Watch a Water Well Being Drilled

out in the country your water well is really important just about any kind of home needs a water source of some kind in this video documents the day that we had the well drilling rig out to my son Roberts cabin to try and find some water for him now one of the things about this process is that you never really know if you're going to hit water so it's a bit nerve-wracking you could spend thousands of dollars and end up with a dry hole we ended up with a really great well and we'll get to that eventually but what I want to share with you now is just the process and how it all unfolded on that day the thing you see dangling here is the drill bit or one of two drill bits that are going to be used this is larger in diameter and it goes in first to create a a slightly larger hole for the metal casing a metal pipe that's going to go down later here the drilling has started and you can hear the sort of pounding action of the actual drill rig it rotates and pounds and pulverizes its way through rock here in our particular site the rock is probably about 2 or 3 feet down and from then on it's just limestone bedrock the whole way this metal pipe is the casing which sticks up above the ground and keeps groundwater out and the welders applying a nameplate which is unique to our well what you see here is pretty much what well drilling is all about it's standing around watching this big drill bore a hole into the earth there's a little bit of water coming out they pump that down to lubricate the bit as it's working here you see the guys removing the first drilling head that they used it's somewhat larger in diameter than the head that they're going to use for most of the well and it's larger so that the hole is bigger so it will accommodate the metal casing that you saw the welder working on before here the casings going in there just wrestling it into place now the purpose of the casing is to make sure that groundwater does not get into the well that we're really only getting that deep down water which is the the purest and cleanest stuff the the water we want the bags you see here are chunks of bentonite clay and they're going to go around the casing later on and in contact with water they swell up and seal around the outside of the casing right now the rig is being used to to pound the casing solidly all the way down into position so that the top is at the right height as the rig bores deeper and deeper additional drill rods need to be added to keep pushing that drilling head down and that's what you see happening here they're the the new drill rod is being moved into position it threads on to the end of the old one and then when it's tight they can remove that wrench and start drilling again and going down another 20 feet or so until it's time for another drill rod to be added here they're applying that bentonite clay I was telling you about it gets filled in around the casing it looks kind of like gravel when it's in its dried State but as soon as it comes in contact with water it starts to swell up and take them together it forms this impervious seal around the top of the casing well now we've gotten down to the real business of drilling the bulk of the well this is the kind of operation that you see going on hour after hour but there's a couple of things I want to point out to you first you'll see some water coming out there that water's not coming from the ground it's still a dry hole at this stage but the water is being pumped in from a separate tanker truck and it lubricates the bit as it's pounding away at the rock at the bottom of the hole there's also air rushing up the air is actually what drives the head that does the pulverizing of the rock here's a closer view of the chain look at the chain on either side there it's slowly inching down that's the rate of progress of the bit as it's going through the rock it's actually dolomite is fairly hard as sedimentary rock goes but this thing is no trouble boring right through it here's an elevated view of what's going on and you can see that the dust kicked up by the air that's being forced down into the hole to drive the head when we finally do hit groundwater that air being pumped down will cause the groundwater to to rise up and shoot out and that's when you know you've hit water as you can see by the big pile of cuttings on either side of the hole we've been drilling here for a while we still haven't hit any water we're probably down about a hundred and twenty feet now the water that is coming out is just the stuff that's been pumped in but I can tell you that something is about to happen here I want you to notice the color of the slurry that's coming out of the hole it's starting to get darker now and we're starting to get more water coming the well driller notices that and he's pointing it out to the camera here because we are actually about to hit some significant water the first water that we've hit in the whole process significantly more water is coming out of the well now than is being pumped down so we definitely hit something the reason that water is coming up all that way from underground is because of the air that's being pumped down to drive the drilling head when we hit water the well driller estimated that we were getting a constant flow of probably 40 to 50 gallons a minute which is a really good flow we were very fortunate and we're very thankful to have hit this kind of water because as I said you really don't know what you're going to hit until you start drilling the question now remains how much farther do you keep drilling because we've clearly hit good water we want to go down far enough that we make sure that we really do have some good stuff in large enough quantities but it is possible to drill too far sometimes it happens that if you keep drilling too much you'll open up an empty rock crack or fissure or something and then all your your water will start flowing down and you won't actually have any and your well at all so we're just finishing up the the 20 foot long rod here and then we're going to call it a day as it turns out the well ended up being 146 feet deep and we're looking forward to lots of great water I know from measuring too that the water rose to about 13 feet below the surface of the ground which is nice and close to the ground so it makes for easy pumping the well driller found this rock which is kind of interesting it's a regular color on one side but it's dark brown on the other and he figures that was along the edges of the water cavern or underground passageway that we hid when we first got into that great water so there's probably a lot down there all in all were very thankful that we've hit some great water and we had a great well driller to help us do it too

Channel: Bailey Line Road

Views: 382,807

Rating: 4.7889991 out of 5

Keywords: well drilling, deep well, water well, drilling rig, drill rig, homesteading water well, homestead well, manitoulin island well, well pump, drilling companies, deep well water pump, dug well, drill pump, well service, well drilling ontario, water well drilling, a well, well water pump, well water, wells construction, well drilling cost, borehole drilling, well drillers, well done well drilling, sand point well, well drilling companies, well drilling companies near me

Id: 2I4yrhaISQM

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 11 2015