Building a shallow well

[mjarrels]

Around here its called a basement!

mark

 

[Egon]

Shoring???

 

[mike194]

well i stayed around 7 feet deep, i would fill about 5 5 gallon buckets with water for ever 5 gallon bucket of dirt. i just could not keep up with the water coming in the hole. so i went and got a 10 foot piece of 6inch PVC and drilled holes in it and put it in the hole. My first choice would have been a 15" plastic culvert but i could only find them in 20' sections and that was way more than i needed. so i backfilled with rock and then about 8" of dirt/clay on top of the rocks.

then i hooked the pump up and ran one garden hose wide open for about 35 min. and then it dried up, i have to wait an hour or two and then i get about another 35 min. the flow is less than i hoped but I was pretty uncomfortable with the hole being deeper than i am tall.


i would really like to use my post hole digger by adding sections of pipe. I just have not figured out the how i am going to do it.

all in all it is an alright well for $20 and 4 or 5 hours of my time.

 

[mike194]

I was really hoping someone would give me some crap and say "why do you need a well when you could use the frost free hydrant in the first picture" . well that water is pretty expensive around here, but now that think of it so is gas to run the pump i am using.

 

[MikeD74T]

Mike, I generally think the safety police are too cautious but you are pushing your luck in that unsupported hole. A cave-in in a 4' hole can be fatal.

Anyway, I dug a well like that in my basement by digging as far as I could until I couldn't keep ahead of the water. Was in gravel & only 4' deep. I stacked up 3' tall concrete perforated drywell tiles one at a time as needed then got inside with my pressure washer & a diaphram type mud sucker pump. Ended up 12' deep. As I washed loose the gravel the pump sucked it out & the tiles settled into the hole. MikeD74T