Well

Pay attention.

To have a garden or cows and chickens or drinking water you need a well. The happy thing about our town, Big Sandy, there is an ocean of water about 25 feet below the ground (depending on hill or valley.) Thus, using a simple air driven tool it is possible to hand drill a well and get abundant water.

This project starts with a drilling tool made from a Harbor Freight Die Grinder, PVC pipe, flexible air hose and a welded star with carbide teeth. I used a post hole digger to start a 6 inch diameter hole. Filled the hole with water and kept it full of water until finished. Connected the drill to an air compressor and lowered the spinning tool into the hole. The air exhaust from the die grinder air jetted water and mud out of the hole. Down I went.

I know what you are thinking, this piece of monkey machinery is not going to drill a well. Let me assure you that I have two wells, one 71 feet deep, one 81 feet deep. Drilled them myself. Cased the holes with 6 inch PVC pipe, dropped a deep well pump in the cased hole, hooked up the electric and out came water, lots of water, plenty of water, needed a regulator to control the water.

Here is the well head showing the well casing coming out of the ground for the 81 foot deep well, black pipe from the deep pump feeding into the above ground storage. The white pipe is from the 71 foot deep well off thru the woods. The wiring on the top right is for water level sensors that prevent the system from over load when there is too much or too little water.

The weld control panel is also home made. Bottom white PVC pipe is conduit for AC power, sensors and pump power. Left center is an AC circuit breaker; just above that is a distribution block to distribute 220 volt AC, 110 volt AC, 12 VDC power. The two lighted terminals at the top are a thermostat control to add heat to the above ground components to prevent freezing and a timing circuit to regulate AC to the three pumps in the system: 81 ft well pump, 71 ft well pump and above ground water delivery pump. At the right side are the 3 controlled relays which swith AC power to the 3 pumps.

This is the above ground water delivery pump. It pressurizes the blue bladder tank in the upper inage, which maintains a constant 40 lb pressure in the plumbing ststem.

From this well system there are pipes going everywhere underground to the house, barn, garden, chickens, cows and even to the pond. Excess water is piped to the pond to keep the system running slow and steady all year long.

I know this is not pretty but this is one of my best projects, and, yes, I did drill a hole 81 feet deep, 6 inches in diameter, into a pool of water, capped it, controlled it and used it. By myself.