How to INSTALL YOUR OWN WELL with a Sledge Hammer for FREE OFF GRID WATER

if someone told you could get access to all the free water you wanted you might think that they were aligned but in this video i'm going to show you how to make that a reality by installing your own well i put this well in a single day using only a sledgehammer and some basic tools i'm going to take you through the project so that you can understand what i did and see if it might be something you want to consider for yourself this is a well point the blue piece you see there is made of cast iron and it's attached to a galvanized pipe that also has a stainless steel mesh now those holes in that fine screen are going to go into the ground and allow water to get inside the pipe and then you'll attach other pipes to the end of it and you can draw water from deep in the ground up to the surface so you can use it this is called a sandpoint well now think of it kind of like a straw that goes way into the ground and allows you to pull water up this is the easiest type of well that you could install yourself each of those pipes has a threaded end and the pipe diameter is an inch and a quarter you can get larger diameters but this is going to be the best bet if you're going to try to drive the pipe into the ground yourself and to connect these pipes together you're going to need a coupling but don't just buy a regular one this is a special well cup line it has threads on both ends but it's unique because the threads don't go all the way to the end now you're going to see that i'm going to hammer this pipe on the ground and normally if you hammer to coupling you damage the end but that gap is going to allow you to hammer the end of the pipe as hard as you want and you're not going to damage anything and before we start driving that pipe you want to clean the inside of the pipe because there could be some oil residue now you might be thinking you're just going to use it for gardening and it's no big deal but you never know if somebody could be drinking the water or even if it's used for animals tie a rope to the end of a brush like this mix up some soapy water and then just pull the rope through the pipe a few times and that's going to clean anything off you'll want to clean out the end of the point as well but you can't pull that rope through because it's got the point on the end so just push the brush through using a stick or something else and then just give it a good rinse until it's clean i decided to install my weld just a few feet from my shed and this is going to give me a couple of advantages if i ever want to try to hook up an electric pump i could put that inside the shed so this is going to work out great and this is also a lower portion of my yard and that means i should be even closer to reaching my water table i'm starting off the hole with a post hole digger this is going to get me down about four feet and it's going to make sure that i can get rid of any roots or rocks that might be in the upper soil and the post hole digger is going to make getting through this rough soil a lot easier how do you know if you've even got water underneath the ground that you can tap into well the real answer is you don't putting in any well has a certain level of chance but in most of new england there's a surprisingly high water table but that's also the case in many other parts of the us and i've put some links in the description to help you but also check with local well suppliers or even your town to see if others have put in a standpoint well unsuccessfully the first step is easy i put the point right into the hole and you can see that i've got about a foot of pipe out of the ground start by applying some pipe dope to the threaded pipe and you're going to want to use one that's rated safe for drinking water the great thing about sandpoint wells is they're often exempt from any kind of rules that a town or state may have but before you put any well in you'll want to check with your city to make sure that it's okay to install your own sam point well with your piped up on now you can screw on that coupler and screw it on as tight as you can by hand then grab another section of pipe put some dope on the end of the threads and thread it into the coupler now grab the two biggest pipe wrenches you can get your hands on you're going to tighten that coupler to the lower section of the pipe and then also tighten the upper pipe into the coupler you cannot make these too tight this stuff is meant to be beat on and here's the secret ingredient that's going to allow you to drive that pipe into the ground without damage this cap is called the smash cap or a hammer cap and it threads directly onto the top of the pipe and this is designed to take the hit of a sledge hammer to drive it into the ground you can hit that cap directly but i decided for some extra insurance i added this 10 inch section of pipe below the cap so there was no way i would cause any damage to the threads below with a cap on you just start to hammer the pipe you can hit this thing as hard as you want now the way i'm doing it standing on a chair was not very smart but this is what i happen to have around i kept at it smashing that cap and driving the pipe into the ground once you're a foot or two from the ground you want to add some more pipe dope put it under the coupling and tighten everything up as you're hammering that cap you're going to loosen the sections of pipe up so it's important to stop every so often put your pipe wrenches on the pipes and the coupling and make sure that they remain tight and make sure you also check the cap too because if those threads loosen up every time you're whacking it with that sledge hammer you're going to lose some of that force and overall that's going to slow you down there are other tools you could use to drive the pipe into the ground some people will use a fence post driver or sometimes called a pipe slammer but those are really difficult to find in fact many people will just make their own so when i first bought this smash cap i thought i would just try it out to see what it was like but it's not nearly as difficult as you would think so i pretty much gave up looking for one of those tools because this hammer was working just fine each one of those pipes including the point is four feet long and i ended up using five of them in total and you can see that cheater pipe ended up working out really well because it took the beading and bent a little bit but the rest of the pipes held up just fine it's a good idea to start checking for water once you're about 12 feet in the ground and once you hit it you'll want to add at least one more section of pipe and that'll put that well point far enough under the water table to make sure that your new well isn't going to run out of water and hearing this sound is like music to your ears especially after all that work what do you do if you hit something big like a rock and the pipe won't go in the ground any further well unfortunately that is a bit of the chance you take with a well because nothing is guaranteed it's kind of like mining for gold except the chances of hitting water are a lot better and if you do hit a rock you can try to wiggle that pipe back and forth and pull out any sections that you can and try the well somewhere else but now we're into the best part of the project and what you're looking at here is called a pitcher pump these things have been around for ages because they work they're simple and they're able to pump up water from as deep as 20 feet and these are a great way to get started but you can also use an electric pump on a sandpoint well and you can even combine multiple sampling wells together for greater output before using one of these pumps for the first time it's a good idea to soak it in a five gallon bucket of water for about an hour the gaskets inside the pump are made of leather and they can get pretty dried out while they're sitting in the box now we're ready to attach the pump to the pipe and to do that i'm just going to use teflon tape to make this a little bit easier with the pump securely screwed in the pipe kira wanted to be the first person to try pumping water out another tip is to pour water in the top of the pump that's also going to help prime it up and remember you are pulling water from up to 20 feet down so it does take a little while before you're gonna see anything come out and now after all your hard work this is what you're gonna get now you might be a little disappointed that that water looks so dirty but you just need to keep pumping it and depending where you live and what type of soil you have will determine how long it's gonna take before that water runs clear now in my case the water started turning clear just about after 15 minutes of pumping and you don't have to sit there for the 15 minutes you can take a break you can do it the next day it really doesn't matter and none of that is going to make any difference because once you have clear water you're going to be so excited this project was a lot of work with all that hammering but once that water started coming up it made it all worth it doing this well project was awesome i had a lot of fun putting it in and the best part of all is when you see that clear water coming out but it's really important before you ever even consider drinking this water that you get it tested and if you're sure you're not going to drink it you should be fine to use it for anything else and if you'd like to see how an electric pump is installed on one of these wells let me know in the comments for a follow-up video and hopefully you enjoyed this video if you did please give me a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you're not already for more videos coming up

Channel: Silver Cymbal

Views: 4,215,491

Keywords: how to install a well, can you install your own well, water well, well water, backyard well, sand point, sandpoint well, sand well, shallow point well, shallow well, well install, diy well, homesteading well, off grid well, home well, how expensive is a well

Id: E-pn41fqYXs

Length: 7min 53sec (473 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021