We DRILLED A WELL & You'll Never Believe What Happened

[Music] so I don't even deal like yet should be illegal oh man that's snow this is gonna be a really good or really bad way to start off the year so I think odds we don't hit water and evens we do hit water God numbers like gods yeah okay odds are water odds are water okay odds are water ready yeah okay we're gonna hit water hold on if we can if we can get a pair we're gonna hit water really shallow and it's gonna be a lot of water so let's try one more time if we get a pair still a nod so that means we're definitely definitely gonna hit water today [Music] no no block the image on the other side yep just in the ditch [Music] oh you got me why yet [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] that right there is better than a cup of coffee will wake up wake you up that's like it that's like a sport who can move piles of crap faster I will say I have no regrets having a mini around yeah because we moved a lot of stuff and we didn't live much stuff nope that's the way it should be we did lift a few things which was more just like stubbornness I think we're gonna hit water today I did rolled the dice yesterday I do I was good feeling you have a good feeling yeah I think we need to make a pool yeah everyone guesses right you should you should place your bets now okay I'm gonna guess I'm gonna just 180 I was guessing 150 really you see I'm being more optimistic than you are okay be like okay you want 150 I'm what do you think everyone has this like we could draw it out that's like well-drilling like experience where it's like optimism optimism optimism and it kind of plateaus and become like pessimism pessimism and pretty soon it's just like tears and and sadness so that's bug his lot of like hugs kind of looks like a funeral a little bit you know get this this is crazy we spilled lettuce I believe the drill Wow I know the stuff on the left is the casing and then what our Wells gonna be lined with yeah these are the drill heads on the right that's what they actually will put down into the ground so every one of those is 20 feet so every one of those $1,000 was $1,000 yeah so every time you see one of those disappear just go over there we'll add a thousand and it's 48 dollars a foot that's the per foot price but there's some base charges in there for capping the well and for the drill head and putting these to the street we're gonna screen the well I'll have to explain that later because I can't remember exactly why but basically I think it keeps sediment from infiltrating the well it's expensive to get the screen in there but it really increases the quality and the longevity of your well otherwise it could it could get flooded with sediment this looks more complicated than flying an airplane what do you think they're squawking oh right I wonder if there's an equivalent for like right brother I do know that at some point if things go well that thing's gonna be gushing water and yeah I'm gonna look like a water park that thing is flipping master this puts the shame any drill we own oh my gosh it's taller than our house what in the world biggest ears so that's the drill head you can see the teeth on it loading the drill head into the casing so basically it drills and inserts casing at the same so the thing is even if you drill a while and there's no water there's still a casing there because you don't want the well to collapse there we go the city water guys hey guys are they technically competitors ones like you can have all the water you want but if we get mad at you we turn it off and this sounds like but you want water independence water independence [Music] somewhere in there [Music] so apparently in Idaho there's a restriction where they have to put bentonite clay around the KC for like help zoo tourism right you have to put it on your face like a mask really really exfoliate parasite that exfoliates your well to make sure its skin is always crystal clear it's like an anti-aging fruit wells anyway in Idaho it's required so that it seals around the casing so the ground water cannot penetrate the casing and apparently in Montana is not required so they have kind of a unique system where they actually have to drill with a large pipe first to create a oversized hole and then they can put the 6-inch pipe in and fill with bentonite around the 6in pipe in an 8 inch hole kind of strange but they have to do it in Idaho and apparently it's because of southern Idaho it's all their fault [Applause] [Music] [Music] so this is the bet that just came and they're pulling the tenants or the 11-inch casing out and then they're gonna put they're gonna weld a bit on our casing that'll actually be the casing bit and then they're going to insert a drill bit actually I think there's a drill bit in that casing already and they're going to use that so this one was just for the first 20 feet or so so this is the bit this is actually a bit okay that's gonna be welded onto the casing and it just stays in the well okay and yeah that's part of our well so we're paying for that like that's part of the doesn't matter if you hit water or not cost is this guy and it's like carbide I think it's carbide or something it's really tough whatever it is and that suckers got a drill till you find water right a little blue guy yeah and so I guess they're gonna weld that on before they start yeah this is really cool yeah it's really cold they're going to be putting bentonite clay I guess in powder form down there and then the groundwater will leach into the sand tonight powder and we'll create a seal around the upper portion of the casing just where they put this 11 whatever it is and apparently this is because in some areas where there's aquifers where there's actually like a high water table and they drill safe through the aquifer I guess the aquifer water could contaminate the well by moving laterally into the well casing so learning as we go [Music] [Music] [Music] being squished between your fingers it's not sand it clumps so there's rock there but like that right there is just a chunk of clay yeah there's still good but they're not even very deep yeah I mean they really haven't even gotten going yet right it looks like they're so they're on the 80 foot mark but they're about halfway so they're almost 70 feet right now and the he just handed me a bunch of what's coming out there's some rock and stuff in it some sand but there's clay like and clay is bad because water doesn't flow through play either it flows over clay which can be good so like when we dug our foundation the concrete guide said don't over dig because if you do you'll end up into clay and then you'll have all kinds of water issues right but in this situation yeah it's just kind of clay sands rock so basically this is what we continue doing is we keep looking at what's coming out and at a certain point you decide do we settle or do we keep going well you know at some point they will hit water then they'll have to do a flow check and say hey this is how much flow and this is the water quality you know if it's really murky water like that's not really desirable so then you have to ask yourself do you want to keep growing and hope for better or so let's keep drilling early so this is what they hit in the first 20 feet and that's just pure clay like that's like playdough you know anyway so that's what they found in the first twenty feet water I want to win the bet but I don't want 180s and 150 spinning we're at 180 feet and it's blowing so what the roller just gave us a thumbs up when the well drillers smiling that's a good sign so we're gonna go deeper to see baby because these these sediment layers they're not like 1 feet if you know they gee let's see fingers crossed I'm not a body language expert people do this even when I can't see their face that's not sign language stop we're failing I know it's hard right a third but when the well drill is getting excited it's hard to not feel the excitement maybe it's kind of like the shelter's strategy where they're like perfect when there's like lots of problems that is actually it is act excited I don't know hell if I thought wet or dirty [Music] [Music] Jesse I know you crashed the drone but we're at about ten well 1300 gallons a day right now so he said we're at like 10 gallons a minute that's in his opinion that's pretty dang big pretty dang good filler handed probably wouldn't go further so I mean Alissa should not make final decisions on how deep our well should be okay so maybe let's go chat yeah let's chat let's have a talk did John okay oh yeah I just it got really wet like I don't know what happened but the compass like stopped working all of a sudden and so it went from GPS mode to addy mode weed and it like flew backwards into the tree which was kind of we're hashtag worth it yeah it is strange it's fine like it took a rough tumble through there got all wet but it's doing fine so who's trying to get the lens so you can see what you could do because it's all covered in water yeah we're under 1901 right I mean I'm not really the odd kind on kind of odd this area is scary area yeah so when you guys went down another 10 feet into the gravel like oh you hit play we went down and I came there they went down to keep a solid layer of clay down there blue clay there don't we don't we don't want to go in you have a sister clean I would be happy with great that's what we originally built the cistern floor was if we drill the well and it was low-flow oh well if it could give us a gallon or two a minute we could use the cistern to be happy as clams he tested it a couple minutes ago at 12 we're gonna test it again I mean that long as it's clean and you can tow your system goal it's when excess will start a vineyard maybe just a small one I don't have that much what a startled water we're totally relying on you for guidance there you know we don't if you feel like that's good water we're not going to argue with it so cool that good job that's good and it's blowing good yeah get all this clay you can see it separating it's just silt that's crazy look at that that's what they were hitting for probably about 60 feet I mean there was actually like travelease you know clay I guess and then they yeah it was a layer they're just pure clay crazy that's what's all over this right here well that's the casing right now so that's a big cut off of a 20-footer that they did take that raise the bid out and then they'll lay the key because they don't we don't need it [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] Garrett there's water working off so pretty think we got to pick our color No I think they're all green do we want to tell them the damage it's not fair to call it damaged yeah yeah that's not really that fair yeah I think hold on they deserved it let me zoom in on the total five five to six hi guys [Music] there's no way anybody could have predicted this today like know ye were fully prepared like we were doing all this work over here because they thought they were gonna be here for a couple of days or three days or something you know we're like smoothing the gravel out making it easy to work and like they're off before dinner time way back yeah elissa know when things go really well we're always skeptical and I don't know I guess one of those there's a lot of people in life when they say just quit you just quit and one of those is a well driller they're like I wouldn't push your luck we were there you did it and it just seems a little too easy which is so different from this project but maybe we can kind of tell you guys a little bit more about why this well was so unique in our area in our area a normal well doesn't exist we live in an area where the earth is turned up by glaciers and the topography is just random so using well reports from other wells is kind of helpful but it doesn't tell you everything about your piece of property the difference could be 50 feet away you never know what you're gonna find so the way the topography around our house is behind their house we have this huge chunk of glacial rock the kind of boulders with some sand in there we found some little ribbons of clay kind of mixed in when we did the trench for our cisterns and that would probably be a good draining soil so we thought well if that exists below where we are maybe we'll hit some sand and we were looking for sand around our area in fact this company just finished drilling a well not far from us and they went 250 feet and it was mostly clay no one in our area has Avel according to the will driller they never run into gravel so we know that the land where our house is sitting on is mostly kind of rock and some clay depending on where you're at but down below us is the valley bed and there's actually a creek that runs through this bed this valley bed over here so the assumption is that there's probably some sort of static water you know somewhere in that area or just below it the concern was that there would be mostly mud or clay quite a ways down but the driller their experience was that there was actually quite a bit of gravel in this area down to about 25 or 30 feet and it was mixed in with clay but it was there was mostly gravel but they ran into a layer of clay and this was solid clay that was the stuff that you made the the square of it we had a piece of that and it was literally just a chunk of clay and because there was clay in this gravel it's not desirable for a well even though there was just a teeny tiny little bit of water there so they went through this layer of clay and at some point down here they ran into well there was there was clay and sand and a bunch of stuff past the layer of clay again gravelly sandy with some clay in it so again not desirable for the well and then at some point like almost just instantly they the clay disappeared and they ran into pure gravel and sand and that was somewhere around 60 65 feet they wanted to go a little bit farther out of curiosity to see if they could get deeper into this layer here this is the layer that we wanted to be in because that's where the water is located so they drilled even deeper than that by coming down a little bit and somewhere 90 92 feet or something they hit a layer of blue clay which was highly undesirable if we kept drilling we were gonna be in a pickle and we could just drill the China as they always say who knows how deep that clay was the well driller said it could be 200 feet thick you have no clue and because we had already been getting water and flow and there was no clay in this gravelly layer they actually backed the welt off by removing some of the casing and they allow the earth to fill this area back in and they pulled the well back to 87 feet putting us well into this gravelly layer we then used a rock and a string high-tech method to measure what's called the static water level so even though the well is 87 feet deep the water is actually sitting in that well over 30 I think it's almost 40 feet deep and there's a flow rate of somewhere around 10 to 12 gallons per minute and there's 40 feet of static head there's so much technical stuff with wells that you couldn't possibly share all that in this video but that's basically what happened when they hit this blue clay they told us it is my well and stop we don't need 12 gallons a minute for domestic use we're gonna do another video down the road I think and talk about our water system how it was part of the strategy what we're gonna do with the wealth that's not for today's video the reason this is so exciting is that there is nobody who guessed we were gonna hit water at 60 feet we guess somewhere around 30 feet down to the valley floor from our house we're kind of sitting up on just a piece of rocky sandy glacial till we figured would forget below that Creek there probably would be some water there but everyone figured it would just be full of clay or mud and the water would just be unusable and so we were fully prepared to just keep drilling down to where everyone else drills there's a very large commercial well nearby where they drilled I believe over 500 feet and they actually made the decision to do the same thing they actually backed the well out because they found better flow higher up and instead of leaving the well so deep thankfully we went about ten feet more than we needed to before we decided to just quit so that's that's what happened and it's it shocks the driller just as much as we are because he does this every day we kind of already knew from talking to neighbors and you know urban myths that if anything like this this doesn't happen this is very uncommon in our area like unheard of now there are areas not too far from us where you know a fifty or a hundred foot well is common but in our area every one of us would have lost this bet so just talking some numbers the driller said an average well like 15 it's in there it's really in there for average especially for this area which would be a 300 foot well at $48 a foot of course there's some extra charges on there that would be fourteen thousand four hundred dollars plus at least a two thousand dollar sand screen which pumps you up to 16,000 plus some extra costs in there so that's kind of what we were budgeting for but again you said one of our neighbors is someone else in the area had a 750 foot well rate there's a thousand foot well not too far from us that had no water the matha thousand feet is 40 is no water forty-eight thousand dollars said that is insane so and they still had to hook to a community water system right which is like another ten thousand dollars plus a monthly water bill so this is why we waited till now to drill a well because we wanted to wait until we felt it was worth the gamble and if we didn't get water or it was gonna be like an astronomical cost we were okay with that so I think this just really puts into perspective what having a 90-foot well is doing for us the fact that we're paying fifty five hundred dollars total is insane and because we hit gravel we don't need the sand screen which is two thousand dollars just so just because we well in this area right here yep we would have otherwise had to pay $7,000 right she's still great in my opinion it is though something we didn't talk about that we're sharing because we're drilling into sand and gravel and things they actually have to put in a steel casement and that is $18 a foot more than a PVC casing so if they drill into bedrock they can actually use PVC which is $30 a foot for drilling right because the K depends on the area so like right one here's paying that rate so basically Wells in our area are very very expensive like people most people will just balk at these numbers because they're just unheard of but because we're drilling into sand you have to use steel casement you have to go really deep and you're still not guaranteed water somewhat some would say that they wouldn't buy property if they didn't know for a fact had water we were with that risk because this is the specific guy we talked to I think four years ago yeah we were okay that we can get you water it's just it's gonna cost we don't know how deep we're gonna have to go with okay with that to get started to get this particular piece of property but if you're looking to buy land and you do want that guarantee there's areas around here that you're guaranteed guaranteed a 60 foot well with good water we didn't want to move to that area but there's these are the types of questions to ask because that could really blindside you if you're not prepared for it but that could be more than the cost of the land itself or and you may not even end up with water great and so this this is I think really valuable information because we had we had earnestly looked at a water system joining a community water system and we were willing to take this gamble for water freedom and what we've learned is that a lot of these independently owned water systems which are common in our area they're not without their problems so it's not a matter of just hooking into a municipal system and you're guaranteed water no matter what they have had their issues and they also have very high rates another small factor but I think it's worth sharing in case you're considering land in a similar area that would have a winter climate our roads shut down for potentially several months back in the spring when we had our sips delivered for our house we struggled to get them delivered because during the spring months there's a process called breakup where the frost that develops in the roadways because we drive on them the frost gets driven very deep maybe six to nine ten feet deep and it makes the roads extremely fragile and what they do is they close the roads to heavy loads you're just not allowed to haul anything really to amount to anything unless the temperatures get below freezing etc well drilling is one of those things people who try to pump concrete in the spring they pay an astronomical amount of money for concrete because they can only bring it in very small amounts like three yards instead of 11 or 12 well drilling shuts down because those those roads are not accessible we knew that if we didn't get this well drilled now it could very well be summer and then we would be right back in the line of people who are trying to hammer out wells during the summer so the point is when they well drill are called and they said we'll be there we're like yes we weren't ready we had no idea what was gonna happen but we said yes please do come we need to get this done now I know a lot of you guys that whether you're new or you've been watching us for a long time you probably have a lot of questions and they're all very good questions not this video way too much stuff to cover so what we'll plan we're planning on doing that soon we're hoping to get a simple maybe a frost-free hydrant installed get a pump installed get power to it and we're gonna be really happy because that will just keep us from having to go off the property to bring water someday down the road we'll answer all those questions and we'll also talk about what's next [Music] kibou bucket boo we got a well chilled abou it's only 87 feet but the boo mom and dad are gonna be a lot happier because they have unlimited water alright munchkins see you in a few hours

Channel: Pure Living for Life

Views: 1,497,730

Rating: 4.593626 out of 5

Keywords: well, well drilling, drill a well, how to drill a well, water, property, land, homeowner, house build, house buildling, home build, home buildling

Id: BUQC62kslAs

Length: 34min 44sec (2084 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Patrick_Spens]

You'll Never Believe What Happened

This is pure clickbait that makes no sense at all in the context of the video. A well-driller drilled a well and found water. Goddamn. What a shock.

I haven't watched all of this yet.

[u/IdBuilder]

Butthead schedules for a well driller and when he shows up isn't ready and has to spend time moving his junk pile around again. I hope they charge him for the extra hour of time.

[u/Alias4reddit]

1. Filmed on Jan 3rd. Alyssa is alive and operating the camera again.
2. Not ready for workmen. Cleaning up the incredible mess. Have they ever been ready when someone does work for them?!
3. 4:24 to 5:00 at 2x speed...sound like maniacs ;) They are betting if they will hit water.
4. Good to see Jesse is a water/ ground/ drilling expert now.
5. Other couple with children suddenly walk around the property.
6. THIS is how close they are to the road for people who didn't know. Also, Jesse crashes the drone, bit further on he blames the drone. https://streamable.com/8jyae
7. $5526 for the work.
8. 22:30 Mr Know-It-All retreats to the whiteboard to explain why their well is so special. (they didn't have to drill deep)
9. Alyssa takes over to instruct us on the whiteboard on some math. She tells her story, Jesse tries to interject constantly.

​

I don't know what to "believe what happened next", they hit water?! That's it.

[u/amirite91]

My mother's cousin (I guess that makes him my uncle, not sure) has been digging wells since 1994 or something like that (has several crews and just as many drill rigs) and he drills two kinds of wells:

1. Garden wells which are shallow wells 25-40 meters (anything less than that isn't worth taking into consideration). The water from these are only used to water fields and gardens and livestock (with conditions). They are unfit for human use because a lot of stuff can permeate through at that level.
2. Home wells which usually start from 60 meters up to how many meters they find water or the owner wants to dig.

He said you never drill wells during rainy season or winter because you're going to do the same job twice (unless you drill them deep). During rainy seasons it's easy to find water quick, whereas during summer when the waterbed is low, such wells will run dry and you won't get much water out of them until the rainy season comes back or the owner calls back the drillers to drill deeper (that's why he's saying you're doing the same job twice).

After he drills a well he has to put sand and other filtering materials and then put an alumium pipe with a coating on the inside in the whole to stabilize the walls and stop the water from being contaminated.

You let the water fill in and then you start pumping the water for 1-3 days. That has two purposes: to clean out the water of contaminants and measure the how long the water would last if being used a lot.

Then the owners take a sample of the water and have it tested for everything. If the report comes ok (within normal values) you can use it inside the house. If not, that well will be sanctioned unfit by the water department and you are unable to use it.

[u/ColdSpring]

And how much money did they spend on the gravity fed cistern? I guess they found out it was too labor intensive to keep filling it up.

[u/IdBuilder]

The drone did not malfunction. He drove it into the tree. He can't even admit his mistake.

[u/ratchetfreak]

Also something I noticed is that the miniloader got put in a glam position very often with the boom just off the side and the brand very visible even especially lit for the occasion.

3:22 is rather blatant with the light

They moved it into shot for the timelapse at 3:34. Again in that advertisement pose.

At 4:09, why would you turn the cabin that way when you go and put it away. You just create a bunch of dead space.

At the talking section at 21:50 right before they move it to the whiteboard, the boom is just in frame.

[u/Peas-and-potatoes]

A well that is intended to supply potable water is not just about flow and reliability. There is this little thing called quality. Typically for this type of wells you need to have water that is aged (long filtration through rock) and is not open to contamination.

Don't count your chickens before you get it tested.

[u/reallyoldandcreepy]

The well across the road(slightly lower in elevation) has a static water depth of 130 feet.

The well behind them at the lumber yard(roughly same elevation) has a static water depth of 175 feet.

A long, hot and dry summer and me thinks their lucky shallow well won't be so lucky then.

Hopefully the well gets recorded quickly so we can see the actual drilling results.