DIY Well Drilling... It's a PITA

so today i'm going to be working on driving my own well let's get to it is it stuck good soil what are you gonna have to do about it oh dang it oh a few moments later all right i got a starter hole drilled about four feet so i'm gonna stick this down the hole all right the next step is to get the pressure washer turned on with the jetter stick the hose down here and then we'll just turn this by hand and i got a t to put on here that we can turn and drive down if we need to do that so let's get started on that so i've got the 4x10 done it's time to start adding the 2 inch by 10 pipes my goal is to go down at least 30 feet what about the clay is that kind of hard to do that if we can drill through the clay do you know how deep the clay goes nope i'm pretty sure you can drink that no it's disgusting that's going to be kind of hard right out of tea it should be easier because it's smaller in diameter smile are you wearing gloves and long sleeves [Music] covering your feet should be [Music] [Applause] that one hot so i started with drilling and cutting the pvc pipe into teeth but i hit shell rock and it pretty much just wore down the teeth so i went to a pipe supply store and i got a two inch galvanized coupling and a two inch a pipe to threaded male end and then i cut teeth into this this should help me cut through the shell rock a lot nicer than this i'm just hammering the teeth out a little bit [Applause] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] okay so the well that i started here i ended up losing um i had the pipe down about 30 feet maybe 28 feet or so and the hole collapsed in on itself and i just for the life of me could not get that pipe out of the ground um i ended up hooking up my my skid steer to the end of the pipe with a a tree harness and pulling on it just ever so slightly and it gave and i thought that i got it out but what happened was the coupler failed and i lost the pipe down in the hole so i had to start a new hole and that's how you drive a well all right so i just got done driving my shallow well i'm about 35 feet here i just dropped my well point in i'm gonna fill it up with some pool sand which is a kind of a coarse grain filter sand and that'll uh go down to the bottom fill up the the at least the first 10 feet is what i'm aiming for and then cap it off with some concrete and then i'll be done it's been two weeks working on this here honey [Music] oh is it one [Applause] it has an iron smell to it but it's not it doesn't smell like super chemically like the other oil oh yeah see the color oh look at it it's not as yellow at all oh wow but it looks like a nice so what was my experience with driving my own well i'll tell you what it was very difficult and arduous it was about a two week long process i spent about a week on the first hole and then i lost it and uh um i'm not one to give up uh even though i was disappointed and upset uh i still forged forward and i started a new hole and it took me another four days to get what i have now and uh i'm really happy with it however this was not a task for the faint of heart it really isn't if you're diy drilling your own well in my location it's very sandy so it should have been relatively easy but in my location i also have shell rock and i hit shell rock and it became very difficult very quickly now one of the things that i didn't do on my first hole which was the reason why it collapsed was i didn't use any kind of clay to stabilize the whole lining and down here when you're working in sandy loamy soil you have to use bentonite clay in your hole as you're flushing and drilling and that bentonite clay will basically create a uh a thin wall lining on the sides of the of the uh the well hole and help stabilize it so it doesn't collapse in on itself when uh when it comes time to pull out your drill pipe and it dramatically improved the um the ability to to drill and not have to worry about the hole collapsing in on itself so that's my takeaway from this experience it was uh it was rewarding and fulfilling you know we now have water and uh using the bentonite clay and doing the the the well the way that i did it was up to code and um and we don't have any utilities to pay now so hope you learned something from this i hope it was entertaining if if at the very least and we'll see you on the next video thanks for watching

Channel: Steve Does Everything

Views: 1,217,591

Keywords: Hand drilling a well, Diy well drilling, how to drill your own well, diy well, Well Drilling, DIY Projects, Water Well, Self-Drilling, Homesteading, Water Source, Off-Grid Living, Well Construction, Borehole Drilling, Groundwater Extraction, Handheld Drilling Equipment, Water Supply Solutions, Cost-Saving Methods, DIY Skills, Plumbing and Construction

Id: haEG5zDI5mI

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022