Drill your own well??

JDEM

Well-known Member
I am curious is anyone here has successfully drilled their own water-well. Note - I am talking about in a no-rock area and am NOT talking about driving a well-point.

I recently bought 60 acres of woods and wetlands in the Michigan upper peninsula. Completely surrounded by Federal forest. Has a cabin on it and had a well-point driven 20 feet down with 1 1/4" steel pipe. No water. I don't know if it ever worked or not. I used a backhoe and dug a 10 foot hole in a lower area and put in 12" plastic pipe vertically. Then drove a new well point there and still no water. At least not when summer comes. Does have water right now.

So - I can hire a well driller (not many will come to this remote area). Got an estimate for $5000 plus $300 just for a well-permit. Plus I wonder if it will raise my tax-assessment. I just got done in court getting it lowered.

I figure I am better off buying some equipment and drilling my own IF it seems cost-efficient. A 4" casing in a 60 foot hole I am sure would be all I need. Like I said, NO rocks.
 
i have been looking at a tool called a bor-zit. its a boring device that hooks to a 1/2 drill. looks like a pretty slick deal. you will need a watersupply to do the boring, but a water tank wil a sprayer pump, or well jet pump should do the trick. here is a link
poke here
 
Last I heard you can still hand dig one here but to be able to drill you need a license which requires something like 10 years experience before they'll even talk to you. It's a politicized field to limit competition just like hvac contractors. The state board (which is composed of like contractors) decide if there is a need for another one in the general area that won't hurt the one already there.
 
As far as I know I don't have that ability. However a 14 foot deep well was "witched" on my property and the streams of water were where they were predicted to be. The well wasn't good enough for a dry season, but that wasn't the fault of the dowser, which is what a water witching is called around here. The water was where he said it was and this was the only practical place anywhere near the house for a well. I lather had a well drilled. My folks had a well located this way, same result, it was a good well. Dowsing works if you have someone with the ability.
 

We have a company that comes onto the site with a small portable rig on tracks that drills sample wells.
Don't know what they would cost ?
Any way to rig a heavy pounder and drive a well point in deeper ? Maybe an air operated jackhammer ?
 
Look up jetting in a well on line or YouTube if you haven't already. Agreed that witching for a water vain gives good results I've watched my grandpa do it with a tree branch before also with good results but around my area we have a high water table. Most times a person can get away with a sand point and 10 feet of pipe. I just helped a friend jet a well last week and it's very easy just need a couple extra sets of hands around.
 
Might be worth your while to consider a rain catchment system with a good purification system to make it drinkable. The wastewater, of course, would not have to go through your entire system.

While we have virtually an unlimited supply of water here, our deep well is total about 80' of 2" casing, then between 20' to 30' of 1' thick black plastic pipe. Even then our well only puts out about 2GPM. With the long winters here and the tremendous amount of wildlife, the water stinks every Spring, and throughout the year if it stays wet all year long. Even surface water will have that stink in the Spring! Haven't gotten into the basement yet, but just ordered a series of filter housings and filters that "should" solve that problem! But my future goal here, if I can ever swing it, is to build a water distillation unit that will then fill a 250 gallon storage tank. That water would be only for inside use, including bathing and toilet, while the well would be used for outdoor needs like using the pressure washer, etc.

Oh yes, there are also home distillery units you can buy, but they can also distill alcohol, so are pretty spendy in my opinion. You can see them advertised in Mother Earth and like magazines, as well as prepper-type magazines.

Might be easier to go this route rather than trying to dig a well in the middle of gov't land. Of course you could always keep it quiet and have no permits, but if ever caught, you'd wish you had shelled out all that money for that little piece of paper giving you "permission" to dig a well on your own property.
 
Years ago you could buy a home well drilling rig. Still have one laying around some place. It had a gas engine on it much like a lawn mower engine and you held it as it drilled. But you had to have some way to have water on hand to pump into it as it drilled. Once you reached the end of the first section you stopped and add a second section and kept going and you could do that till you either gave up or hit water.
 
150 miles south of the Bridge. I have put in six 2 in. wells at 50-60- ft. I use my backhoe with a pulley on it over the 2 in. pipe and run a rope down to the pulley on my Ford 9N. MY weight has a stem that goes into the casing and weighs about 100 lb..
I can raise and lower the weight 40-60 times per minute to hammer the pipe in. I replace the pulley on the 9N with a small rim so the rope will not fall off.
 
Thanks for the input. I am aware of the home-drilling rigs like Deeprock sells. Main issue is the small ones start at around $3500. Not sure if it is worth it. There are also rigs for less then $1000 that use an air-powered motor-bit. Problem with that is - it requires an air-compressor capable of at least 17 CFM @ 90 PSI. No electricity in the area except for my small solar-electric system. So I'd probably have to get a gasoline powered air-compressor for another $1200. That brings up the cost of the air-rig to $2000 and I don't even know it really works. If I could find a used gas powered air-compressor I might consider it.

I cannot drive the well-point any deeper. It would make no sense. It is only 1 1/4" pipe so I cannot fit a small submersible pump inside of it. Only way to use it is with a suction pump on top and water cannot be sucked out of the ground any deeper then 25 feet or so. Just the weight of the water lowers the pressure enough so it boils and turns to vapor once it gets deeper then that.
 
kcm.MN; I'm curious about why you would use treated water for flushing the toilet, particularly water generated through an active, as opposed to passive, process. Of course, if it has to do with the difficulty of re-plumbing the house to isolate individual fixtures, that's entirely understandable. Stills are easy to build, I built one when I was 17, and I was only smart, not handy. The only moderately complicated part of a still is the condensation unit. You need to provide running water for it because the condensation coil will heat the coolant water until it will no longer condense the steam. This is something I could accomplish easily now, but when I was 17, I had to do it manually since I needed to be able to break down the still and hide it before morning because it was in my basement bedroom of my parents' house. By the way, I didn't use it to distill water, in case that's not obvious.

Stan
 
I stumbled on to a Utube video where the guy used plastic pipe fittings an air compressor and other assorted pieces and made an outfit that appeared to work well. Several videos on U tube about drilling wells
well drilling
 
"No water", like if you drop a string with a nut on it, there is no water, or you can't pump any out ?

Might just be the point is plugged from being dormant.

Check the local hardware store for muratic acid pellets. Drop a bunch into the pipe and wait 12-24 hours. Dump a box of baking soda down the pipe afterwards to neutralize the acid, then hook up a hand pump and let if flow for a half hour. Verify with a PH strip that all is well.

Friend did this same thing just last week with great success.
 
(quoted from post at 10:00:16 06/12/17) kcm.MN; I'm curious about why you would use treated water for flushing the toilet, particularly water generated through an active, as opposed to passive, process. Of course, [b:99512f760a]if it has to do with the difficulty of re-plumbing the house to isolate individual fixtures, that's entirely understandable.[/b:99512f760a] Stills are easy to build, I built one when I was 17, and I was only smart, not handy. The only moderately complicated part of a still is the condensation unit. You need to provide running water for it because the condensation coil will heat the coolant water until it will no longer condense the steam. This is something I could accomplish easily now, but when I was 17, I had to do it manually since I needed to be able to break down the still and hide it before morning because it was in my basement bedroom of my parents' house. By the way, I didn't use it to distill water, in case that's not obvious.

Stan

Bingo! :wink:

100+ year old farmhouse here, and I already re-did the water lines once. Ain't got enough bend in me anymore to do it again. Also, sometimes the water here can stink.....BADLY!! After winter, when there is a buildup of urine and feces from wildlife, it takes time for the earth here to deal with that excess waste. Much of it flows away during Spring flooding, but then waste from elsewhere can still flood back in! Got about 20 acres out there that stays so wet that not even Willows will grow - only cattails - so the water table is normally quite high here.

Add to that that me and the wife don't like rust stains, etc., in the toilets/tubs/etc., ....well, now you can understand why I eventually want to use distilled throughout the house. Also going to get away from a septic system here. With the high water table, septics are pretty much useless unless you have a mound system. However, we don't have room for a mound system, and just the two of us don't generate enough water to keep it from freezing in the cold, harsh winters. So about the same time as the water treatment, will also be starting a new compost system that will manage all sewage here. While I don't believe there's a problem with human waste compost being used in the veggie patch, all of ours will be going towards flowers rather than food plants.

Got a LOT to do around the old place in the next few years, and this year is starting slower than expected. I had bought a Farmall 460 with loader to do a lot of the work, but I need something geared more towards these wetlands and the very soft soil. The Farmall was built for farming - not for what we need. Still, hoping to make a project tractor out of it some day! :wink:
 
I used the loader on my tractor and added a pulley to the side of the bucket. Jacked up the back
wheel and made a short shaft with a ball joint on the end. I used 3/8 nylon rope and a well driver
that I made that weight about 15 lbs. Run the tractor slow and it would raise and drop the driver.
As the pipe went deeper I just lowered the loader so the shaft on the drive did not come out of the
pipe. I ended up going around 45 foot with my 2 inch one and I did several of the neighbors with a
couple going close to 60 foot. This was in sand with no rocks
 

i had a cousin that whiched a well for dad in 1976. said we would hit water at 50' . we hit water at 48'. he found another spot, but said it would not make a good well. we can pump it dry in about 12 hours, but it will refill over night. Dad is still using the well. .

i was there and saw it my self and then watched a driller dig the well. 36" bore to a depth of 65'.

bass
 
I pulled the old point out and put a brand new one in with more screen area. In August, NO water in the hole. Spring-time, yes.
 
I think a shallow wells are about 27 ft depth. I have seen some places built in the 40-50 where they hand dug a hole and lined it with curved block. After they got about 20 ft deep, they then drove a well with a point. Put pump in pit. Built house over well pit. I would be concerned if you did that and then had a flood. good by pump.


It cost me around $2800 total for a 6 inch well drilled to 70 ft, pump, bladder tank. Water table was about 30 ft. Endless supply of water.

No way could I afford the drilling rig my well guy uses. He said the drill bit was expensive and he only gets about 5 wells out of bit before they have to be rebuilt, not cheap.
geo
 
I have 50 ft. deep wells that have a head of 30 ft. of water that I can pump with a hand pump or a shallow well pump. Most wells here in Mi. will have water come up the pipe. I have 15 wells and they all have water that comes up the pipe--some flow.....
 
Back in the day, a lot of people around here just had a cistern,we caught rain water,farther in law hauled every drop for a household of seven. Plastic tank buried, or a 2000 gal new septic tank used for fresh water. Of course you need somewhere to buy water, and a way to haul it.
 

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