DIY build your own backyard well for free water

pretty good [Music] well today's the day I got my private well permit application approved yesterday so now we're gonna start digging first I have a little soliloquy about the importance of doing this right don't just dig a hole in your backyard and suck water out of it there are a lot of steps you need to take in order to ensure that the groundwater underneath your ground isn't affected negatively by what you're doing first get a permit if you need one I'm in Virginia Virginia requires a permit for drilling a well anywhere and this is important because groundwater is a natural resource it's a shared resource it's a resource that you're going to be using when you're pulling water out of it and if you don't seal the well properly if you don't take if you don't use the right materials you can contaminate the groundwater not only for yourself but for all of your neighbors and other people around you who also use it so do your research and do it right to dig our well I've got an 8 inch auger the way this works is you plunge it into the ground you twist pull out the dirt and repeat I'm on the coast of Virginia I'm going to be digging about 10 to 15 feet down before I hit the water table and so we're gonna be extending this thing a few times okay let's go over some of the materials that we'll need we've got our auger here we've got our extension pipe here this should extend us up to about 16 feet I've got a shovel you'll need some gravel I've got two 10-foot sections of four inch PVC pipe that's going to be our well casing and two 10-foot sections of one-inch PVC pipe that's going to be what we pull the water up through I've also got some grout in bags that are still inside because I don't want them to get wet but I will bring those out when we're ready to fill in the well alright let's get digging we hit a rock already got some glass two or three feet down that's weird we're getting it pretty deep into this hole it's getting hard to turn let's lower to the ground so let's add an extension okay got our extension in let's keep going so I'm down about 7 feet now and I'm hitting this sand it's weird digging a hole in your backyard you can learn a lot about geology you can learn about what kind of soil you're what kind of ground your house is built on this is this white stuff this is like it's like beach sand getting really heavy not only from the longer but from the sand that right there is water folks way down there that's about we're about ten feet down and we've have standing water there you got it cut the screen into our PVC pipe so that water can filter into the pipe and then we'll be able to suck it out with our one inch too and then seal up the well casing all right we're now ready to start cutting the screen into the bottom of our Ella case got some PVC primer and some PVC cement going to attach this in cap at the bottom of well casing the end cap just keeps sort of random crud from entering the bottom of our well casing we only want water to enter two small slits that are going to cut inside of the pipe [Music] [Music] you might see in some other videos there just drilling round holes with a drill that that's gonna let too much crud into our well case you want narrow slits to keep out little rocks and it helps keep out mud here is our finished well screen you can see a bunch of of the slits that I cut in it with my dremel and it's not perfect it's not pretty but I think it will get the job done I'm surrounded by trees on all sides okay got our well casing in the hole on top of the gravel we'll need to grout in the gravel up to almost the surface but before we do that let's test this thing out see if we can get some water I'm using a foot now is a one-inch football we're gonna put it on the bottom of our inner pipe basically what it does is it lets water come up but not go back down it'll make pumping the water out easier [Music] so we're ready to pump some water out and do a test and see how this casing works I've got a water pump here I've got a whole bunch of couplings that I'm going to use to connect these different sized hoses together then we're gonna connect it up to this pipe stick the pipe in the hole see what happens well this has to pump a lot of air out of this pipe first I'm gonna go grab a coat Oh we've got some water coming out I think there's so much junk in it the pump is having a hard time I filter got clogged already I'm just cleaning the filter here on my water pump but now that we know that we can get with water out of our well now it's time to grout around it co de and we're done you want to use grout because it doesn't shrink or expand we finished our grouting and this is what our well looks like now whoo a lot of hard work but it's gonna be awesome when it's fully hooked up you really want to make sure you grout don't just throw dirt and crap back into the hole you're gonna have two problems first all that mud any dirt and stuff that you throw it back into the hole is just going to seep down through your gravel into your well casing and your water is gonna be brown forever who wants brown water forever second reason is that it protects the larger ground water source from chemicals and other stuff that's seeping down through this opening that backfill the softer than the original dirt and it's gonna be more porous and it's gonna allow stuff to seep down in there again we don't want chemicals and nonsense getting into the groundwater because we all share it so don't do that go through a mud back in your hole grout it properly the last thing I'm gonna do today is put a well seal on the top of the well to protect the inside of the well casing just like the grout protects the area around it pretty good

Channel: Historic House DIY

Views: 9,786

Rating: 4.6071429 out of 5

Keywords: well, water, private well, diy, do it yourself, home improvement, free water

Id: tplMs43kJJQ

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020