My Dad was a driller for 25 odd years. Had his own rig and water truck at one point. In the 60's, my mother followed him around the country in an FX Holden, towing an 18 foot Franklin caravan. We often spent months living in the desert in a base camp consisting of the van and the car.
That's my Dream and goal .....one day Im gonna Have my Own Drilling Rig and water truck ...And not have to Drill for Other Company's Anymore and use my Own Drilling Rigs.. strictly off what guys like your pops have taught me through the years of Drilling 🙏💪 .
Excellent. I drilled with my dad when I was a kid. Did it with a Bucyrus-Erie 22W. Man, does a nice rotary rig blow the old 22W out of the water!! This looks so easy and quick. Makes me wanna get back into drilling. Thanks for the video.
No complaints here. Thanks for taking the time to film and edit this procedure. Now I have an idea what I might expect when I have a well drilled on my place.
That's was great. When I was a young boy in 1959 I watched our well being drilled at 110 feet. The way it was done was they pounded the drill for a long time. The pounded sound traveled to be heard 1/2 mile away. Thanks for your video
I never knew how they installed a well. This video was really educational. Thank you OP for the video, and good luck with your new well. Hopefully it brings you clean water for many many years to come!!
Been a well driller for a couple years here and i work with my boss who has been literally doing it since a teenager. Hes in his 50s now. If its one thing to take away from what ive learned and what hes told me...the flashier and nicer looking the rig, the more junk it is. Down here in fl there are about 3 premium well drilling companies, in my area. Each one is WELL CAPABLE of purchasing a multi million dollar rig. Do they? No..cause the new ones(where everything is hydraulic) are junk. Each of those companies has an old rig from the 70--80s, where everuthing is run off its own individual transfer case and driveshaft. These things are a work of art. Its a true masterpiece to see a contraption of about 6 transfer cases, 10 driveshafts and 2 massive transmissions running all at once and in sync with each other. But! Because everthing is running str8 off gears and drive shafts u dont have to worry about hydraulics breaking or blowing which i heard is extremely common on those new rigs. So if u ever buy a well and they pull up in an old clunker...thank the lord. Cuz you probobably have a crew of guys who have been around and know exactly what there're doing. Also if uve never seen one operate(overall its looks very similar to this rig with hiw tall the derrick stands and where the drill rods are sitting but behind the cab there is a massive flat bed where this contraption in built on) it is truly a work of art to watch it all come together. I still remeber we were drilling a well for a farmer. He has had many wells drilled in the past. He walked up to my boss and said " how come everytime these drilling rigs show up they look like a pile of junk?" My boss says "have you ever seen a company pull up with a new modern rig?" The farmer says "no." My boss says, "yea, cause they know what works and what dont!" Lol
I agree with you. We've got an international built in 86 and a peterbilt from 91, despite being old and clunky, they're my babies. We recently got done drilling a 770' well and did a gravel pack with the 86 international, its my favorite rig on our lot. Theres a couple more that we have but they dont get a lot of use. Were south east texas
@@rustynichols22 Yep. Same with our Bucyrus cable tool rig. Its such a rare unique skill to be able to operate one of those. We only used to the cable tool rig for shallow wells on small residential homes. My boss could tell you EXACTLY what was happening at the bottom of the well just by holding the steel cable while jt dropped the weight up and down. Wether the hole was muddy, whether or not it needed the water bailed out or whether we needed to add some...crazy lol i was starting to pick up on it but it takes a long time to master. Not alot of people out there that can operate a cable tool rig. Rotary, ya just gotta know the process...cable tool, takes practice to control it and make it do what u want it to do.
Yrs ago, 1981 bought a piece of property in central oregon...lots of lava rock. Price of the land included free use of 1947 Federal Truck/cable and Tool driller. Had wooden oak bearings on the spudder. Owner told me to listen to him only and do exactly as he instructed during the drilling process. Took me a year in after hrs and spare time to drill through 400 ft lava. I worked full time, kid on the way, hauling water etc....boy it was rewarding afterwards. The hole was straight enough...w/ a mirror you could see 1/2 hole at bottem. Drilled 8'' all the way down, cased w/ 6'' PVC (risky). The most scariest thing I did. Most of my peers were skeptics including some local well drillers. One well driller though did admire my ambitions and would come out to check on my from time to time. I was about 25 yrs old.
dieselphiend : I listened to the man who owned the machine...I built a "bull nose shoe" that the PVC slid into. I had 450 ft 3/8" air craft cable hooked to it. The cable was spun onto the "Bailer Bucket" spool. The first 20ft PVC was fitted into the show about 6inches. I used several machine screws to secure it. The bottem of the shoe had 2 inch wide straps shaped like a half circle so I could lower PVC down and the shoe would "glance" off any ledges ect. We used the Bailer Bucket spool to lower the PVC after we glued each piece on. It was risky but worked first time. We lowered 480 ft untill it came to rest on bottem of hole. Its a one time use because after a year or so Im sure the cable rusted. Once at 250 ft the PVC hung up...I got scared...raised the PVC casing a couple of times and lowered it again...it went on down...I was worried.
Good job. When I was a young Hydrogeologist the crew drilled a 12 inch artesian well 1.2m deep with water temp 104F reaching 10 ft in the air. Now that was a happy farmer
Thank you for uploading an interesting video. I had 20 years of experience as a driller in Japan. Air hammering was not my speciality but it was really interesting for me. The first bit they say very expensive seems worn to me and I can fix it by gas welding. I think that the most expensive bit is the last one for drilling rock and it can’t be fixed when it get worn.
A likeminded brother for sure! I have met too many people who do not have their water squared away but have a lot of fancy prepping toys and gizmos. I try to encourage them get their sustainable water supply going ASAP.
I drilled mine with a sledge hammer and two inch drive point. Hit water a 32 feet after four days of pounding in the hottest summer on record. Lived there twenty five years and never ran that well dry once.
Different everywhere you go I'm a driller helper and you could go 5 miles in any direction and the water would be at a different depth it also depend on how many gallons per minute you want. if you're a farmer you're gonna want 100+ GPM. If not up here in Idaho the least you can get is 40 GPM.
I gerw up in Michigan and my father cleaned, pumped, dug septic tanks. We even did Wells. I loved every minute of it I was only a kid having with my dad after work
And btw, all the people complaining about the camera should really count their blessings. Not many people take the time to video this process in a down to earth manner, so we can just watch it. Thanks again for this.
Before the honest and good well drillers in this area retired and died, I luckily drilled several wells at $12 a foot. Now the newbies need to pay off their cowboy cadillacs and drill 3x deeper and 3x more per foot. Makes me puke.
Thank you. This is a one of the kind Video. I am 62 years old and this is the first time that I see how a modern well is done. It is sure different from the well I saw done y hand in old days which one bucket of dirt at a time was pulled out with a rope. It's amazing!. Thanks
Greetings from Europe, Portugal. Thanks for taking the time to share this brings back some memories. I had a borehole sunk 14 yrs ago similar stats the 20cm liner is down 30 meters with an eventual depth of 112 meters to the 3 phase German made pump which is still going strong. When it goes wrong sometime in the future plan is to get a low voltage solar pump that will do the job via the sun which we get plenty of here.
I will be soon. I have 4 solar powered pumps to do a video on. 2 I have been running for about a year , 1 new Sunrotor pump and a prototype 24v gearmotor for a Simple Pump. I can't wait to do these vids.
Our drillers drill until they get at least 20-30gpms. The pumps only pull 10 but through the years as the water is depleted, you're covered for much longer. Our Ozark Mo wells run an average of 300-350ft. deep now days with an occasional 600ft. in our area. Depending on depth, you can look at 5000-10,000. for completed (w/pump). Depending on the type of rock, our casing can run 200' easily which adds to the cost. Nice video.
I work as a plumber and seen alot of water systems , testing water from wells and installing several types of unit's like water softeners etc.etc. and I've only witnessed drilling 3 times in my 22 years of plumbing. The last time was a 60 gallon a minute artisian well and that was at 80ft.which was strange because it was near the summit of a mountain range with an elevation of 3,000 ft.. It was pushing iron magnesium rich water out the well top about 6 inches..lol.. Was crazy..
Great video, here in north fla my 4" artesian well is 700' deep ,and it free flows about 45 gallon a minute, it cost $5000 about 10 years ago, today its $6500
Great educational video~!! I was amazed at how easy that driller made it look. Seems like you'll have all the water you can use for many years. Thanks for the step by step narration.
We are getting a well put in on our property as soon as they lift the road restrictions. This is one of the last steps before we move into our new house. Thanks for posting the video it's great info.
Backup to my backups. I also have turned my place into a water lab of sorts and needed the well to test a variety of pumps and the ability to put multiple pumps in the same well.
I live in central Texas and had a 250' well drilled and completed (casing, concrete pad, submersible pump, controller and hook up) for $11,000. Costs vary by location. Permitting costs very low here. God bless America and the freedoms we have. Well makes +300 gal/hr in the Trinity aquifer.
How much did the water rise after reaching the aquifer? That aquifer has been known to fluctuate quite a bit in some locations. Does the water come out hot?
@@Accumulator1 We are not in a "geothermal" area so the water is at about 65-68oF. It is not artesian well and will not flow above the ground level. The water has to be be pumped out. San Solomon Springs in far west Texas is a good example of an artesian spring that flows at 10,0000 gallons per minute!!! tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/balmorhea/nature This is a cute one if you have not seen it: ua-cam.com/video/lUzNmVtVRuA/v-deo.html
Congrats on a great well. 3k is a great price. My American made well pump is 1/2hp, 10gpm and 42 years old! Still going strong. Average lifespan for a quality well pump is 50 years.
Drilling in rock is a lot simpler than unconsolidated material like we have in the NW Corner of Ohio. We have to drill with a water/mud slurry from start to finish to hold our hole open ,it takes water to make water here. I can do & have done both everywhere you go people do things that work for them. I have a 6" well 98' in depth total with 10' of screen made in sand & gravel that produces over 300 GPM. Average depth here is like 100' deepest I have ever drilled is 290' a low producing well is probably 40 GPM average 50 GPM+. We have artesian & flowing artesian wells in my area ,I have a 5'' well with 5' of .020 slot screen 100' deep that will free flow 30GPM 3' above ground. Come drill in flowing well country like that you'll lose more than your mind.. Our well's here in Ohio have to be 5'' or bigger now we hold licenses in OH & IN. I enjoyed this video ,thanks..
Steve La Londe Jr hi I am a water well driller in Australia The Last Boy I put down was in Victoria about 300 Ks from home it was down 400 feet with 40 ft of a t slot casing at the bottom and we pumped 60000 gallons an hour out of it with six foot drawer down it's a fantastic Basin lovely alluvial drilling about 200 feet of sand altogether quick money
aka mud-rotary drilling on an elevator system, raising and lowering viscosity to float gravel or heavier - more viscosity= more lift but longer washout for slower velocity.
Back in my younger days, i dug a well by hand down to 95ft. Encapsulated the hole in rock and dropped a bucket line for water. Wife loved it and all my friends were very impressed.
We had a well that they drilled down to about 110 feet, hit bed rock. When the drill broke through it was in a 70' cavern full of water. The driller lowered the pump to the bottom and brought it up from the bottom 8' and locked it down. We had some of the best tasting cold water I have ever tasted.
About the time it started to drill my washing machine started spin cycle off balance and the house started shaking. It was like a fancy theater with live effects.
18 minutes is long, but you're forgiven. You're among the very few among the amateurs on YT to acknowledge that editing is essential to the dynamic of a video ! ;)))) Thaïs for posting.
Wow, that was the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time - that truck is like a mini oil rig! I’ve always wondered what the heck a well is and how it is dug.
The old farm house I bought had a hand dug well 30 feet deep. It went dry and I had to have a proper well dug. So they came out and began drilling and they got to solid limestone at 30 feet, which is why the original well stopped there. I told them I wanted 10 GPM @ 70 psi and not to stop drilling till that was accomplished. The price per foot doubles when you are going through limestone. But limestone wells are the best in my opinion. They went 168 feet through solid limestone. It was the best water, easy to filter and soften, but I paid for it dearly. $6000 is what the bill was.
Man you got a smokin deal @ $10-ft.hopefully they didn’t gouge you fer the pump and such. 92-‘97 I busted knucklez @ American Veterans (AMVETS)Well Drilling-Cerrillos,NM. Your video Brings back good memories of them yrs for me. Looks like it sure aint changed much.still sloppy-muddy!! take care now..
My 350' well in 2007 was $12,000 Illinois. Now I'm in New Mexico and my pump went out. The bill is $4,000! Well is 750' deep. $1000 to R & R pump and $3k for the hardware. Yeah, you did get a good deal. Glad you have a ton of water.
I had a new well drilled about three years ago. It costs me more than $5000 for a 140ft deep well with static level about 5 feet from the surface. My soil is mostly sand, then clay, then sand. I found a small dinosaur footprint in one of the larger rocks brought up from the well borer.
@m9 ovich im just south of fond du lac,wi. normal depth in our area is about 300ft i believe.i think that was what they quoted us and ended up being less.the more north you go,you can drill your own well in the sand,lol.like 25-50ft is not uncommon about 2 hrs north of me.
Sometimes its really difficult to get through the Van Allen belt because of the radiation. I'm glad they could get through it okay though. Great video.
A bentonite grout is required where I live. It is pumped in from ~ 20ft down filling around the casing up to the surface. The casing is solid and anchored on the bedrock 80 feet down so the bentonite doesn't get into the well but prevents any surface water from following the casing to the bedrock and then into my well. Hope that makes sense.
Engineer 775 looked like good quality work.Most quality drillers here in Australia follow these principles ie: casing, clean-outs, Bentonite etc.Well done (pun) intended.
@@davidbaker2859 I am in Alberta Canada, retired from 40 years drilling water wells (bores in Australia as it is referred to ) Once we locate an aquifer we remove temporary surface casing, ream down to top of aquifer and then set casing down to above aquifer within 1 meter or less, pump grout down through the bottom of surface casing and back up around the annulus back to surface. Once this process has the grout in place the surface casing is then pressed into a pilot hole the same size as outside diameter of casing which totally seals the annulus of the surface casing. A 60 meter well generally takes about 6 to 7 hours to complete. 4 hour pump test - 2 hours draw down and 2 hours recovery will complete the well and is mandatory on every domestic well drilled.
My well took about six hours. Went nearly 300 ft. Very successful. Cost about 20$. / ft. Laurentians, Quebec. The 10$ /ft quoted here might be 10US , but still inexpensive. My drilling was 2011, for sure right now could be much more $$$. It was a geo thermal rig that came here. Didnt have to have a big truck back up , necessitating a couple of trees cut and a pad for the truck. Much better. The geo thermal unit was the size of a large car and was directed with a remote control keyboard type apparatus
wow that is a nice mechine. please note one man wore gloves the other did not. never let your hands come close to a rotating shaft with gloves on. the shaft can snag your gloves and pull your hands off your forearms. the man with the gloves did not come in contact with the shaft until it came to a completr stop.
#1 drill pipe is not a shaft #2 any fool who would put his hand on a rotating shaft gloves or no gloves is asking to get hurt AND if want to get picky neither one of those fools was wearing a hard hat And if you have ever drilled around a coal seam you would never smoke next to the hole.
Wow $3K to get a 300 foot well drilled with a million dollar rig? Around here our well drilling crooks wouldn't drill past the roots on the grass for that price.
When I had my wells drilled the first driller went 377 and 375 ft in Collin County, Texas and got sandy water. Got another guy and he went 665 feet and we got great water but it was $25.00 a foot = $18000 for the deep well, tanks and pump.
In northern Ca, a 200ft well is $8600 without any pump supplies, just well drilled out and cased with pvc, this includes their “fees” etc. Then after 200ft it’s $35/ft.
I work for a well driller in NE Pennsylvania. $10 per ft for drilling. Steel casing, $16 per ft, no less than 40ft of casing reguargless of depth to bedrock
These new rigs are nice, i'm working with equipment made in the 70's and 80's that just cover you in mud and grease, steel case, with 1/2hp pumps with pvc 1" piped inside
Last rig I worked on we started out at 24" down to 4000 ft but we weren't drilling for water and sent drill motors out 5 different directions. Water wells sound like a fun retirement job for me. It's all hard Bubba.
All I asked for was a drilled , cased well , no pumps, no pipe, now wire , no tanks. The companies make their money off of the pkg deals they sell. my well was $9 /ft, $320 casing and $70 permit. ~ $3070
Engineer775 WOW.! I HAD MINE DRILLED OVER 20 YEARS AND - EVERYTHING WAS $1200: DUG, CASED, PUMP, BLADDER TANK, WIRED. BUT MY HUSBAND HAD A FRIEND WHO DID ALL THE DRILLING FOR FREE. WE GAVE HIM BEER AND FOOD. I HAD THE SAME RED DIRT COME OUT BUT IT'S NOR ANYWHERE ELSE BUT ABOUT 100' DOWN. IT COSTS $1,200 NOW TO HAVE IT SERVICED AND MORE IF YOU NEED A PUMP. DAMN
In the 70's we could drill a cased "Deep" well , for Galvanized , at 3 Dollars a foot and that included the submerable 2-3 horse pump with Tank and all of the fittings and under ground water proof wire to a out side braker Box . That was the going price. Drilled Coquina rock and averaged 2-4 Thousand Dollars. not including the drilling per foot, that was separate. Through out central Fla. From Ocala, all the way down to Kississime Fla. lolNow , you can't touch it , for under 14- 18 Thousand. I wouldn't have the plastic crap for a casing. It's used up in 5-10 years depending on how much sand and gravel comes out of the well each time the pump turns on. lol Good Luck.:)
No sand and gravel comes out when the pump is turned on. PVC casing lasts longer than galvanized. There would be little need for a 2-3 hp pump on residential. Most are 1/2 hp.
Very interesting video and I"ve always wanted to see that done. Great job in condensing the all day event to 17 minutes. Thanks for taking your time to film that and I hope it works out really well for you for a long time.
I know I know- to shakey! I miss too many things when I use the tripod. I need to buy a better camera as well but all my money goes to PVC and pumps. : )
The Static water level is the distance from teh top of the water in the casing to the ground level. It took about a day for the well to settle out and I kept measuring as my goal was to have a well with < 30' static so that I could always us a cheap suction pump/pitcher pump to get water out if all my fancy DC setups fail.
Lee & Sims do this because they like the easy life and easy money. lol Decades ago I was on a job where H. O. Meyer Drilling of King County, Wa was hired to drill our hole not far up into the hills from Wilkeson Wa. He was telling me that at some time earlier he was considering on purchasing a new drilling rig that had a capacity that his present rigs didn't possess, but he decided against it, figuring he could make do with what he had. Six months later, it became clear that he needed that rig (I saw it, it was huge). But, in those six months, it had doubled in price to over $200,000. So, he had to buy it at the new price. I don't know how that could have happened, but that is what he said. The smaller cable tool rig that Harold used for the Wilkeson job was chosen because of the steeply slanting strata we were drilling through. He reluctantly agreed to use me and another guy as helpers in order to reduce costs because our employer was strapped for cash. Every time we made a mistake, he would curse a blue steak that could have drilled through that rock. He also told me that he was drilling for water on a property right where the owner directed him to put the hole and after drilling a long way down, it was a dry hole. The owner of the property then brought in a geologist who examined the property and then told Harold to "move your rig over here," which was just a few feet. Harold said that he asked what the *&%$ blankety blank would that do? He said ok because he gets paid anyway. He soon hit water. I think he said that a vertical fault had caused the aquifer where he had started to be cut off from the underground water flow and that the geologist could see the fault line evidence (or he had it on his charts, or ???).
a lot different from here in Florida we concrete our casing and damn sure don't push it in if it doesn't go to the bottom of our hole we pull it and recirculate it till it goes to the bottom and then we concrete it in pushing it through the casing till we get return on the outside and the flush with water so we are left with around 20' in the inside of the casing and drill that out when we are Drilling the actual well and usually go around 180-500' deep so that we are in the Floridian stream which is the nice water around here but I know nothing about up there it is a whole different bag of worms evidently either way it is weird seeing things done this way when you are used to things one way. I want a job there it seems a lot easier over there lol
John Anderson, yes, strange to see different methods in different areas. Up here in Illinois we would never risk drilling overburden down 80' with air. If there was a cave in while making a connection, you're screwed. Anything more than 20' we would definitely circulate fluid. But everyone does what works best for them.
WE WILL NEVER USED GALVANIZED 2 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER METAL PIPE AGAIN. Both our galvanized pipe wells failed. Both have the pump stuck at 320 and 496 feet The pipes corroded. One lasted 5 years. The other lasted 3 years. When we tried to pull the pumps (7000 lb of lift) both pipes broke off the pumps One well at 600 feet was abandoned The other now has a 3 hp pump above the stuck pump. Both stuck pumps are 5 hp. we ohmed both stuck pumps and the electrical is fine. Sentiment from the corroded first well clogged the first PUMP.. A hole in the second well dropped the pressure to 12 psi from 60 psi. WE LEARNED NEVER TO USED METAL PIPE IN A WELL The case inside diameter is 4 inches. The pump outside is 3.75 inches. It is smarter to use a 3 hp pump, PVC SCH 80 ... 1.25 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER and pump to a 1500 gallon above ground tank. Then pump to the fields and houses from the above ground tank.
That's why they changed to ABS or PVC pipe. I remember something about Ion exchange with galvo, don't remember the specifics though, should be easy to look up. Never use galvanized pipe for natural gas. but I have seen that also.
Yeah galvanized and cast iron drainage systems were long gone years ago although when I first started plumbing in the 80s I did a lot of cast iron. And sometimes it's still used in hotels and such where the ceilings are what's called a return air plenum if PVC was in this plenum and somehow caught on fire on one floor the toxic fumes from the PVC would be distributed throughout the whole building in mins of course that would be catastrophic so cast iron has to be installed anywhere above ground for this reason only it makes for a much more expensive job in materials and is a labor killer because most of the younger guys have never used it and theres a learning curve for sure plus its about ten times heavier per foot but if even one life was lost. Think of the liability on the city the. Architect the general contractor and plumbing contractor just for starters
We had a lot of wells drilled for geothermal fields. Drilling through limestone - the only concern, if they hit a cave, they had to abandon the well. With a cave they couldn't get the tailings to the surface, they would pile up in the cave, collapse and trap the bit.
You see that bit at 1:28 ?? I was on a job site once and the well drillers hit a cave... oops... Clunk ... no more $80,000 bit. The crew tried to retrieve it for a day or two. The boss was a tad bit mad, but it's still down there. They had to move over another 200 feet to drill another one with a brand new bit.
Had a new well drilled 200 feet. Water level 75 feet down. Draws 130 gal/min. Irrigates a 40 acre orange ranch so need the volume to water the entire thing at once. Cost of well was $60k. In Central CA.
Google DeepRock well drilling equipment in Opelika Alabama USA. They will ship you an awesome machine for only a few thousand dollars. Then you can drill it yourself, it’s easy.
They said Grampa back in 1910, and in Minn, hand drilled a well for the farm and raising of 20 cows. Dad in the 1920's had to get up very early to hand pump for hours before going to school.
That is awsome. And I thought the post hole digging drill was an impressive digging machine. This is a lot better then what my grandfather did. He used dosing rods (yes, I know they do not work) to find water, and then dug it by hand. He has two wells about 40 feet deep, both dug by him.
Our well is 475 feet through rock (we live on a bluff along the upper Mississippi River). The average price to have a well dug up here is $35,000. I've never seen anything but steel casings around here.
in this area of Texas the ground shifts a lot. my neighbors well is 800 feet with steel casing. mine is 500 feet with pvc casing. they both collapsed. I was able to push the broken pump to the bottom and put a 3 inch pump in the well. my neighbor ended up with the driller , drilling next to his old well with no water. then a new well 600 feet away from the old well. the cost was me; $400.00 for a new pump. his $ 23,000.00 for a driller plus the pump and installation of new pump , wiring etc.
PVC pipe will become oval shaped over time, thus not allowing you to pull the pump from the well when it finally goes out. That means you'll have to drill a new well one of these days. Always use steel casing.
Sadly it used to be this easy our aquifer is getting way over taxed. Some areas this still works most of the year. Others people are now having to drill down to 8-900ft in some places. The Florida aquifer is a complex system that has seems to live and breath changing yearly. Look at some areas around melrose.. used to be lakes now fields of Grass. Other areas used to be fields of grass and now are lakes. Good thing is we do get tons of rainfall even during drought season compared to most places so it's easy enough to modify the topography and have it drain your land to your well location.
John, You won't dig it with a shovel down here. But the water is down only 6' in the winter and during the summer, if we get a wet storm, it can be a foot above ground level. And we are on high ground. :-) Those 6' are 5.75' feet of porous rock and about 3" of dirt from the rock plowing. Current water level is 4.01' ASL and ground level here is 10' ASL.
I read somewhere that the highest point in Florida is 6 feet above sea level? Wonder how good that water could be, not to mention sinkholes everywhere, glad I live on a mountain! Hawaii is getting burned by volcano, damm!
Great video. I am learning a lot from all of your vids. We purchased our current house in 2006. It was built in 2002. It has both well and septic. First house for us to have a well and septic. We are also in an area that looses power quite often. I am interested in adding both solar and hand backups to our current system. Need less to say I am going over each of your vids in great detail. Please keep them coming!!
Back in the 2000’s I worked in Nevada drilling water wells on people’s property who did not or could not get permission to drill. We had a small rig that was good for about 110 - 140 feet. We used a 33 foot gutted out RV to carry tons of water. Made a lot of cash and left before too many people knew.
My Dad was a driller for 25 odd years. Had his own rig and water truck at one point. In the 60's, my mother followed him around the country in an FX Holden, towing an 18 foot Franklin caravan. We often spent months living in the desert in a base camp consisting of the van and the car.
That's my Dream and goal .....one day Im gonna Have my Own Drilling Rig and water truck ...And not have to Drill for Other Company's Anymore and use my Own Drilling Rigs.. strictly off what guys like your pops have taught me through the years of Drilling 🙏💪 .
Excellent. I drilled with my dad when I was a kid. Did it with a Bucyrus-Erie 22W. Man, does a nice rotary rig blow the old 22W out of the water!! This looks so easy and quick. Makes me wanna get back into drilling. Thanks for the video.
No complaints here. Thanks for taking the time to film and edit this procedure. Now I have an idea what I might expect when I have a well drilled on my place.
That's was great. When I was a young boy in 1959 I watched our well being drilled at 110 feet. The way it was done was they pounded the drill for a long time. The pounded sound traveled to be heard 1/2 mile away. Thanks for your video
I never knew how they installed a well. This video was really educational. Thank you OP for the video, and good luck with your new well. Hopefully it brings you clean water for many many years to come!!
Same, all the best with your new home, and thanks for the education!
Been a well driller for a couple years here and i work with my boss who has been literally doing it since a teenager. Hes in his 50s now. If its one thing to take away from what ive learned and what hes told me...the flashier and nicer looking the rig, the more junk it is. Down here in fl there are about 3 premium well drilling companies, in my area. Each one is WELL CAPABLE of purchasing a multi million dollar rig. Do they? No..cause the new ones(where everything is hydraulic) are junk. Each of those companies has an old rig from the 70--80s, where everuthing is run off its own individual transfer case and driveshaft. These things are a work of art.
Its a true masterpiece to see a contraption of about 6 transfer cases, 10 driveshafts and 2 massive transmissions running all at once and in sync with each other.
But! Because everthing is running str8 off gears and drive shafts u dont have to worry about hydraulics breaking or blowing which i heard is extremely common on those new rigs.
So if u ever buy a well and they pull up in an old clunker...thank the lord. Cuz you probobably have a crew of guys who have been around and know exactly what there're doing. Also if uve never seen one operate(overall its looks very similar to this rig with hiw tall the derrick stands and where the drill rods are sitting but behind the cab there is a massive flat bed where this contraption in built on) it is truly a work of art to watch it all come together.
I still remeber we were drilling a well for a farmer. He has had many wells drilled in the past. He walked up to my boss and said " how come everytime these drilling rigs show up they look like a pile of junk?" My boss says "have you ever seen a company pull up with a new modern rig?" The farmer says "no." My boss says, "yea, cause they know what works and what dont!" Lol
I agree with you. We've got an international built in 86 and a peterbilt from 91, despite being old and clunky, they're my babies. We recently got done drilling a 770' well and did a gravel pack with the 86 international, its my favorite rig on our lot. Theres a couple more that we have but they dont get a lot of use. Were south east texas
@@rustynichols22 Yep. Same with our Bucyrus cable tool rig. Its such a rare unique skill to be able to operate one of those. We only used to the cable tool rig for shallow wells on small residential homes. My boss could tell you EXACTLY what was happening at the bottom of the well just by holding the steel cable while jt dropped the weight up and down. Wether the hole was muddy, whether or not it needed the water bailed out or whether we needed to add some...crazy lol i was starting to pick up on it but it takes a long time to master. Not alot of people out there that can operate a cable tool rig. Rotary, ya just gotta know the process...cable tool, takes practice to control it and make it do what u want it to do.
Yrs ago, 1981 bought a piece of property in central oregon...lots of lava rock. Price of the land included free use of 1947 Federal Truck/cable and Tool driller. Had wooden oak bearings on the spudder. Owner told me to listen to him only and do exactly as he instructed during the drilling process. Took me a year in after hrs and spare time to drill through 400 ft lava. I worked full time, kid on the way, hauling water etc....boy it was rewarding afterwards. The hole was straight enough...w/ a mirror you could see 1/2 hole at bottem. Drilled 8'' all the way down, cased w/ 6'' PVC (risky). The most scariest thing I did. Most of my peers were skeptics including some local well drillers. One well driller though did admire my ambitions and would come out to check on my from time to time. I was about 25 yrs old.
How did you secure the PVC when it got past the 300' mark while adding new pieces without losing it?
dieselphiend : I listened to the man who owned the machine...I built a "bull nose shoe" that the PVC slid into. I had 450 ft 3/8" air craft cable hooked to it. The cable was spun onto the "Bailer Bucket" spool. The first 20ft PVC was fitted into the show about 6inches. I used several machine screws to secure it. The bottem of the shoe had 2 inch wide straps shaped like a half circle so I could lower PVC down and the shoe would "glance" off any ledges ect. We used the Bailer Bucket spool to lower the PVC after we glued each piece on. It was risky but worked first time. We lowered 480 ft untill it came to rest on bottem of hole. Its a one time use because after a year or so Im sure the cable rusted. Once at 250 ft the PVC hung up...I got scared...raised the PVC casing a couple of times and lowered it again...it went on down...I was worried.
Shane vanWinkle Wow.
Amazing how when you're young nothing seems impossible.
yes, quite the adventure.
Good job. When I was a young Hydrogeologist the crew drilled a 12 inch artesian well 1.2m deep with water temp 104F reaching 10 ft in the air. Now that was a happy farmer
Thank you for uploading an interesting video. I had 20 years of experience as a driller in Japan. Air hammering was not my speciality but it was really interesting for me. The first bit they say very expensive seems worn to me and I can fix it by gas welding. I think that the most expensive bit is the last one for drilling rock and it can’t be fixed when it get worn.
Interesting
A likeminded brother for sure! I have met too many people who do not have their water squared away but have a lot of fancy prepping toys and gizmos. I try to encourage them get their sustainable water supply going ASAP.
I drilled mine with a sledge hammer and two inch drive point. Hit water a 32 feet after four days of pounding in the hottest summer on record. Lived there twenty five years and never ran that well dry once.
Different everywhere you go I'm a driller helper and you could go 5 miles in any direction and the water would be at a different depth it also depend on how many gallons per minute you want. if you're a farmer you're gonna want 100+ GPM. If not up here in Idaho the least you can get is 40 GPM.
@Mr Sunshines Why the dipshit comment?
@Mr Sunshines lol why the cussing man take the stick out your butt
@Mr Sunshines That was uncalled for.
Mr sunshines your a dumb ass pos you dont know sheot;() hahah dumbass
I gerw up in Michigan and my father cleaned, pumped, dug septic tanks. We even did Wells. I loved every minute of it I was only a kid having with my dad after work
Sounds like fun
And btw, all the people complaining about the camera should really count their blessings. Not many people take the time to video this process in a down to earth manner, so we can just watch it. Thanks again for this.
Thank you! I owe you for that!
I got motion sick and quit at 3 min. I guess you never heard of a tripod !!!!!!!!!!
E775 3k to dig a well? In California it cost way more, multiply that times 6 and sometimes higher.
Before the honest and good well drillers in this area retired and died, I luckily drilled several wells at $12 a foot. Now the newbies need to pay off their cowboy cadillacs and drill 3x deeper and 3x more per foot. Makes me puke.
devarasan ra
How can you not love watching drilling ? This is a great video for showing it in "real time".
thank you for putting this on youtube! It's straight forward and makes more sense than an engineer talking. Merry Xmas!
Thank you. This is a one of the kind Video. I am 62 years old and this is the first time that I see how a modern well is done. It is sure different from the well I saw done y hand in old days which one bucket of dirt at a time was pulled out with a rope. It's amazing!. Thanks
Thank you for watching!
That's one of the coolest pieces of heavy equipment I have ever seen. Thanks a ton for sharing. This is very interesting.
Fascinating! What satisfying feeling to see the water come out!
Probably addicting.
Nice work, fellas💚
Very interesting - the process had more steps than I expected. Thanks for taking the video and posting.
Greetings from Europe, Portugal. Thanks for taking the time to share this brings back some memories. I had a borehole sunk 14 yrs ago similar stats the 20cm liner is down 30 meters with an eventual depth of 112 meters to the 3 phase German made pump which is still going strong. When it goes wrong sometime in the future plan is to get a low voltage solar pump that will do the job via the sun which we get plenty of here.
I will be soon. I have 4 solar powered pumps to do a video on. 2 I have been running for about a year , 1 new Sunrotor pump and a prototype 24v gearmotor for a Simple Pump. I can't wait to do these vids.
Engineer775 m this
Our drillers drill until they get at least 20-30gpms. The pumps only pull 10 but through the years as the water is depleted, you're covered for much longer. Our Ozark Mo wells run an average of 300-350ft. deep now days with an occasional 600ft. in our area. Depending on depth, you can look at 5000-10,000. for completed (w/pump). Depending on the type of rock, our casing can run 200' easily which adds to the cost. Nice video.
Thanks for taking the time to video this. Couldn't stop watching. Nice job editing too. Thanks again
I work as a plumber and seen alot of water systems , testing water from wells and installing several types of unit's like water softeners etc.etc. and I've only witnessed drilling 3 times in my 22 years of plumbing. The last time was a 60 gallon a minute artisian well and that was at 80ft.which was strange because it was near the summit of a mountain range with an elevation of 3,000 ft.. It was pushing iron magnesium rich water out the well top about 6 inches..lol.. Was crazy..
Great video, here in north fla my 4" artesian well is 700' deep ,and it free flows about 45 gallon a minute, it cost $5000 about 10 years ago, today its $6500
Today 30000
Yeah idk where you live but that's gonna run you more than that lol
Great educational video~!! I was amazed at how easy that driller made it look. Seems like you'll have all the water you can use for many years. Thanks for the step by step narration.
We are getting a well put in on our property as soon as they lift the road restrictions. This is one of the last steps before we move into our new house. Thanks for posting the video it's great info.
Darren Charron
have your well checked for arsenic! too much here in Arizona
Backup to my backups. I also have turned my place into a water lab of sorts and needed the well to test a variety of pumps and the ability to put multiple pumps in the same well.
I live in central Texas and had a 250' well drilled and completed (casing, concrete pad, submersible pump, controller and hook up) for $11,000. Costs vary by location. Permitting costs very low here. God bless America and the freedoms we have. Well makes +300 gal/hr in the Trinity aquifer.
How much did the water rise after reaching the aquifer? That aquifer has been known to fluctuate quite a bit in some locations. Does the water come out hot?
@@Accumulator1 We are not in a "geothermal" area so the water is at about 65-68oF. It is not artesian well and will not flow above the ground level. The water has to be be pumped out.
San Solomon Springs in far west Texas is a good example of an artesian spring that flows at 10,0000 gallons per minute!!!
tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/balmorhea/nature
This is a cute one if you have not seen it:
ua-cam.com/video/lUzNmVtVRuA/v-deo.html
Congrats on a great well. 3k is a great price. My American made well pump is 1/2hp, 10gpm and 42 years old! Still going strong. Average lifespan for a quality well pump is 50 years.
Drilling in rock is a lot simpler than unconsolidated material like we have in the NW Corner of Ohio. We have to drill with a water/mud slurry from start to finish to hold our hole open ,it takes water to make water here. I can do & have done both everywhere you go people do things that work for them. I have a 6" well 98' in depth total with 10' of screen made in sand & gravel that produces over 300 GPM. Average depth here is like 100' deepest I have ever drilled is 290' a low producing well is probably 40 GPM average 50 GPM+. We have artesian & flowing artesian wells in my area ,I have a 5'' well with 5' of .020 slot screen 100' deep that will free flow 30GPM 3' above ground. Come drill in flowing well country like that you'll lose more than your mind.. Our well's here in Ohio have to be 5'' or bigger now we hold licenses in OH & IN. I enjoyed this video ,thanks..
Steve La Londe Jr hi I am a water well driller in Australia The Last Boy I put down was in Victoria about 300 Ks from home it was down 400 feet with 40 ft of a t slot casing at the bottom and we pumped 60000 gallons an hour out of it with six foot drawer down it's a fantastic Basin lovely alluvial drilling about 200 feet of sand altogether quick money
aka mud-rotary drilling on an elevator system, raising and lowering viscosity to float gravel or heavier - more viscosity= more lift but longer washout for slower velocity.
Back in my younger days, i dug a well by hand down to 95ft. Encapsulated the hole in rock and dropped a bucket line for water. Wife loved it and all my friends were very impressed.
really interesting to see that happening.
3K for 100m well is a lot cheaper than it costs in Australia.
We had a well that they drilled down to about 110 feet, hit bed rock. When the drill broke through it was in a 70' cavern full of water. The driller lowered the pump to the bottom and brought it up from the bottom 8' and locked it down.
We had some of the best tasting cold water I have ever tasted.
About the time it started to drill my washing machine started spin cycle off balance and the house started shaking. It was like a fancy theater with live effects.
lol
Phil Lowmanfbfccds
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I've seen this done from afar, but real interesting to see it up close and personal. Thanks.
I love it when I stumble on an old one I missed.
Getting ready to drill ours in Missouri. Thanks for the detailed video of what we're going to see happen.
Where in Missouri?
18 minutes is long, but you're forgiven.
You're among the very few among the amateurs on YT to acknowledge that editing is essential to the dynamic of a video !
;))))
Thaïs for posting.
Thanks for watching!
vincent752
Wow, that was the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time - that truck is like a mini oil rig! I’ve always wondered what the heck a well is and how it is dug.
Never seen this process before. Thanks for the interesting video, thumbs up!
Great video! I was an assistant driller on a 1988 IR T3 for five years. Great pay, hard work.
6:06 I approve of any task where periodically whacking the equipment with a large hammer is a requirement.
Haha! Go work in the oil field! Hammer unions every where! Hammer wrenches too! You will be sick of hammering all day! =]
The old farm house I bought had a hand dug well 30 feet deep. It went dry and I had to have a proper well dug. So they came out and began drilling and they got to solid limestone at 30 feet, which is why the original well stopped there. I told them I wanted 10 GPM @ 70 psi and not to stop drilling till that was accomplished. The price per foot doubles when you are going through limestone. But limestone wells are the best in my opinion. They went 168 feet through solid limestone. It was the best water, easy to filter and soften, but I paid for it dearly. $6000 is what the bill was.
280' this spring, pvc collapsed on them got to pull it out and install iron, sweet water, 12 gpm, cost 8 grand. North Central Idaho elevation 900'.
Need one in eastern WA...any suggestions?
Man you got a smokin deal @ $10-ft.hopefully they didn’t gouge you fer the pump and such. 92-‘97 I busted knucklez @
American Veterans (AMVETS)Well Drilling-Cerrillos,NM.
Your video Brings back good memories of them yrs for me. Looks like it sure aint changed much.still sloppy-muddy!!
take care now..
Great Well!! Man, I'd love to have a well with those stats! Thanks for sharing this. It was very informative! God Bless!
That was a fantastic video! I never knew how a water well was done. Thanks for posting.
WHY ... "why" would ANYONE 'thumb-down' such a worthwhile source of information / thing too learn from ? ... *I really learned / enjoyed this* :- )
My 350' well in 2007 was $12,000 Illinois. Now I'm in New Mexico and my pump went out. The bill is $4,000! Well is 750' deep. $1000 to R & R pump and $3k for the hardware.
Yeah, you did get a good deal. Glad you have a ton of water.
I had a new well drilled about three years ago. It costs me more than $5000 for a 140ft deep well with static level about 5 feet from the surface. My soil is mostly sand, then clay, then sand. I found a small dinosaur footprint in one of the larger rocks brought up from the well borer.
Enjoyed this video very much and learned a lot . thanks for taking the time to film , enjoyed very much''
last year (2018)we had ours drilled for a new house.225ft i believe for the cost of $6500 ish..this is in central wisconsin.
rooster I live in S. AZ. Had a new 400’ well estimated complete was $32,000.00. Didn’t go for it. Stayed with the current multi-family well.
@m9 ovich im just south of fond du lac,wi.
normal depth in our area is about 300ft i believe.i think that was what they quoted us and ended up being less.the more north you go,you can drill your own well in the sand,lol.like 25-50ft is not uncommon about 2 hrs north of me.
I live in south eastern PA.. well was put in 30 years ago by a company that still used pounding equipment.
Sometimes its really difficult to get through the Van Allen belt because of the radiation. I'm glad they could get through it okay though. Great video.
Van Allen belt? They're not going into outer space. They're drilling a water well.
Vallen Larsen
richard wysham ooooh I see sorry I think it was the Ron Wilson layer
A bentonite grout is required where I live. It is pumped in from ~ 20ft down filling around the casing up to the surface. The casing is solid and anchored on the bedrock 80 feet down so the bentonite doesn't get into the well but prevents any surface water from following the casing to the bedrock and then into my well. Hope that makes sense.
Engineer 775 looked like good quality work.Most quality drillers here in Australia follow these principles ie: casing, clean-outs, Bentonite etc.Well done (pun) intended.
@@davidbaker2859 I am in Alberta Canada, retired from 40 years drilling water wells (bores in Australia as it is referred to ) Once we locate an aquifer we remove temporary surface casing, ream down to top of aquifer and then set casing down to above aquifer within 1 meter or less, pump grout down through the bottom of surface casing and back up around the annulus back to surface. Once this process has the grout in place the surface casing is then pressed into a pilot hole the same size as outside diameter of casing which totally seals the annulus of the surface casing. A 60 meter well generally takes about 6 to 7 hours to complete. 4 hour pump test - 2 hours draw down and 2 hours recovery will complete the well and is mandatory on every domestic well drilled.
That was a great price for 300 feet, 10 dollars a foot is about half the cost in Canada
$10 per foot is unheard of in Alberta
For a hammer rig here in Perth Western Australia we charge anywhere from $110-$140/M
My well took about six hours. Went nearly 300 ft. Very successful. Cost about 20$. / ft. Laurentians, Quebec. The 10$ /ft quoted here might be 10US , but still inexpensive. My drilling was 2011, for sure right now could be much more $$$. It was a geo thermal rig that came here. Didnt have to have a big truck back up , necessitating a couple of trees cut and a pad for the truck. Much better. The geo thermal unit was the size of a large car and was directed with a remote control keyboard type apparatus
Thanks for filming! Never seen this before, it was very interesting.
wow that is a nice mechine. please note one man wore gloves the other did not. never let your hands come close to a rotating shaft with gloves on. the shaft can snag your gloves and pull your hands off your forearms. the man with the gloves did not come in contact with the shaft until it came to a completr stop.
#1 drill pipe is not a shaft #2 any fool who would put his hand on a rotating shaft gloves or no gloves is asking to get hurt AND if want to get picky neither one of those fools was wearing a hard hat And if you have ever drilled around a coal seam you would never smoke next to the hole.
Nice well!...hope it serves you well for many years to come.
Yeah, Good price. Here it’s $1500 to show up and $75 per foot plus the cost of the casing with no guarantee they will hit water.
Ahhh, an auger truck. My husband ran one for many years. Even slept in it for a while lol. He'd refer to it as the "Auger Suite".
Wow $3K to get a 300 foot well drilled with a million dollar rig? Around here our well drilling crooks wouldn't drill past the roots on the grass for that price.
right...thats what i was thinkin
Gospel singers quartet
dan paul About $10,000 to get a well drilled around here and another $7500 up for septic
crooks ? you just said the rig costs 1 million dollars
By the time you get a drill rig, water truck, and tooling. Yes a million can be spent quick.
But less than $10.00 a foot..cheap.
When I had my wells drilled the first driller went 377 and 375 ft in Collin County, Texas and got sandy water. Got another guy and he went 665 feet and we got great water but it was $25.00 a foot = $18000 for the deep well, tanks and pump.
Ouch. 100-150 ft wells cost 8-15k here in western nc
300ft only 3k..man thats cheap
Really cheap! How the hell did he get that deal?
Keep in mind they used plastic pipe for a casing. Steel would quadruple the cost.
In northern Ca, a 200ft well is $8600 without any pump supplies, just well drilled out and cased with pvc, this includes their “fees” etc. Then after 200ft it’s $35/ft.
I work for a well driller in NE Pennsylvania. $10 per ft for drilling. Steel casing, $16 per ft, no less than 40ft of casing reguargless of depth to bedrock
15 a foot around me
These new rigs are nice, i'm working with equipment made in the 70's and 80's that just cover you in mud and grease, steel case, with 1/2hp pumps with pvc 1" piped inside
Last rig I worked on we started out at 24" down to 4000 ft but we weren't drilling for water and sent drill motors out 5 different directions. Water wells sound like a fun retirement job for me. It's all hard Bubba.
All I asked for was a drilled , cased well , no pumps, no pipe, now wire , no tanks. The companies make their money off of the pkg deals they sell. my well was $9 /ft, $320 casing and $70 permit. ~ $3070
Engineer, what RAILROAD do you work for?
Engineer775
WOW.! I HAD MINE DRILLED OVER 20 YEARS AND - EVERYTHING WAS $1200: DUG, CASED, PUMP, BLADDER TANK, WIRED. BUT MY HUSBAND HAD A FRIEND WHO DID ALL THE DRILLING FOR FREE. WE GAVE HIM BEER AND FOOD. I HAD THE SAME RED DIRT COME OUT BUT IT'S NOR ANYWHERE ELSE BUT ABOUT 100' DOWN.
IT COSTS $1,200 NOW TO HAVE IT SERVICED AND MORE IF YOU NEED A PUMP. DAMN
betty kuykendall as
In the 70's we could drill a cased "Deep" well , for Galvanized , at 3 Dollars a foot and that included the submerable 2-3 horse pump with Tank and all of the fittings and under ground water proof wire to a out side braker Box . That was the going price. Drilled Coquina rock and averaged 2-4 Thousand Dollars. not including the drilling per foot, that was separate. Through out central Fla. From Ocala, all the way down to Kississime Fla. lolNow , you can't touch it , for under 14- 18 Thousand. I wouldn't have the plastic crap for a casing. It's used up in 5-10 years depending on how much sand and gravel comes out of the well each time the pump turns on. lol Good Luck.:)
No sand and gravel comes out when the pump is turned on. PVC casing lasts longer than galvanized. There would be little need for a 2-3 hp pump on residential. Most are 1/2 hp.
Very interesting video and I"ve always wanted to see that done. Great job in condensing the all day event to 17 minutes. Thanks for taking your time to film that and I hope it works out really well for you for a long time.
I know I know- to shakey! I miss too many things when I use the tripod. I need to buy a better camera as well but all my money goes to PVC and pumps. : )
I got seasick and barfed at 6:23 but otherwise a great video.
American ingenuity gets it done!
Is the camera attached to a paint shaker?
UA-cam can remove that shake.
The Static water level is the distance from teh top of the water in the casing to the ground level. It took about a day for the well to settle out and I kept measuring as my goal was to have a well with < 30' static so that I could always us a cheap suction pump/pitcher pump to get water out if all my fancy DC setups fail.
Awesome video. Thanks for sharing.
This video is really interesting. I had no idea how a well is created.
might be Shakey but I don't care IV never seen one drilled before very interesting. idk much about PVC but IV alwes been told you print and then glue?
You still haven't seen how a well is drilled All you saw was pipe turning
Lee & Sims do this because they like the easy life and easy money. lol
Decades ago I was on a job where H. O. Meyer Drilling of King County, Wa was hired to drill our hole not far up into the hills from Wilkeson Wa. He was telling me that at some time earlier he was considering on purchasing a new drilling rig that had a capacity that his present rigs didn't possess, but he decided against it, figuring he could make do with what he had.
Six months later, it became clear that he needed that rig (I saw it, it was huge). But, in those six months, it had doubled in price to over $200,000. So, he had to buy it at the new price. I don't know how that could have happened, but that is what he said.
The smaller cable tool rig that Harold used for the Wilkeson job was chosen because of the steeply slanting strata we were drilling through. He reluctantly agreed to use me and another guy as helpers in order to reduce costs because our employer was strapped for cash. Every time we made a mistake, he would curse a blue steak that could have drilled through that rock.
He also told me that he was drilling for water on a property right where the owner directed him to put the hole and after drilling a long way down, it was a dry hole. The owner of the property then brought in a geologist who examined the property and then told Harold to "move your rig over here," which was just a few feet. Harold said that he asked what the *&%$ blankety blank would that do? He said ok because he gets paid anyway. He soon hit water. I think he said that a vertical fault had caused the aquifer where he had started to be cut off from the underground water flow and that the geologist could see the fault line evidence (or he had it on his charts, or ???).
a lot different from here in Florida we concrete our casing and damn sure don't push it in if it doesn't go to the bottom of our hole we pull it and recirculate it till it goes to the bottom and then we concrete it in pushing it through the casing till we get return on the outside and the flush with water so we are left with around 20' in the inside of the casing and drill that out when we are Drilling the actual well and usually go around 180-500' deep so that we are in the Floridian stream which is the nice water around here but I know nothing about up there it is a whole different bag of worms evidently either way it is weird seeing things done this way when you are used to things one way. I want a job there it seems a lot easier over there lol
John Anderson, yes, strange to see different methods in different areas. Up here in Illinois we would never risk drilling overburden down 80' with air. If there was a cave in while making a connection, you're screwed. Anything more than 20' we would definitely circulate fluid. But everyone does what works best for them.
@ Everett Lee - If you think FL has crappy water, you are drinking from the wrong vessel. Try the taps/faucets.
Took three years to get a course in water chemistry water wells etc. Should have gotten a three day forklift course for the good it did me.
WE WILL NEVER USED GALVANIZED 2 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER METAL PIPE AGAIN. Both our galvanized pipe wells failed. Both have the pump stuck at 320 and 496 feet The pipes corroded. One lasted 5 years. The other lasted 3 years. When we tried to pull the pumps (7000 lb of lift) both pipes broke off the pumps One well at 600 feet was abandoned The other now has a 3 hp pump above the stuck pump. Both stuck pumps are 5 hp. we ohmed both stuck pumps and the electrical is fine. Sentiment from the corroded first well clogged the first PUMP.. A hole in the second well dropped the pressure to 12 psi from 60 psi. WE LEARNED NEVER TO USED METAL PIPE IN A WELL The case inside diameter is 4 inches. The pump outside is 3.75 inches. It is smarter to use a 3 hp pump, PVC SCH 80 ... 1.25 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER and pump to a 1500 gallon above ground tank. Then pump to the fields and houses from the above ground tank.
Mike Dunn the third pump (3 hp, 320 feet, 276 static, 1.25 sch 80 pvc pipe) at 40 psi is delivering 18 gpm.
galvanized pipe was long before PVC. and you are right galvanized pipe is worthless even for an air line!
Mike Dunn
Friggin drain line for the kitchen is galvanized,,,damn thing rusts itself almost shut occasionally.
That's why they changed to ABS or PVC pipe. I remember something about Ion exchange with galvo, don't remember the specifics though, should be easy to look up. Never use galvanized pipe for natural gas. but I have seen that also.
Yeah galvanized and cast iron drainage systems were long gone years ago although when I first started plumbing in the 80s I did a lot of cast iron. And sometimes it's still used in hotels and such where the ceilings are what's called a return air plenum if PVC was in this plenum and somehow caught on fire on one floor the toxic fumes from the PVC would be distributed throughout the whole building in mins of course that would be catastrophic so cast iron has to be installed anywhere above ground for this reason only it makes for a much more expensive job in materials and is a labor killer because most of the younger guys have never used it and theres a learning curve for sure plus its about ten times heavier per foot but if even one life was lost. Think of the liability on the city the. Architect the general contractor and plumbing contractor just for starters
Building my first house and need a well so thank you for this video, I was clueless.
Awesome! Thanks for posting the video.
We had a lot of wells drilled for geothermal fields. Drilling through limestone - the only concern, if they hit a cave, they had to abandon the well. With a cave they couldn't get the tailings to the surface, they would pile up in the cave, collapse and trap the bit.
You see that bit at 1:28 ?? I was on a job site once and the well drillers hit a cave... oops... Clunk ... no more $80,000 bit. The crew tried to retrieve it for a day or two. The boss was a tad bit mad, but it's still down there. They had to move over another 200 feet to drill another one with a brand new bit.
Had a new well drilled 200 feet. Water level 75 feet down. Draws 130 gal/min. Irrigates a 40 acre orange ranch so need the volume to water the entire thing at once. Cost of well was $60k. In Central CA.
call me very lucky, our well is only 22FT. Good clean water.
We used to have a banjo pit ,, you would push the one end into the ground and on the way to suction were baffles, seems like a better sytem
In Australia it cost us around 30-40K to drill 50+ metres to expensive
Google DeepRock well drilling equipment in Opelika Alabama USA.
They will ship you an awesome machine for only a few thousand dollars. Then you can drill it yourself, it’s easy.
Victorius please shop around, that's way over our quotes in NE Vic, cheers.
They said Grampa back in 1910, and in Minn, hand drilled a well for the farm and raising of 20 cows. Dad in the 1920's had to get up very early to hand pump for hours before going to school.
Many thank for all the good info
Please with all the technology you show us. Can you work on your camera shot and your sound.
Arcouette jp
Nope, this guy is too consumed with how much he didn’t pay.
That is awsome. And I thought the post hole digging drill was an impressive digging machine.
This is a lot better then what my grandfather did. He used dosing rods (yes, I know they do not work) to find water, and then dug it by hand. He has two wells about 40 feet deep, both dug by him.
Interesting. Thanks. One observation... Hold the camera still please.
Our well is 475 feet through rock (we live on a bluff along the upper Mississippi River). The average price to have a well dug up here is $35,000. I've never seen anything but steel casings around here.
Zig says he's in so az, pd 28. ft went 925' uses grundfos sq pump w solar 1200 w array 15 gpm tasty ancient artesian water ☺☺
in this area of Texas the ground shifts a lot. my neighbors well is 800 feet with steel casing. mine is 500 feet with pvc casing. they both collapsed. I was able to push the broken pump to the bottom and put a 3 inch pump in the well. my neighbor ended up with the driller , drilling next to his old well with no water. then a new well 600 feet away from the old well. the cost was me; $400.00 for a new pump. his $ 23,000.00 for a driller plus the pump and installation of new pump , wiring etc.
earthquake simulator - well drill edition
Special Unlock - Fraking
PVC pipe will become oval shaped over time, thus not allowing you to pull the pump from the well when it finally goes out. That means you'll have to drill a new well one of these days. Always use steel casing.
Need to move to Florida. Walk out back dig own 6ft with a shovel and done lol..
john smith lol
You're right. I'm hand digging my well with water for another well. So easy down here, we hit 3ft get water :)
Sadly it used to be this easy our aquifer is getting way over taxed. Some areas this still works most of the year. Others people are now having to drill down to 8-900ft in some places. The Florida aquifer is a complex system that has seems to live and breath changing yearly. Look at some areas around melrose.. used to be lakes now fields of Grass. Other areas used to be fields of grass and now are lakes. Good thing is we do get tons of rainfall even during drought season compared to most places so it's easy enough to modify the topography and have it drain your land to your well location.
John, You won't dig it with a shovel down here. But the water is down only 6' in the winter and during the summer, if we get a wet storm, it can be a foot above ground level. And we are on high ground. :-) Those 6' are 5.75' feet of porous rock and about 3" of dirt from the rock plowing. Current water level is 4.01' ASL and ground level here is 10' ASL.
I read somewhere that the highest point in Florida is 6 feet above sea level? Wonder how good that water could be, not to mention sinkholes everywhere, glad I live on a mountain! Hawaii is getting burned by volcano, damm!
Great video. I am learning a lot from all of your vids. We purchased our current house in 2006. It was built in 2002. It has both well and septic. First house for us to have a well and septic. We are also in an area that looses power quite often. I am interested in adding both solar and hand backups to our current system. Need less to say I am going over each of your vids in great detail. Please keep them coming!!
This is a *great* video...thanks.
Back in the 2000’s I worked in Nevada drilling water wells on people’s property who did not or could not get permission to drill. We had a small rig that was good for about 110 - 140 feet. We used a 33 foot gutted out RV to carry tons of water. Made a lot of cash and left before too many people knew.