean, I know some folks just have to do it the hard way, but this is the hardest way. This is when I ask myself, "Would the old timers have done it this way if they had this modern stuff?"

That question gets asked a lot around my place. The answer is almost always NO.

bill in oh, if you decide to chew glass...please take some pix, also!!! LOL.

MichiganFarmer, I really don't think that anyone would of hand dug a well 100, or even 60 feet, deep in the old days. I am willing to bet that the well drillers in your area drill down 60 to 100 feet or more for wells. That doesn't mean that the ground is not saturated above that depth. It is likely that the watertable is well above the 60 to 100 foot depth in your area.

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Here is a good read on how to dig a hand dug well.

It has some drawings, and some time frame,
for how long it might take to do the job.


http://www.minifarmhomestead.com/homestead/wells.htm

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Hand dug water well.
 

In much of central and western Kansas the water table is just short of 100 feet deep. My parents eventually owned 6 quarters of land with a total of 4 hand dug wells on them. The two on the home quarter were 75 feet and 85 feet deep.
They were both capped with old grain drill wheels that had been filled with concrete with the center cut out for the pipe to enter the well. That means they were about 5 feet in diameter at the surface.

Check this hand dug well out in the Kansas town that was destroyed by tornado this spring.
http://www.bigwell.org/bigwell.html

Remember. Native Americans use to live in teepees 150 years ago. They have since wised up.

You should too. Digging a well by hand claimed many a life. Saving a few dollars isn't worth a life.

They dug wells by hand years ago, because it was the ONLY AVAILIBLE OPTION.

my neighbor uncoverd a stone lined dug well behind his house, we dropped a light on a ext cord down it to see.....

75 feet and no bottom in sight, and the rope "felt" like it hit something at about 125 feet.

3 feet across and tightly lined with field stones.... that alone had to be a feat.

I wonder if there is any body down there....

If it gets down to either I dig a 60 foot well or chew glass, I will take the pics as you requested...

I think it would be kinda fun. If the bricks were stacked carefully and the hole wasn't over dug to much, it seem it would be impossible for the brickwork to collapse, as it would form a continuous arch around the hole.

Pete

Back in the mid to late 1800's my great-greatgrandfather was drilling wells with a horse drawn rig. I don't know how it worked but I do have a picture of it somewhere. It's just finding the picture. Anyway, tell your friends that they did drill wells before the 1900's so they would be doing it the old fashioned way.

How about digging a well as a 1:1 side-slope cone? Reduces the danger of cave-ins. Increases the volume of earth to be moved.

When a depth sufficient for water is reached a vertical casement can be constructed and backfilled.

When I was a kid, I imagined that is how it was done.

Isn't this why drivepoints were developed?

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

Our well is hand dug, about 30 feet deep. I have never opened it up so have no idea what it looks like. A nice benefit of the hand dug well is that we are about the only people in the area that don't have arsenic in their water. Drilled wells here that exceed 40 feet have arsenic it seems in non-ending supply.

My homestead has a 2 hand dug wells. One of them has been filled in, the other is still in use. In my area the water table is about 25 feet, but the well was dug 55 feet deep. I wonder how they did that?

the water probably didnt erupt into the pit till they hit 55 feet, and it flooded up to 25ft.

That makes sense, also, they might have dug it during a drought year when the water table was low.

There were 4 hand dug wells on our place. One we filled in. One we covered with a slab of cement. One we use out by the barn to water livestock. The other is the well used by the house. It is not worth a darn & we have to have water hauled when it is dry. (most of the year it doesn't keep up) I can't wait until we can get a well dug. I don't think we will have a problem hitting water. The hand dug wells have no storage. I am guessing they are about 30 feet deep. I want one about 60 feet deep so we have plenty of storage. It really is not fun to be worrying about how much water you have. Do I have enough to shower, to flush the toilet, to do the laundry?? Not fun at all! I am amazed looking in them & seeing how they laid up rock all around it. What a lot of work!

I wonder after the man in the well digs down about ten feet, if this thought comes to mind, am I digging a well or a grave. :shrug:

We have four hand dug wells on our place. We have never run out of water. They are bricked up inside, and are about 35 feet deep. We use these for the garden and the animals. We live in the city limits so have to be on city water also for our house..

We have a well that is around the 100 year mark, but it is only about 5 inches in diameter. It must be one of those horse-drilled ones. It was the main water supply for the old homestead that was here. The house was demolished about 40 years ago, because it was fill with copperheads.
There was a neighborhood feud here several years before we bought the place, and somebody filled the well up with burlap sacks and green walnut shells. We currently have no well, but an above-ground 300 gallon cistern. It really REALLY sucks to haul water for our house and all of our animals. I would LOVE to figure out how to clean that well out, or we will have to do a hand dug well.
Wells around here cost about $10,000.00 to start, and they want to insist on going over 500 feet for some reason.
Some people just can not just attain the "modern" methods... so a hand-dug well may be their only option.
I would really really hate to do one... but if that is my only option... *yipes*

Cricket

In Iowa, it is against the law to dig your own well unless you are a licensed well-driller.

I'm pretty sure a hand-dug well is against state code.

And it is interesting since the old wells are about 60 feet and the modern wells are 200+ feet and the well drillers get paid by the foot.

No doubt the increased population/pollution requires a deeper well, but 250 feet? Everyone complains about the sulfur smell.

In any case, I wouldn't do it. You can only live three minutes without air, they'd never dig you out in time.

Why not catch the rain?

I had no idea a person could hand dig a well this deep. Here in Minnesota, it would be a rare location where one could not reach saturated soil within 20 feet of the surface.

Foxfire books
 

I remember reading several personal accounts of hand digging wells in the Foxfire series of books. They were interesting, but not something that I would want to try.
I bought one of the Hydra Drill well drilling rigs several years ago and it has a few working wells to its credit now. At half the cost of one professionally drilled 200 ft. well, it has more than paid for itself and will continue as long as the drill and pump engines are maintained.

they cant force you to turn your faucet on though

This is very interesting. I appreciate every bodies posts

From what I've read and from stories I've heard from my relatives, you also have to be careful of methane gas while digging. May not be a problem in all 50 states, but here in WV we have an abundance of natural gas and coal deposits. Will post picture of old well as soon as I can get it uploaded.

Maggie

:p :p :p Oh goody! Don't cut yourself.

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You better get fresh air down in the well while you are working or someone else will have to finish the job after they bury you.

bumpus
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We've a spring in our lower field, but on the far side of the field. We plan to hand dig a 'well', if you want to call it such, to pump water from. That would cut out about 200 feet of pipe to pump through and get the pump close enough to our future barn for a short electric run. Since the water is so shallow we'll be hand diging a well to pump from and lining it to prevent surface water from entering. Should have a nice limestone bottom to build our casing on.

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Also remember when you have dug your way to Chinia you may not hit water.

bumpus
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Our water supply is from a hand dug well lined with stone. If it was dug when the original cabin (now our living room) was built, it is about 130 years old.

We were told it is 25 feet deep but we've not measured it. During the drought this year we got very nervous. We were very stingy with showers, toilet flushing, laundry. We did okay.

We'd still like to have a drilled well, in case of drought or surface water contamination.

In today's world, it is often not allowed to dig this type of well - they contaminate easily. As Cabin says, most of them around here were 20-30 feet & filter out surface water & collect the water table - saturated soil, not really a water vein. You end up collecting the rainwater as a slow seep from the surrounding area and it is filtered through 10-30 feet of surface soil. Bad things can show up pretty easy in 20 feet of filtering....

I have heard of them 100 feet or so deep. Man must be work.

Around here they were dug next to a low wetlands or ditch or creek - you took the well to the water, you didn't buy 5 acres & force a well onto that property.....

Cave ins are a real threat, for sure. Problem is the types of soil layers you hit - clay, sand, loam, gravel - all act different & do a number on your shoring - can make things deform or move horizonally. Gets hard to dig perfectly straight down, angles also make cave-ins more likely. Go through dry layers, suddenly hit water and those layers get wet then it's a whole new game - no longer stable. The rock are supposed to pack in tight & not let it crush, but what if sand or clay wash out of one side, and the ring shifts.... If you've ever seen Mythbusters or some illusionist shows where they burry people in dirt - it doesn't but take 10 feet of ground to crush a pretty strong box. Can't imagine what pressure 30 - 80 feet would be like.

Bigger issue is the air quality - lot of well diggers died on the job. No oxygen. _Very_ serious consideration if anyone wants to do this for a hobby...... Think long & hard on air quality.

--->Paul

That's what we had, only it was 25 feet and unlined. The well had been faithful for over 70 years, but more and more people are drawing from deeper in the aquifer, lowering the level. It started to fail us in dry times, for maybe a day or so, like when we did too much laundry all at once on a weekend, then it would recharge enough to go again. I went ahead and did the 70-foot drilled well 2 years ago, and man I am glad I did. We are in exceptional drought now, and the 25-footer would have been long gone.

Having lived in South America for a while, I must add that they have a lot of hand dug wells (this was in the 80's). Every house in our town had a hand dug well, even thought they were bringing in actual city water in the early 80's. One house we lived in had 2 wells, one was only about 30 feet, the other was around 60 - 70 feet. I watched a few being dug, and a few being dug deeper because they were running dry too often. Was a lot of work, but then those people were accustomed to working hard.

Never saw one collapse, although I am sure some probably did. Most of them only had bricks or rocks lining the upper part (maybe 10 or 20 feet down) Most had a brick or rock upper part protruding from the groud 2 or 3 feet, usually with a rod to attach a pulley to retreive water with a bucket. Our well was pretty good as far as quality and quantity go, but some were not. We had a submersible pump that pumped water to a tank on top of the house, which connected the the indoor plumbing. Pressure wasn't real high, but it worked fine.

Removed as there was an error in posting.