Can I dig my own water well?

[Stimw]

I've put down a half dozen wells here in Florida by jetting them down. I've put two on my property that I now own, one to water my garden and one for my Geo-Thermal Heat Pump. both are 30' deep.
I used 2" PVC casing and washed down with garden hose pressure. Then dropped 1 1/4" PVC with well point down inside the 2" and removed the 2".
I had a problem with the garden well, when I got down 18' my water quit coming back out of the hole around the 2" pipe. I ended up buying a 2" gasoline pump from Harbor Freight for $200. I dug a pit with my backhoe to recycle the water and it took about 10 minutes to wash the other 12' down.
Except for the pump there is very little expense.
I helped my neighbor set his power pole. Once we got it stood up it needed to be another foot deep. We took a garden hose and a piece of 3/4" pvc and jetted around it and it sank right down. Took less than 5 minutes.

 

[bx24]

I'm in far eastern Pennsylvania and around here I have six feet of soil before I hit bedrock. My well goes down 300 feet. Hmmm, sounds like it's difficult to fetch water around here, but every time it rains two inches my sump pump gets a workout.

Sounds like it is time to use your JD and slope the dirt away from the house!

I've put down a half dozen wells here in Florida by jetting them down. I've put two on my property that I now own, one to water my garden and one for my Geo-Thermal Heat Pump. both are 30' deep.
I used 2" PVC casing and washed down with garden hose pressure. Then dropped 1 1/4" PVC with well point down inside the 2" and removed the 2".
I had a problem with the garden well, when I got down 18' my water quit coming back out of the hole around the 2" pipe. I ended up buying a 2" gasoline pump from Harbor Freight for $200. I dug a pit with my backhoe to recycle the water and it took about 10 minutes to wash the other 12' down.
Except for the pump there is very little expense.
I helped my neighbor set his power pole. Once we got it stood up it needed to be another foot deep. We took a garden hose and a piece of 3/4" pvc and jetted around it and it sank right down. Took less than 5 minutes.

This definitely sounds like the way to go

 

[Stimw]

Take a piece of 3/4" X 10' pvc and buy the hose adapter to screw on to 3/4" pipe fitting and stand it up and start jetting. You will see how easy it is and the 10' will go down into the ground. If you raise up and shove back down you create a lot of hydraulic pressure.
I will do this sometimes just for fun. I have even removed tree stumps by jetting around them to loosen and find the roots to cut.

 

[CCWKen]

Geez, you're lucky. We can't even drive a stake in the ground around here without calling and checking for gas, oil or utility pipe. Then there's the aquifer regulatory agencies snooping around all the time. Texas did away with the "my land, my water" rule so they can regulate the amount of water you can take. Every well has to be registered. (Yeah, sure.)

 

[Renze]

I talked to a local well drilling company and they said their minimum charge was for 100' of well drilling ($2400). Given the shallow water table, and the make up of the sub soil (mostly sandy), is there any way to dig my own well to use with a windmill pump? How deep should it be? What diameter pipe should be used? How can you dig in sandy soil - below the water table level and not have things keep collapsing? I would really like to avoid paying twice as much for the hole than for the entire windmill!

I live in Holland on sandy soil as well.
For cattle watering, we water jet the drain pipes for cattle self-drinkers with a manure tanker.
We welded an adaptor to go from 6" manure tanker size, to 2.5" irrigation hose size. we put a heavy wall (because of the weight, to keep it going straight down despite the recoil of the water spouting out) tube on the end of the hose.

With little pressure you can water jet up to 10 meters in our soil, before you hit a gravel layer, and below that, several grey clay layers.
All our cattle drinking drains are 6 meter deep, and 3" in diameter.

When we changed from a 15 hp Lombardini air cooled diesel pumpset, to PTO driven irrigation (with 50 hp in front of it, worked lightly at 1500 rpm, so putting out about 25 hp) the 20 year old, 13 meter drain collapsed and was sucked full of sand because the water table inside the drain was that much lower than the ground water table.


Problem with shallow wells is that the water cant get in quick enough to keep the water in the well high enough vs. ground water table. Sucking the water too low will cause the well to run full of sand because of the gravity water pressure around it.

We had a company drive a new well with a tractor mounted drill rig, which drilled the well with hollow pipes with a drill bit on the front. it is 28 meters deep, thats where they found a continuous sand layer from 17 to 28 meter, which gives a 10 meter continuous layer of sand under the first clay, to put in two 5 meter filter pipes.

100 feet is about 30 meters, so i assume it would be overkill to drill 100 feet for just a windmill driven pump. In our 28 meter well, we still cant see an end to the water supply when we put a full 80 hp in front of the pump....

For our cattle drinking, we had an even more professional drill rig drill 100 meters. The quality of the water is higher than we get from the county waterline
It was a truck mounted rig, and it was shaking on its outriggers when the drill hit a gravel layer, applying a major part of the weight of the truck to the drill...


If you want to pull small volumes of water for cattle drinking, a shallow, manure tanker jetted well will work. If you want to irrigate with a big pump, youĺl run out of water in minutes and have to wait an hour before the water will come back.

If you have access to a manure tanker, its worth to try ho deep you can go: it depends on where the clay or gravel layers are in your soil, a water jet works fine in sand but just doesnt get through gravel and clay.

 

[kthompson]

For some reason the Communists...errr the government stooges who are paid to do nothing seem to frown on stuff like that. They think you will pollute the water table......HUH?????

Local well driller told me it is due to the well head not being seal at the ground and surface run off with fertilizer, animal waste and so forth running down the well beside the pipe. kt