How to drill your own water well

https://drillyourownwell.com/

by jacobmarble • 3 years ago

338 223 3 years ago

drillyourownwell.com

housemusicfan• 3 years ago

This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of "How to perform your own knee surgery"

EgregiousCube• 3 years ago

Perhaps, but a really cool thing to know, and you're much less likely to hurt yourself. I enjoyed the read :)

msandford• 3 years ago

Its pitched as just for irrigation, not drinking water. Not nearly as dangerous as a result.

Ariarule• 3 years ago

What exactly is so terrible as long as you're willing to take a small to moderate risk of getting a PVC pipe stuck in the ground and keep in mind the presented cautions -- consider the water irrigation-only/non-potable until tested (possibly even if tested, although that's not what the site says)?

ooterness2• 3 years ago

Badly dug, uncapped wells can also exacerbate groundwater contamination, making the problem worse for everyone else.

alexo67• 3 years ago

Maybe for use as drinking water, but for watering flowers etc. it is perfect.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

Probably want to read this first, particularly if you live in a western USA state:

https://waterfilterguru.com/is-it-legal-to-drill-your-own-we...

Shrinking aquifers and neighbors drilling wells just a bit deeper than their neighbor's wells have contributed to a long-standing conflict over water access, see Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner for the historical origins of conflicts.

"Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting!" - Mark Twain

oceanplexian2• 3 years ago

If you live in a dry, western state, there’s a 100% chance this won’t work. I live in the Southwest, and outside of some exceptions wells go down a thousand feet or more. You ain’t doing that without heavy equipment.

bagels• 3 years ago

USGS has maps of water well depths. 250 feet at my house, definitely would be "ambitious" to diy that depth.

tspike• 3 years ago

This is equivalent to people fretting over using plastic drinking straws when certain industrial uses are exempt from environmental laws. The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops that should never be grown where they are and wouldn’t be if our water rights laws made any sense.

You tapping in one of these wells means very little in the context of this important topic.

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops.

And collection at spring source from water bottling companies let's please not forget that environmental abuse.

Not all aquifers start underground.

stedman• 3 years ago

Hella ASMR from listening to this guy

jplona• 3 years ago

For folks interested in the standard process, I highly recommend this channel: https://youtube.com/@h2omechanic. Very informative.

h2odragon3• 3 years ago

"Mother Earth News" is a good resource:

(1984) https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/d...

Some people ... got their rig stuck three different times in their first well! As they wrote, “We recognize that many of our problems are due to our inexperience …. But our inexperience is not much different from yours.”

They have many other articles on the subject; but I'm fond of linking to this one in particular.

I helped dig that well. And several others. The fellow in the middle of the picture there is my dad.

Using the gantry rig pictured in the article was much easier than just the engine unit (much like a post hole digger they sell in stores now). One of our crew was a gifted machinist who ran that up after we bent the several pipes trying to dig without bracing.

irrational• 3 years ago

Orville and Dot Synoground of Pine Mountain, Georgia, drilled through 35 feet of solid granite with a Hydra-Drill and a diamond coring bit. They hit the rock layer at 18 feet and kept drilling — cutting about six inches of granite an hour — until they broke through. After three solid weeks of work, Orville and Dot struck water at 165 feet.

I honestly don’t think I’d have that level of determination unless I was truly desperate.

h2odragon3• 3 years ago

we were "back to the land" hippies (and had the monthly newspaper targeted toward people like us)... "self reliance" was a goal for many, as well as "can't afford to pay professionals to do it."

athenot• 3 years ago

Thanks for posting this; I have Georgia granite under my feet in random and unpredictable quantities. I've noticed most of the "success stories" in the submitted article happen to be in sandy areas, or with softer ground.

yencabulator• 3 years ago

Over here it's sand, sandstone & clay, but I can't even dig a big enough hole to plant a bush without hitting rocks the size of my head. To anyone wishing to drill into the ground like this, good luck!

ltbarcly3• 3 years ago

I tried this years ago and it ended in failure. From what I learned it seems like your soil down to the level you want to drill to has to be basically 100% silt/sand/clay. In most areas there are various pebbles, some up to the the size of a dime or so, and what I found was smaller particles would wash up and out of the hole, but these pebbles would accumulate on the bottom.

I switched from using low-volume water sources to a 1.5HP well pump pulling from a swimming pool. The pool would empty in about 20 minutes, and I would then have to wait for it to refill from a regular hose. However, while this very high water volume was able to clear the pebbles (which is how I know the floor of the hole was covered with pebbles at all, it was maybe 12 feet down at that point), there was diminishing returns and eventually the pebbles no longer cleared the top.

I'm sure I was doing something completely wrong, in the end if you have sandy/silty/clay soil you can just buy a sand point (aka driven point) and sledgehammer it down as deep as you need to go. It's a lot more heavy labor but it is also almost certain to work.

kylebenzle3• 3 years ago

I'm doing a hammer driven well point right now, been pounding for 3 weeks nearly everyday. I get about 1 inch per day exhausting myself. I'm maybe 9 feet down, no water yet. I am getting a lot stonger and it gets eaier everyday. Probably have 20+ hours into this stupid thing already :(

Well point is NOT easy.

seahorserocker• 3 years ago

I tried to use this to drill a well some years ago on the west coast of Florida near the ocean. Worked great through the sand about 20 feet. Then we hit a shale deposit. There was no getting through it. Some pro well drillers came and couldn't make it through either. The neighbor drilled his own well a couple years prior and told us the secret. Blasting caps. We gave up.

YeBanKo• 3 years ago

Blasting cap on the drill bit?

Arrath• 3 years ago

Usually you pull your spendy drill string out of the ground then lower a charge down the hole to fracture whatever layer is giving you trouble. Turning your drill bit into a fragmentation grenade tends not to be overly productive.

tomcam• 3 years ago

The good news is that the shale was determined to be frackable, so you were able to sell hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and drive to Beverly Hills in your ancient jalopy

dalke2• 3 years ago

I don't think it would be worthwhile to make your own hydraulic drill if there are rental alternatives.

More specifically, around 1981 my Dad rented a drilling rig to supply the irrigation pump for our yard in Miami.

See, the city was phasing out septic systems, and had installed sewers to our neighborhood. They charged for sewer based on water consumed. By drilling a well he could avoid paying sewage fees for irrigation water.

I think he hit water at 8 feet, and put the well down to 12. This was Miami.

It also drilled through some limestone.

bragr2• 3 years ago

if there are rental alternatives.

That's good advice for almost all tools. The average weekend warrior may never have been to their local tool rental shop, but it's worth checking out! You can rent just about anything, for very reasonable prices, and it tends to be pretty high quality/industrial stuff. For all the tools you only use one a year, it probably makes more financial sense to rent than buy.

quickthrower24• 3 years ago

But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. For most DIY I find the cheaper ones good enough, as long as you get some online wisdom first to avoid the occasional turds being sold. Example: chainsaw, drill, jet wash, pruning equipment etc.

h2odragon3• 3 years ago

Yeah, well, Florida. You don't need much to hit water table in FL. High heels will sometimes do.

dalke2• 3 years ago

Yes. Isn't that the point of the web site?

When the water table is shallow, but deeper than your Louboutins - which is much of Florida - you can drill a well yourself, at low cost.

After all, the technique only works for down to about 20 feet (there's another page on how to extend that to 30 feet), and 7 of the 26 listed success stories are from Florida.

jcampbell1• 3 years ago

Many places allow for dual meters: one water meter that is used for irrigation and another for water that ultimately goes for waste treatment. In places with abundant water, e.g. places where this drilling technique would work, the water is typically practically free and the “water bill” is mostly a sewer bill.

adrianmonk• 3 years ago

Where I live, they base the sewage fees off water usage during the winter. Since few people water their yards then, it mostly takes irrigation out of the equation.

Bonus: it spurs you to think about conservation. When your 3-month wastewater averaging period starts, you know that any water you save will cut costs for the whole year.

fred_is_fred• 3 years ago

Same here and I've thought about this, but the cost savings of doing less winter laundry for example are in the end miniscule. We pay way more for water than for sewer.

camillomiller• 3 years ago

This guide is great. Before reading it I was always chipping my water. Now I know how to do it!

killingtime74• 3 years ago

This ignores the most difficult part...getting a permit

oceanplexian2• 3 years ago

I think the idea behind doing it yourself is that you don’t need a permit. In the USA, while permits are technically required for a lot of things, the law is widely ignored, and enforcement is lax to nonexistent. Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work.

pbourke• 3 years ago

You will likely have issues if you ever try to sell property with an unpermitted well. FHA loans have restrictions on the well as do many local jurisdictions that may refuse to convey the property if the well isn’t up to code. My local jurisdiction won’t block the sale but will write an alarming letter to the seller. In the case of a new build or major remodel, you will not be able to get a certificate of occupancy without a state and county verified well here.

Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work.

Yeah, it’s your responsibility as a homeowner to get the permit (either get it yourself or see that the contractor does). Even if you don’t think the permit inspectors are doing anything in terms of quality control, the permit helps you to pass inspections as part of the sale process and will limit your insurance exposure if there’s ever an issue. There’s probably fine print in your insurance contract saying that all work shall be permitted as required.

bobthepanda• 3 years ago

The permits exist for a reason.

If too many people start doing it, it becomes an issue of overdrawing groundwater. This leads to an arms race of digging ever deeper wells to reach the remaining groundwater, and on top of that starts leading to ground subsidence as ground formerly full of water dries out and compacts.

Off the top of my head, there is massive groundwater subsidence in the Central Valley of California, Mexico City, and Jakarta due to this issue, at rates measured in feet per year. This makes the land prone to flooding, and also damages buildings and infrastructure since the subsidence is generally not evenly spread out.

KirillPanov• 3 years ago

At least in my state (Washington), electricians and plumbers licenses include an annual permit which covers all the work they do during that year. It's only the trades that don't have a licensing program (or are only licensed as "general contractor") that need a separate permit for each job instead of one big one that covers all their work for the year.

myspy• 3 years ago

We had the idea to drill one to here in Germany, but having drilled it doesn‘t mean you can use it as long as you please. Ground water levels are falling and eventually it will be forbidden.

But we also have a 13k liter cistern and with drip irrigation it holds reasonably long.

K0balt2• 3 years ago

And today I am reminded that people in many places must get the state’s permission to build, repair, or improve their shelter, to grow food, to collect rainwater, to dig a well.

On property they “own”.

You’re literally asking the states permission to have the basic things needed for human survival- shelter, food, and water.

While this makes sense to me for a business or an organisation, it strikes me as unconscionable for a private individual to have to get permission from the state to survive.

Neil44• 3 years ago

I understand the sentiment but when you have this many people living close together, somebody has to be the adult to make sure things continue to work for everybody.

EliRivers2• 3 years ago

On property they own

Ownership that is regulate and enforced by the state; if you own it according to the rules, you use it according to the rules. If you want to do something else, you can step outside the rules and best of luck to you.

mattclarkdotnet• 3 years ago

Isn’t ownership of land regulated by the state pretty much everywhere?

holoduke• 3 years ago

Because you alter things outside of your perimeter. If you extract a lot of water you might cause issues at your neighbour.

pjc50• 3 years ago

It turns out that we live in a society. And these days the main risk to human survival before middle age is other humans.

JKolios• 3 years ago

Or, you know, people understand that their actions have consequences on others and living in an organized society is far better than the alternative. We're not endlessly settling an untapped frontier that exists solely in our heads.

fouc3• 3 years ago

it strikes me as unconscionable for a private individual to have to get permission from the state to survive.

It would be nice to be free of the state. But how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced?

It seems like the population is too high in most places to be able to tolerate people doing their own thing, with their own property. Not sustainable unfortunately.

At this point, "private ownership" is fading away. Eventually, maybe a hundred of years from now, we'll all be leasing our land from the government, and perhaps even leasing our privileges.

duxup2• 3 years ago

That was the attitude of the dude down the road from me who started his own impromptu pig farm. The folks who are outraged by what they can't do on their own land often also are the folks who don't think beyond step 1 and don't care if their pig shit stinks and runs off everywhere.

Tangurena2• 3 years ago

The issue is "water rights". In Western states, somebody owns that water already. The rain might fall on your house, but it normally flows into some creek/stream/river where the legal and moral rights to that water belong to someone else. Capturing that water is legally considered theft. In Colorado, for example, every bit of river water was allocated to someone before Colorado became a state.

One book that covers the history of water projects in the US is Cadillac Desert [0]. We have this cultural myth that all we need is a little more water to make the desert bloom. And as a country, we've wasted trillions of dollars diverting rivers for agricultural use. Agricultural users of water pay almost nothing for their water while using enormous amounts of taxpayer funding to do so. Utah and Arizona have recently had droughts where water consumption by private citizens was limited.

There are several crops that use enormous amounts of water, the one receiving attention is alfalfa. 82% of Utah's water is consumed by agriculture. The UT governor owns a farm that grows alfalfa for export. Instead of cutting back on his own farm's water consumption, he's been on radio & TV telling Utahns to pray for rain. Arizona has had some recent news stories about Saudi companies growing alfalfa in AZ and exporting the hay to Saudi Arabia. Alfalfa consumes so much water that growing it in Saudi Arabia is illegal. Amusingly, `alfalfa` is an Arabic word. The issue with AZ & UT is that there is plenty of taxpayer subsidized water to grow alfalfa for export while simultaneously rationing residential water consumption.

0 - https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing...

greenie_beans2• 3 years ago

permits don't exist in the county where i want to do this.

amluto3• 3 years ago

Well permit requirements are highly variable. As I understand it, in surprisingly large parts of California, the permit is almost automatic. In other parts of California, there are more complex regulations and sometimes even requirements to meter and pay for (!) well water usage. Cough, Santa Clara, cough.

I’d actually be all in favor, except that the rate for non-agricultural users seems to be over 10x the rate for agricultural users.

schobi4• 3 years ago

It is nice to get that many details on a single drilling method. But keep in mind - there are many more techniques for making your own well. Some might be better suited depending on the conditions.

There are hand operated drills, 150mm diameter with extension rods up to 10-15m long. If it works for your soil, then this is less messy.

I went with digging and a different type of dug well "Schachtbrunnen". I laid a pre-fabricated concrete ring on the ground and started digging inside until it sank into the ground. When it was level, I put the next ring on top. No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.

XorNot• 3 years ago

Huh. This is ingenius in that "obvious once you hear it" way that I wouldn't have thought of. I practical want to try it just because of that.

mongol• 3 years ago

How did you dig? With a shovel? Or some other equipment? How many rings did it take?

nightfly• 3 years ago

No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.

schobi4• 3 years ago

Yes - shovel and bucket. I took 50cm rings each, for a total of 9 for 4.5m. They weigh about 300kg each and could be rolled into the garden. I got some scaffolding pipes and built a "gantry" over my hole. We could lower them by attaching a small chain operated pulley.

marmakoide• 3 years ago

I helped my Dad doing just that ! It was fairly easy, it just need patience. It's South West France, in an area with sandy soil. All it took was ropes, shovels and buckets. We connected it to drain pipe buried in the garden, to capture the winter rain water. The water is used for outdoor cleaning, gardening.

quickthrower24• 3 years ago

How deep can that go? Can you fit yourself and shovel in the ring to go deeper? Is there any danger of collapse?

schobi4• 3 years ago

I went to 4.5m - the rings did not slide easily any more as we paused for a year. If you work on it right away, you can go much further

I went with an inner diameter of 1m, this is fine for a small shovel, a pump, a small jackhammer.

Concrete rings are used all the time in road construction work. I don't see a risk of collapse with those when stacking carefully. Even if one ring were to get a crack, where should it go? I felt safe in this regard

thih9• 3 years ago

Is this for drinking water? And what depths can be reached with this method? I wish these were stated more clearly; I’m guessing “not drinking”, based on:

It is great for saving money on watering your lawn and irrigating a garden.

Off topic: as a non native English speaker, the title made me pause. As in, why would I want to drill my water and do it well?… oh, water well, right.

friend_and_foe• 3 years ago

The quality of the water depends on the location.

This particular method of drilling a well works in sandy soil or clay where the water table isn't very deep. If you're in mountains or on any topology with bedrock you'll need better equipment, particularly a carbide or diamond tipped bit. And you'll be drilling potentially hundreds of feet. Something like this would most certainly not work in Colorado, it would probably work in Florida or Louisiana.

AngryData• 3 years ago

I certainly wouldn't drink water out of a shallow well most places. It is worth every penny to get someone to drill a 200 foot well and not have to worry about contamination for drinking.

NotYourLawyer• 3 years ago

No, the website says this is generally non potable water.

bluGill8• 3 years ago

They state it is for irrigation only. You can use the same technique for drinking water in some places, but it really depends on local soil conditions (meaning even if your neighbor has safe water you might not get safe water!) and the care taking when drilling the well. If you do try this, after drilling and sealing the well you chlorinate the water (to kill anything you introduced), wait a week, then have a proper lab test, if the lab says it is safe to drink you are fine. The lab test should be repeated every 3 months (almost nobody does, but that is what the labs tell you)

You can sometimes work around this by installing filters (RO and otherwise), and UV lights. However you need lab results to tell you what filters to install, and you need to keep those filters maintained.

aaron695• 3 years ago

Many folks think they have to dig or drill their well into an aquifer.

My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not.

Hand dug wells are fun to watch on TikTok, most on the tag are old ones, but a few are people digging them - https://www.tiktok.com/tag/handdug%20well

This one scared the shit out of me - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/723999758509...

I was looking at this Polish Company selling augers, but I checked local bore records and they were 80m for the aquifer and they were hitting rock pretty quickly in their samples even if I went for ground water - https://www.ebay.com/str/drillpartnerofficialstore

chewz• 3 years ago

My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not.

It isn't stupid concern for drinking water. You could have neighbours with septic tanks leaking, cesspools or using crazy amounts of roundup for their lawn.

But for watering flowers, washing and cleaning ground water is usually OK. You can always make a test of water quality at local authority...

Aquifier water is of good quality but getting to it might be expensive.

bluGill8• 3 years ago

Fortunately most dirt is an excellent filter for septic waste. The law requires 40 (double check this number for where you live) of distance between a septic system and a well because at that distance the water that gets through is safe to drink without any more treatment. It doesn't matter how bad your septic system is installed, the 40 feet distance makes it safe.

Note that I said most dirt above. There are types of soil that act more like pipes and so raw sewage from a leaking septic system has been found many miles away. Check with a local expert to see what soil you have to deal with.

gregmac2• 3 years ago

My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not.

It's not just that, dug and shallow wells are also getting surface water run-off -- basically anything on the ground in the immediate area or uphill. There's actually an acronym for this: GWUDI (Groundwater under the direct influence [of surface water]). They're highly susceptible to seasonal changes and rain. The worst ones are people that in a lower-lying area than nearby farms -- nitrates (from animal feces and fertilizers) and pesticides are all extremely expensive to remove from water.

When you do a drilled well, the annular space (the hole around the casing) actually has to be sealed (with bentonite) to prevent surface water from getting directly into the well and aquifer. I see no mention of this in the article.

Where I live (Ontario Canada) there are environmental laws protecting ground water. Badly done wells can actually contaminate a huge area and affect other people's wells and drinking water.

tamimio2• 3 years ago

The problem is if that leads to water contamination, all it takes some of these homemade drillers to contaminate it “by mistake” with gasoline, oil, or even chemicals, with all what it means to environment and people using the same water.

4gotunameagain2• 3 years ago

Did you read the article? The method uses no gasoline, oil or chemicals.

tamimio2• 3 years ago

I did, but accidents happen, those are usually farmers and aren’t trained engineers with all safety measures, someone could have an oil tank nearby and someone/car bump into it or similar scenarios.

enagrimm• 3 years ago

very insightful

Joginda• 3 years ago

indeed

praptak3• 3 years ago

In Poland it's quite common for people to just hand dig their wells, using concrete rings for the reinforcement of walls. It's legal up to 30 meters depth and up to 5 m^3/day water yield.

Article (in Polish but there's pics): https://darmowyporadnik.pl/artykul/36/budownictwo/kopanie-st...

Edit: Or maybe I should say "it was" - most new wells are just a vertical steel pipe with a submerged electric pump rather than big concrete rings. These are obviously much more convenient and safer.

OfSanguineFire7• 3 years ago

With the recent legislation that every Polish village has to be connected to water and sewage even if the homeowner wanted to remain off-grid, I would expect not expect well-digging to remain popular.

jcarrano• 3 years ago

It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.

fakedang• 3 years ago

I think we'll see a similar scenario as what happened in many rural and semi-urban areas of India. Most folks use well water for their daily use, but still maintain an urban/central water connection in case of emergencies (especially as droughts are becoming more of a reality worldwide).

Well digging is still going strong - actually stronger, since people are now digging deeper wells as the water table is shrinking.

momirlan• 3 years ago

you also have to consider the price to pay for metered municipal water. i would still prefer free water from my own dug well.

badtension2• 3 years ago

You could bypass that with a domestic wastewater treatment plant.

jeffrallen2• 3 years ago

The first week I came to live in Guatemala from the USA 3 brothers from a nearby village dies of asphyxiation at the bottom of a hand dug well which had a generator running too close up above.

Don't risk it. Confined spaces are dangerous.

b112• 3 years ago

This is terrible, but the same thing can happen in a basement, and even has happened in low laying areas of land.

Would you suggest we stop digging basements?

There are far more issues with just walking outside, lightning strikes hitting people, are more common.

praptak3• 3 years ago

I think it will solve itself as people move to steel pipes which are generally less labor intensive to drill. They also eliminate the danger of falling into the well.

msrenee• 3 years ago

These wells are a few inches across. There's no risk of falling in.

bluGill8• 3 years ago

I have a large well for my water (machine bored - wells here have terrible recovery), when the pump went out a few years back I looked down the hole and decided no way will I climb down there. I bought a pump and used hoses and extension cords to lower it into the well from above, then a week latter hired someone to come out and do the proper install. They had the proper safety gear so they couldn't fall down the hole. More importantly they knew how to use the - I know where to buy the gear, but that is one case where improper usage will kill you before you find out you were wrong.

beardedwalleye• 3 years ago

That's >1300 US Gallons, which is a little more than what we use in a week as a family of 5.

faangguyindia• 3 years ago

My family of 4 uses

500 gallons of water here in Himalayan foothills.

moooo995• 3 years ago

Wait, that is per day?!

gibspaulding• 3 years ago

This is really interesting, though I unfortunately don't read Polish.

For each ring deeper, do you dig out under the bottom ring until it slides down and another can be added to the top of the stack? That sounds terrifying having a whole stack of concrete shifting around above you.

schobi4• 3 years ago

I built such a well... The concrete rings will just sloooowly slide down once there is room under them. If you dig evenly, they will just go down straight. Only a few centimeters at a time. This part does not feel dangerous. As a bonus,you can buy concrete rings with steps included, so you don't need to buy a 5m long ladder.

In historic well digging the walls needed to be secured with wooden planks or bricks and such after digging straight down. Huge risk of the walls falling in. This was a problem just generations ago... And all of the family had stories of grandfather's digging wells that collapsed and that the historic approach was dangerous.

With concrete rings, there is no danger of collapsing. And certainly, when placing a ring, noone should be standing inside!

But yes... - It becomes a little claustrophobic when this becomes deep. I stopped at 4.5m and got used to it by the time we came that deep. - I put a pipe in to blow fresh air to the bottom. This helps with the uneasy feeling of a possible bad smell - there is a risk of dropping a bucket on the head. Use a proper rope, a proper knot, a proper bucket made for lifting and stop when the guy above needs a break

dbrgn• 3 years ago

I wondered how getting a permit in Switzerland would work.

According to some sources I found:

- You need to request a permit from your city and your canton's water and sewage department

- To get a permit, you need a "proof of utility", so you can't just dig a well for fun, it needs to bring some benefit.

- You need a written technical planning document as well, including an analysis on the energy- and cost-efficiency of your project

- If you want to drill down to the groundwater (for drinking water quality), you need additional analyses being done, to prove that the project conforms to standards and causes no harm.

It sure sounds fun to have your own well, but I think I'll stick to collecting rain water.

finnjohnsen2• 3 years ago

You're digging your own well to out society to begin with. It is a scratch in the pain for such a project to have proper paperwork in order.

I'm joking ofcourse, but not 100%

verisimi• 3 years ago

Just do it. Live a little.

j-a-a-p• 3 years ago

Digging a well after dark also adds to the experience.

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

Reminds me of this, what boomers needed vs what I need: https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-1...

mindslight• 3 years ago

I'm quite sympathetic to the overall trend. But nearly half those listed things are effectively optional things to protect himself or make his life easier - eg you do not need an LLC, but you surely do want one. Another near half are to protect others from himself as he is putting himself out there as a business, as he is employing workers or subjecting customers to his work. There could certainly be more small-business-friendly ways to handle these things [0], but earlier periods weren't solving them and at least now there is an attempt. So this particular critique doesn't ring true for me.

The proper comparison is looking at what it takes to do it for yourself or a friend. Of that list, that's probably just permit/inspection, which is hard to talk about generally because it's going to vary per locale. Although you really do want the backhoe.

[0] just spitballing an example, worker injury insurance could be provided more by the state from the general fund.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

Oh well...

poulsbohemian• 3 years ago

Where I work as a Realtor, it's generally possible to drill a well for domestic use. It will typically run about $20K and as we have a high water table, they generally hit water around 60 feet and will take the well down to around 250 feet if they want to "future proof" it. Deepest well in our area that I've heard of is around 900 feet and that was considered really rare / extreme.

Where homeowners become conflicted is that well gives them the rights to domestic use and to water a basic yard, but nothing beyond that. You are quickly in to "water rights" which can become complex and limiting. More and more we are seeing water masters (a state role) take away rights from landowners who are not fully using their water rights. For example, if the land was previously farmed but has now gone fallow and the water right has not been used, the state will revoke it - and there's a 0.0% chance of ever getting it back. This sometimes leads to cases where people (farmers) overuse their water to ensure they are demonstrating usage, but then of course that can lead to fines for overuse. No question water is going to be a defining issue in the American west for the foreseeable future.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Curiously, you have to already have water

kozak• 3 years ago

I suppose you use a gasoline water pump if you don't. Unless you are in a desert, of course.

RajT883• 3 years ago

The house I live in has a well. 400 feet deep (why? long story).

The thing to be aware of is that there's a few different kinds of additives you might need for well water.

The most usual is water softener. Ours isn't too hard, but what we do have is hydrogen sulphate from bacteria in the soil - it requires hydrogen peroxide to make the water smell neutral and palatable.

SteveNuts• 3 years ago

Where do you add that? into the water softener?

RajT883• 3 years ago

There's a pump which feeds into the water softener tank. We don't use softener, so peroxide is the only thing which goes into it.

To the other guy - we drink the well water. It's fine after the peroxide treatment.

kylebenzle3• 3 years ago

Why do you need any conditioning for irrigation water?

adrianN• 3 years ago

You might ruin your soil over time.

bluGill8• 3 years ago

Water softeners are common, but they are regional. In some places the ground water is naturally soft and you don't need one. In others you need them. One house I lived in you needed an iron filter, but most people have never heard of such a thing There are lots of other devices in the water treatment catalog that you might or might not need. Only a real water test can tell.

technothrasher2• 3 years ago

I had an issue with hydrogen sulfide bacteria in my well water system. If I didn't run any water for a couple days (like, say, I went away for the weekend), I'd get a terrible sulfur smell to my water. When my well pump failed, I took the opportunity while the well head was off to dump a bunch of bleach down the well. Haven't had a problem in years now.

RajT883• 3 years ago

Interesting! I had wondered if that would be viable.

anilakar• 3 years ago

Step one: move to a place where the municipality does not claim ownership on the bedrock.

ajot• 3 years ago

Site must have received an HN hug of death, so not sure what method it reccomends.

There's a (university research group?) called WOT that uploads videos to Youtube with different low cost/low tech techniques, my favorite one being with a hand drill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRhsoSCXvg

ufjfjjfjfj• 3 years ago

Drilling a shallow well is easy with basic "tools"... It'd be nice to be able to do a deep well though

zigzaggy• 3 years ago

My grandfather was a "well witcher" (Appalachian roots here). Many believe that's woo woo or some kind of super power. The man was incredibly intelligent and resourceful and he had a reputation for finding water every single time he dropped the drill into the ground.

When I was a kid I used to go to sleep listening to stories of my dad and his dad driving around on a 2 ton truck with a 3 ton drill and how the brakes always went out. Somehow they always lived to tell the tale.

Haven't thought about this in a long time. Good memories.

benoliver9992• 3 years ago

In The Traveller's Tree by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a travelogue from the Caribbean, he gives an account of water divination. He initially sees it as some voodoo myth, and is taken aback when they repeatedly find water.

digitalsushi• 3 years ago

Ok, if I point at a random spot in the ground in an area that generally has water, and I said, "dig here and you will find water", and you put 1/5 a mile of pipe down into the earth and water comes up, am I some type of miracle? Would those people work in the desert? I think it's a lotto ticket that always wins.

naikrovek2• 3 years ago

the depth of the water table is fairly well known throughout the world, and it is not like a series of underwater rivers which are easily missed; the water table is called a "table" because it is very large and very flat.

if you are within 100 miles of a natural body of water, or in a flood plain, or anywhere that it rains semi-regularly, drilling will get you to a source of water.

there's no magic or divination involved.

presidentender• 3 years ago

My dad drilled water wells in the US after spending many years working on oil wells overseas. His clients would often hire witchers (water witches, water witchers, well witches - I think the distance from Appalachia to Montana clouded the specific vocabulary). You'd have this very old man dodder around the property with a pair of sticks, and when the sticks magically chose to pull together and cross, that's where you'd dig the well.

I do not recall whether the magical approach was any more successful than the traditional approach.

stickfigure5• 3 years ago

It's shocking how many people still give weight to astrology.

bluGill8• 3 years ago

In most cases you can drill just about anywhere and find water. So any approach from random to looking at geological features (which you can gather from seismograph data, if needed set off an explosion in controlled locations...) will find water. The latter approach may find a specific place where a less deep well can work, but in most locations there isn't that much a difference (at least not among the reasonable places to drill your well - if you are willing to pay for miles of pipe you can maybe have a useful choice of location).

johnloeber• 3 years ago

It's called Dowsing and there's no evidence that it works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

When I built my house in the country, the well driller insisted on witching. He said "we should drill right here." I said "No, move it 100 feet that way. Your spot is right in the middle of my future driveway."

"I can't guarantee we'll hit water there" he said.

"I paying you. Just drill where I said" I said.

And of course we hit water.

runjake• 3 years ago

I was shocked to randomly drive by a local water utility company and a guy walking in a field holding what looked like dowsing rods in his hands.

I didn't stop to ask, but it wasn't a locate antenna (I am familiar with those, and he didn't have any wires or electronic equipment on him).

I was pretty surprised they were messing around with dowsing, knowing it's scientifically unproven/disproven.

Then again, people still use lie detectors and chiropractics.

candiddevmike• 3 years ago

If you dig deep enough anywhere you'll probably find water eventually.

MisterBastahrd• 3 years ago

.... Your grandfather knew that he needed to find soil that wasn't covered in a stone slab and how deep he needed to dig to hit the water table.

That's not woo woo or some kind of super power. That's simply having the experience of having dug a deep hole in the ground a few times.

0x445442• 3 years ago

When I was younger I witnessed a well witcher find a location with a devining stick. Spooky stuff.

lost_tourist4• 3 years ago

Or as I suspect like where I grew up, if you dig down far enough you will hit water. The professional guys there would just ask "where do you want it?" and 99% of the time there was water there and not that far down.

303uru• 3 years ago

Heh, water table here is at about 350 feet with nothing but boulders and clay between ground level and there. Good luck.

pravus• 3 years ago

This is interesting. Part of my life was working with a water well driller running a rig for my grand-father's business a long time ago. The technique is virtually identical but with a hydraulic lift for running the drill and uses compressed air to clear the bore.

The first step was to find the location and park the drilling rig so it wouldn't sink once the well was dug. Then you'd raise the drill arm, attach a section of pipe and the drill head. You'd lower it down into a round flange that had an opening to one side where all of the cuttings blew out. My job was to shovel the cuttings into a trench to direct water flow once you hit the water line. It was critical to keep water from getting under the tires of the rig.

Each section of pipe is 20 feet long and as you drill in you detach the rig head, raise it, get another section of pipe from a rotating carousel and then start grinding again. Once done you pull all the pipe by basically doing the reverse and then perform a similar operation to push casing down into the hole. When the rig pulls away you have a round hole in the ground ready to have another truck come in to insert an electric pump with all the wiring. Then you box everything up at the top and say job done.

Oil field drilling is pretty similar as well but the rigs are vastly larger and move way more earth much faster. My dad worked on a rough necking crew and I've been exposed to the oil and gas industry most of my life so this is an interesting tangent.

bochoh• 3 years ago

My 5 year plan includes building a shed with power, then adding a self driven well and adding the capacity to switch irrigation off city water to the shed source (tm). In the northeast so no real water concerns here

naikrovek2• 3 years ago

never in my life have I read a more positive landing page about drilling your own well.

this guy has me convinced that i can drill my own well.

i don't need to drill my own well, but if i ever do, i am sure that i can do it, now.

solomonb• 3 years ago

Is this at all viable in Southern California? My gut says no, but I would love to be wrong.

amluto3• 3 years ago

There’s lots of data here:

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/current/?type=gw

Oddly a bunch of counties are missing from the results, despite USGS appearing to have some data.

kuon• 3 years ago

I live in Switzerland and my house is build on a rock, some of the foundation is actually rock and not concrete but it's old from 1750. So that drilling technique is not for my yard.

But, this lead me to think, is non rock ground frequent in urbanized area? Is rock ground like my place more like the exception? I'm used to it so I thought it was the norm, but I guess it is not.

BrandoElFollito• 3 years ago

In my days of fighting paranormal activities and beliefs (homeopathy, wells witchers, ...) we were usually told that we do not have open minds and do not accept anything outside of our limited science.

For one, you need to have an open mind, but be careful to not your brain fall off (https://youtu.be/RFO6ZhUW38w?si=1Snzh3lhFJ6d381g&t=12)

Then, we were very much interested in seeing these unusual things happening. As I mentioned it in a previous comment, I declared at the radio that I would immediately switch my PhD topic (in physics) to study them. Because, you know, Nobel prize. I did not get to see anything unusual, did a uneventful PhD and, well, do not have said Nobel prize.

But the important thing was: I wanted to measure. To have an experiment where what was unusual would be measurable. This means that tests with well diggers were a complete failure when they were asked to find water in controlled conditions.

OTOH, they were good when in the wild because (probably) they could read the landscape and see signs of water (conscientiously or not).

Same with homeopathy: when I have a headache I get an aspirin and before it had time to reach my stomach I feel better. I also once swam away from what I thought were sharks and I probably broke a swimming record because my arms were moving like a blender.

This is to say that scientists do not limi themselves - they just want to see and measure something to say that this is a thing. Unfortunately as soon as they do it the whole paranormal things fall apart. But we are still hoping.

How to drill your own water well

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