How long does it take to drill a well ?

gab

Well-known Member
This is across the road from me, think he started about the end of Feb.. One of the guys that own the field told me
they drill a small well first, then use that water to do the big one. Unless my hearings bad I think he told me it was
going to be 800 ft. deep. Every day last week and again today looks like about a four inch hose running all day.

Think this is the fifth pivot for these guys in the neighbor hood.
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My Montana well is at 500 feet. (I don't own it any longer) It took 3 weeks. The issue is the encounter with sills of hard rock, or boulders that require the use of diamond bits and time. Jim
 
The first one we had drilled about 48 years ago, took a couple of days, I think he had to shut down because of the heat a few times. It was about 150 feet deep, 20 feet down to bedrock, the rest was solid rock with some cracks with water in them. It filled almost to the surface, but would only supply 2gpm continuous. But with a 6 inch bore there was a big reservoir, we got by fine for the 9 years we lived there.

The second one we had drilled at our cabin they started at about 6 in the morning, were done by 10 AM! Only 60 feet deep, all in dirt, flowed (artesian) 50 gpm for the first summer. Last summer in the drought it was down about 4 feet below ground level, this spring when we had a lot of rain and the snow was melting it flowed 30 gpm again.
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In Iowa it took two years to get the permits and two weeks to drill 140'. This was a small municipality with about 200 customers. The state had three or four environmental consultants here getting paid by the hour, so they had no incentive to get it done. This deep well was intended to be the backup well to our two shallow 25' sand point wells, but one shallow well had nitrites get too high and the other one developed an air leak. It had to get to the point we were going to be without water before they got serous. But, $250k of govt money we have good tasting water again. I think they decided to run the deep well as the primary and repair the one leaky shallow well for backup.
 
I can't say just how long. I would think with what I see around here it would only be a half day or less depending on the depth. MOst around here are only a 100 -300 FT . In the San Louis Valley in CO I was told some of the irrigation wells were in the couple thousand feet for them. Never saw only the casing and pump with the sprinkler so could not say for sure.
 
Usually a one day job in this part of Virginia. The quality of water is luck of the draw. Mine is 240 feet deep, clean clear water, not even a sediment filter on it. My neighbor a half mile away about the same depth, has to change filters every sixty days.
The real fun is pulling and changing a pump by hand. I have done that at two places this last year.
 
<But with a 6 inch bore there was a big reservoir, we got by fine for the 9 years we lived there.>

Russ, could you expand on that please? Are you saying you're not allowed to have a 6'' well with only 2GPM? Why not??

I ask this because our well is barely 2GPM. However, it's a 2'' pipe. No submersible pump here.
 
The static water level was down about 3 feet, so the casing had about 220 gal. of water in it. The pump was
down about 135 feet, so there was about 180 gal. available immediately, then only 2 gpm. The pump was about
10 gpm, so it took about 25 minutes of steady pumping to pump it out. I only did that once in the 9 years,
I was watering trees. I just shut the pump off for 10 minutes and all was fine. This was all 46 years ago,
so I don't remember exactly. The artesian well in the picture is at our cabin near Baudette, it flows 20
gpm, but I think you could pump 50 gpm continuous, our pump is only a 10 gpm submersible.
 
A little farther South in VA my well driller said in our area they hit grey rock with water first not very good water but keep drilling to hit white rock which is what he did.Two wells on the farm around
350 ft deep both have great water.
 
Digging an irrigation well is a bit different than a house well, probably has a 16 inch or bigger casing, and like you said they need to keep the hole flooded with water from somewhere. Then the casing is usually packed with special, tiny pebbles to have good water flow. Still, that is a long time. Perhaps there was a delay waiting for supplies, like the casing, or screen, or the stone?? Or somethinmg broke on the drilling rig?
 
Thanks for the extra info Russ. Appreciate!

We're hoping to get a new well put in some day, but some day has been hiding in the shadows for far too long., especially in dry seasons. Worst part is, when it's so dry that fullsize trees are dying, the water table is just a few feet down. *lol*

But yes, if I ever did get a new well put in, my plan was to use a larger casing for the extra storage. Don't need a lot of water, but 2GPM really is pretty pitiful.
 
My well in N. Idaho went down 260 ft. The first 12 feet was dirt and the next 220 ft were basalt rock. the yield was 35+ gpm. The total time for drilling was about 6 hours.
 
As Connie stated below a house well is a totally different well.By me a 16 to 24 inch gravel pack well can take days or lucky 12 hours.They need to access to a full well supply for water to flood the well hole to keep it open when drilling.
 

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