Hydraulic Motor Question

[ocaj11]

Jim,

My neighbors well is 74 feet deep, but he hit water around 50 feet if I recall correctly. I'm pretty sure I'm close to water at 40 feet, but I'm getting beat by this gravel.

Today, I rigged a contraption using 3 inch pvc with a flapper at the bottom. I hooked my shop vac up to pull a vacuum and was able to pull some gravel and sand into my pipe. The semi-check flapper I rigged held the sand and gravel in the pipe. We pulled up and dumped, but my design is too cumbersome to get much done since I plumbed the 3 inch pvc down to 1 1/4 inch pvc. All that pipe and water was heavy......

I have not tried to put a pump at the bottom of the hole yet because I still want to get another 10 - 15 feet before testing.

I'm still contemplating the hydraulic motor idea and might go for it if this bailer contraption fails.

 

[jinman]

That's good and bad news Keith. You know water is there, but you're about 20 feet from success. Of course water tables vary widely in depth, so you might get lucky and find sufficient water soon. Often shallow wells are terrible for drinking and full of iron, but probably fine for watering grass/crops without any treatment. Shallow wells are also subject to surface pollutants. Deeper water is older water that has been there long before people were ever on this continent.

The most danger you have with the hydraulic motor/auger method is getting a stuck drill pipe or twisting the stem. I think you will have to use some down hole lubrication. My driller used Dawn dish soap when he was drilling my well. He had a huge cattle trough filled with water and Dawn. We pumped water out of my pond into his water truck and then filled the trough and mixed the dawn soap. His drill rig pulled water out of the trough and sent it down the pipe with air pressure to cool the drill and keep it lubed.

I remember that my uncle had a well that was walled up down to about 30 feet. The diameter of the well was about 3-1/2'. He wanted to get the well deeper, but ran into sandrock. He drilled into the sandrock and then used dynamite to bust up the rock. He got his well deeper and increased his water pool significantly.