Home made well drilling rig

[Col Mckee]

Anyone out there ever drill a water well with a homemade rig or a clone of the Hydra Drill? I know I'll heve to go at least 150' or more to hit dependable water. INPUT PLEASE...

[Brian_h]

I seem to remember my uncle had one he drilled a well with.

If I remember right his comment was something like, "Its cheap but a lot of work" and "If there is a chance you'll hit rock before water you'll be disapointed".

But you probably already knew all of that if you asked the question in the first place.

[x39]

There's a guy up the road from me who drilled his own well. He told me there was nothing to it. Just the same, I hired a guy with a rig to do mine. If you're determined to do it yourself, you may want to check out the book "Wells and Septic Systems", by Max and Charlotte Alth, published by McGraw-Hill. It has very detailed instructions on drilling your own. Good luck.

[snowman]

drill or pound?

my neighbor put his own in, hit water at 40 feet...no problem

All his was was a piece of pipe with the point on the end. had a big piece of wood that he lifted up and down to pound it with. he had rigged something up on his tractor, i was young at the time
-jacob

[sandman2234]

I have washed down shallow wells(straight wash), driven 2" galvanized pipe while washing out the inside. I purchased a drilling machine, used, to give it a try, but didn't think much of it. It was one of those 5hp motors drilling 5 feet at time.
What works in this part of the country, probably won't work in a lot of the USA due to soil and formation differences.
My best luck was using a piece of 5" steel (3'long), with a solid rod (1")drilled and tapped into the end of it.(also 3'). Using a 3 legged pole arrangement with a pulley hanging at the top, I added a pulley to the back of my tractor to raise and lower the weight, dropping it on top of a plate screwed onto a piece of pipe. Just hammer it down, then add some water via a small pipe to wash out what is inside it. When you hit the rock layer, I used a homemade bit that I screwed onto a piece of 1" pipe and with water blasting the particles out of the way, I just keep raising and lowering it a inch or so till I busted thru the rock.
That is usually where you find water at in these here parts.
No major investment, except time and the power supply for the head that raises and lowers the rope that is suspended from the jin poles.
David from jax

[psomero]

my parents drilled a well that was pretty deep one time i remember. dunno how they did it, though. they said they did a couple of feet a night for months.

[Mike Burdick]

Don’t know what kind of soil or rock you have to go through but when I was young I helped a neighbor put in a small well that was about 100 feet deep in a clay soil. We used 2-inch rigid pipe and a homemade water jet. Don’t know if this would work in your situation though.

We had a sprayer that could get water pressure to about 200 psi. We welded a “boom” on the sprayer that was 24 feet high and was a single 3-inch diameter pipe with a hook and a pulley that hung over about 1-foot. Nothing really elaborate. On the end of the hose we made a swivel attachment for connecting the high-pressure line to the 2-inch pipe. We’d then hoisted each length of 2-inch pipe up with a rope; attached the end to the pipe already in the ground with a coupling and turned the sprayer on. It took about 10 seconds to dig that pipe down its length. We did that for the five lengths. Putting the first one down was the hardest as it sprayed mud all over us but after that no problem whatsoever.

Speaking of the good old days...

On our place we have a well that is 5-feet by 5-feet and about 35 feet deep and dug in solid sandstone. My Dad dug that entirely by hand using a bar and shovel. I once had to dig a posthole in that same kind of sandstone and after about 10 minutes I went to get a jackhammer. I can still hear my day say "It’s only a tiny hole – I can have that done before you get back". He did!

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[This message has been edited by Mike Burdick (edited 05-13-2005).]