Digging a Shallow Well

I've been asked how I am finding water when I dig a well it's pretty simple what I use many people disagree with it say it doesn't work I'm not here to change anybody's mind I'm just telling you what I use and what works for me and again this is only for shallow wells something both let's say no deeper than 30 feet and my secret weapon is coat hangers dowsing rods and what I use to make these work correctly so I don't have to wonder from my thumb or fingers are helping or that it's rotating correctly drinking straws take a drinking straw cut it in half slide it over in slide it over and I don't let my thumbs touch I don't grab tight and hold it don't let my fingers rub on this you want it just to come up and they're very easy to rotate within these straws you want to keep them perpendicular to the ground or just up pointed down just slightly because you don't want to work against and I'll go out as I'm about to do another well out where my I have some bees and I need to make sure that they're having plenty of water and it's further that I want to tote it every day and I'll have a further demonstration once we get out there I've marked that spot okay what's happening here is real interesting it happens every once in a while I'm getting hit on a line which means to me which has been my experience there is an underwater stream right here it might make more sense if I come in this way again it's kind of comfortable perpendicular to the ground just a little bit lower walk up they start to cross now just kind of like put a foot marker right here which means I could dig anywhere on this line and I'm gonna hit water because there's a stream of sorts running underneath here the other thing that will happen occasionally is instead of them crossing we get a little closer instead of them crossing like this you may go pass something and both of them go like this or like this in me is I need to go that direction back towards where the water is and once I start going that way they will cross again a lot of times this will point you in the direction that you need to go now sometimes it I've done this where I can't find anything I mean I'm not getting any hit this just so happens it has bit this has been about the easiest I did I started and as soon as it I started getting hits on the water and I bet if I start going across like this probably about three or four more feet it's going across there direct line so since I have been fortunate enough to find what I believe to be blowing water underneath here I'm going to try to find a spot that's convenient for me particularly point sand that's the way it is been for the whales that i didäôt another part of the property so what convenient for me this area because I can keep it out of the way and it's convenient so let's see what back we'll come back up on that line okay scuff in the ground back here I get another line I'm just gonna pick me a spot I'll pick me a spot this could be on this line now that we got everything ready start on our wheel [Music] okay thanks to pay attention to as you're digging as I started it's very sandy here of course as you see but I got down to a little over five feet in the sand it's changing color SEC I mean I'm getting to a different kind of sand I'm getting to clay whatever but when you're digging pay attention to the changes in the color of what you're digging because that can give you clues as to what you're about to get into weather getting closer to water whether you dig somewhere else around on your property you may have an idea of what to expect and the difference between the original auger with having to use a pipe wrench and everything to take stuff up with this method right here making these extensions out of square bar tubing just move sprinkly up they handle off but extension here reattach spring clip put your handle back on but just friend clip in and you're ready to keep rolling so we're down a little over 10 feet now it's starting to get into the clay and usually you get there you get to the other side of it and in that sand on the other side of the clay or Rock that's where you get to start getting water so I anticipate anytime this thing's starting to get a little bit wet it's also important that you try to keep things straight up and down perpendicular you starkey crooked you're gonna have problems putting your pipe in later on what we're done about now 13 feet we've started to hit water not late it's really really wet with really rough sand mixed with it squeeze it out here's a tip especially if you're working by yourself because this can get 50 dog Oh heavy get to the point we help control this thing if you've made one of these with the detachable pieces the square tubing just take the handle off it doesn't seem like that weighs a lot but you don't have to balance it up in there and it makes it a whole lot easier and you don't have to worry about hitting you ball head on the way down there you go when you get in the water there's gonna be a lot of suction and it is not gonna want to let you pull this up so to help get it started you need to do is you need to twist and pull at the same time to break that suction loose and that's a little harder to do when you're trying to pull the handle off so you'll just have to work out it's all by feel you'll feel it let go like I said right now I'm pulling up on it and twisting and it is not letting go okay there we go knows a part of the joys of working place okay we're finished not that you can see anything down in there there's our varying bits of soul I wanted to go deeper I'm about eighteen feet which is not very deep but I got four feet of water in the hole but here's the reason I went ahead and stopped and this is from experience this right here there's green clay this is out of focus clay and you get in this and it goes on for a while and it is tough and it is slimy and it is a lot of work and I'm not gonna gain anything by killing myself going any further I just need to be able to get a little water out of this thing to take care of my bees and water a plant or two around here with old cistern pump so oh one more thing this is why you pay attention when you dig it's broken right off in here that's oh it's an old spearhead that came up find lots of arrowheads and spearheads around here this is one he came up about I don't know I was about four or five feet down and got it well next we're gonna put our pipe in the hole okay here's our PVC casing pipe that's gonna go on the ground it's about 20 feet long because I got about a four foot water table in the hole I just come up from the bottom a little bit get this in you'll get our pea gravel around it and we'll pack dirt back around it and our casing pipe will be finished under then capping it off and then we will put our pump pipe in okay so we just about ready now what I like to do when I fill the hole back in of course first put the pipe in then I put the pea gravel in to be higher than the level of the notches I cut in the the four inch PVC then I start replacing the soil that came out of the ground and what I do is I start from this and me from what came out last and work my way up to what came out first as you can see I haven't got half way through and I'm already full you know also like this one here sometimes I do it beforehand I will clean around the bottom of the the hole where I'm digging this one here was a lot of nice grass and I just left it there now I'm through digging the hole and I'm filling in I go in and I've chopped all the the grass around it I'll pack this here down and then we're going to cap it with concrete a bag or two of sack Creek should be fine and what that does that causes the water not to be able to run down into your well it will run around it it's just another way to seal it off we get that done and hopefully tomorrow we will be able to get the get our other pipe in and go ahead and put the pump on once it gets close to the Bob you'll feel it once the slack goes out of it you've hit the bottom there's mine I'm at the bottom so what I like to do is take it and tie myself a little knot right there so I know where the top of my case is let's bring it back up right about there so I've got almost four feet almost four feet of water in there so what I need to do is measure this cord from the end of the top and be about one foot shorter because we don't want the bottom of our whale pipe to be touching the bottom of our case and being say it I've already cut my pipe these shallow wheels this is one of the most important things that you can have to save you all kinds of trouble this is a foot bowel and what it does is it allows water to come into your pipe and it will not come back out so your pump will always stay Prime so then the next thing we need to do is lower this down in our whale and I'm using one-inch pipe on this piece together this is a scrap whale okay what I don't want to do lose this you know I can grab it the other thing I've done is like went and got a flat a four inch flange for a drain or a toilet it's gonna be easy to sit to stay in there and then just kind of forward to set on top nice let that thing sit right in there down nice and tight okay it does not get any easier than that right there so as far as your well being you're done with with this part you don't have to worry about stabilizing or anything then your pitcher pub one thing would be easier to do is it go ahead and prime it go ahead and get water in that pipe so you're not fighting to bring it up water down in our pie I'm hoping that's enough water I may not have got enough but then we'll take our picture pop attached to the top of our pie we'll see we got enough in their prime and we don't I might get some more water to help this thing get prize okay we had to get some more water because I have enough to private thing but we I look at this as a good training example not to freak out if it doesn't work there's not water and you can prime right through your pitcher club to just open it up and pour through you're gonna have to pump and pump and pump until you get rid of all that because that's all the stuff to spend disturbed at the bottom it will take a while eventually it will clear now what I do so I have to worry about this thing moving I'm just going to attach it to my block up here it's good to go and if you notice the being started I already I put my concrete at the bottom and the reason for that is twofold one you want to keep your whale clean you don't want brown rock water running in it bring your contaminants in but to think about this way you have opened a hole in the ground exposing water down there you want to be a good steward and not let stuff get nasty so you're you're not only keeping your well water clean but you're keeping water clean and other people may end up using so now we'll just let this thing sit get it cleaned up in my job is to pump this thing get it cleaned out and we've got another wheel okay we're gonna wrap all this up we've got it installed we got it aground we're getting water I still need to clear mine but we're not going to do that here I just want to close this up with a few tips to help you in some problems that may come up with all this that seemed to come up with all of them one make sure all of your connections your your PVC glued connections your teflon tape connections all those are tight if not they will leak a little bit you'll loose Prime and you'll have problem with your pump too if your pump after doing it this way and having the foot valve on the bottom if it continues to loose prime probably what's happened is the dirt or sand or whatever that's in the bottom of the Year whale has gotten into the foot valve and it's keeping it from closing all the way which is allowing water to run back out it's not a big deal pull this off pull your pipe out take that foot valve apart there's one screw it takes out you can clean it out get the sanded junk out put it back together drop it back in it should be fine finally keep a bucket or a container of water near your pump until it is given you continual water it can be quick prime of this thing where you can continue going and eventually hopefully you'll have one that you don't have to worry about I've got one of those around here it stays primed all the time so good luck what you dig in hope this helps um and I'm gonna get out of here because it's starting to rain happy digging

Channel: TigerCreekFarm

Views: 1,699,511

Rating: 4.7666802 out of 5

Keywords: dowsing, shallow well, digging well, pitcher pump, hand auger, auger well

Id: 5rYPRMm8Arw

Length: 26min 11sec (1571 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Kramasz]

How is this pepper related you ask? Well, I will have all my peppers on my back lot. Currently there is no irrigation other than a long stretch of drip I installed for my fruit trees. I will be branching off this into my peppers, but one day I'd like to have in-ground much like this dude here.

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As I'm typing this, I think I may do in-ground kratky buckets. At least I can get those out into the yard immediately.. Maybe that'll come this week.