Water Well Drilling Rotary or Pounder

[caver]

Sometime in my future I will have a well drilled. I would be shopping right now but need funds from when i sell my current home to pay for it. Growing up it was all percussion rigs in our subdivisoin just outside city limits. You could hear that echoing through the neighborhood. It seems like it took them part of a week. This was 1970's. Our second house dad built in that neighborhood had a well drilled by a percussion rig. I know they are still around. Then one day this new developing subdivision off of ours had a rotary rig show up. It took maybe a day or so. If price was comparable and I could find someone who still had a percussion rig I think i would go that route.

 

[LouNY]

I've been involved with wells from hammer units and rotary. The rotary's are much faster especially when going deep.
One thing I've seen over the years is that the rotarys especcially with operators that pushing the pressure of the drilling mud higher and going faster can and do plug off some of the smaller veins of water. I had several drillers tell me that they don't but I am convinced they are full of it. One neighbor had to have a new well several years ago and they drilled 4 different wells in 4 different locations and never got a good well just a few gallons per minute. They had a pounder come in and he opened one bore up by a couple inchs and they ended up with better then 20 gpm that was a bunch of smaller veins in limestone formations. did another one with almost the same results and got adequate water using the two wells.
If your water is in stone veins the pounder will fracture the rock not just bore a hole.

 

[JJT]

I'm a fan of the old pounder rigs, slow and steady. I've had two wells pounded and one done with a fast rotary rig. The pounders do 40 - 50 feet a day, the rotary rigs can do 400'+ in a day.

I have a neighbor who went rotary, 800'+ in two days, barely gets a gallon a minute. I'm at 200', pounded in a week and get 5 - 6 gallons a minute. The wells are less than 500 yards apart.

 

[steve tym]

In my neck of the woods:
Pounders have a hard time getting the casing set into bedrock properly.
Pounders are twice the dollars per foot.
Pounders keep the hole cleaner and the wells tend to produce more water.
Pounders take forever.
Air rotary rigs can more easily set the casing properly.
Are half the cost per foot, but will probably drill more linear footage.
Drill with very high air pressure and may tend to force drillings into the fracture and close them off.
Normally cut 4-500' per day.
Most wells around here are done with air rotary rigs.

 

[caver]

I sometimes watch this young guy's channel on YT called H2o Mechanic. They often go out and hydro-frack a poor water well. Another benefit with a pounder is they can get into smaller areas.

 

[ponytug]

I've been involved with wells from hammer units and rotary. The rotary's are much faster especially when going deep.
One thing I've seen over the years is that the rotarys especcially with operators that pushing the pressure of the drilling mud higher and going faster can and do plug off some of the smaller veins of water. I had several drillers tell me that they don't but I am convinced they are full of it. One neighbor had to have a new well several years ago and they drilled 4 different wells in 4 different locations and never got a good well just a few gallons per minute. They had a pounder come in and he opened one bore up by a couple inchs and they ended up with better then 20 gpm that was a bunch of smaller veins in limestone formations. did another one with almost the same results and got adequate water using the two wells.
If your water is in stone veins the pounder will fracture the rock not just bore a hole.

I think that you are in the money about a hammer rig fractures a much larger zone of rock that is advantageous when the well is producing water from veins in bedrock. I have friends on granite bedrock, and their well is something crazy like 400' because it fills from tiny veins all the way down. There is no water bearing layer.

Around here bedrock is mostly pre-fractured due to all of our many faults and earthquakes. Everyone drills with rotary rigs. The water bearing layers around here tend to be sand or gravel, or highly fractured shale (think 1/8" sized pieces). Often those layers are quite thick. 50-100' thick. There tends to be relatively impermeable clay layers interspersed. So, there really isn't anything to plug. You are either heading toward a water bearing layer, or you are there and done.

Fracturing a low production well can make a difference- if the aquifer isn't depleted, which is usually the cause out here.

All the best,

Peter

 

[Valveman]

Both methods have pros and cons. For small wells I wouldn't use a spudder if the rotary will work in that area. Rotary with air is pretty clean. Rotary with mud can take a lot of well development to get the mud cleaned out of the formation like with a high speed bailer. High speed bailers need steel casing as it will collapse PVC. Although, if you rinse out the mud before casing and gravel pack rotary works well with PVC casing. Usually don't have much choice as only one way or the other is available in most areas.

Just to throw in a picture, here is the spudder rig my Grandfather abandoned in Texas in the early 1920's.

 

[scott_vt]

Good Afternoon caver,
In 1982 while building my house in Ct, I had a pounder dig our well. He went down 125', and we had about 3-5 gpm. when my two sons started getting older, and using more water for showers and wash, we had to have a rotary rig come in and deepen the well. We went down to 450 ft and not getting a very good gpm reading at that depth. We ended up having a fracking rig come in to open up the veins in the bedrock. That totally changed the dynamics of that well, increased gpm and our static level was down 40 ft, so almost 400 ft of reserve.

The problem here was when the pounder got down to a certain depth, they had a tough time going through some tough granite, and it just slowed things down.

Hope this helps !

 

[Valveman]

The problem here was when the pounder got down to a certain depth, they had a tough time going through some tough granite, and it just slowed things down.

My Grandfather used dynamite. Lol! Could get it at the feed store in any small town. They say you can't remember things before age four. But I swear I can remember seeing stuff shoot up in the air through the windshield of his old pickup truck at that age.

 

[ernemats]

In our area I don't know of any pounders every company that does wells uses rotary drills.