16 ms·

How to drill your own water well

338 points by jacobmarble 3y ago

housemusicfan 3y ago
This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of "How to perform your own knee surgery"
- EgregiousCube 3y ago
  Perhaps, but a really cool thing to know, and you're much less likely to hurt yourself. I enjoyed the read :)
- msandford 3y ago
  Its pitched as just for irrigation, not drinking water. Not nearly as dangerous as a result.
- Ariarule 3y ago
  What exactly is so terrible as long as you're willing to take a small to moderate risk of getting a PVC pipe stuck in the ground and keep in mind the presented cautions -- consider the water irrigation-only/non-potable until tested (possibly even if tested, although that's not what the site says)?
  - ooterness 3y ago
    Badly dug, uncapped wells can also exacerbate groundwater contamination, making the problem worse for everyone else.
- alexo67 3y ago
  Maybe for use as drinking water, but for watering flowers etc. it is perfect.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Probably want to read this first, particularly if you live in a western USA state: https://waterfilterguru.com/is-it-legal-to-drill-your-own-well/ https://waterfilterguru.com/is-it-legal-to-drill-your-own-we... Shrinking aquifers and neighbors drilling wells just a bit deeper than their neighbor's wells have contributed to a long-standing conflict over water access, see Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner for the historical origins of conflicts. "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting!" - Mark Twain
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  If you live in a dry, western state, there’s a 100% chance this won’t work. I live in the Southwest, and outside of some exceptions wells go down a thousand feet or more. You ain’t doing that without heavy equipment.
  - bagels 3y ago
    USGS has maps of water well depths. 250 feet at my house, definitely would be "ambitious" to diy that depth.
- tspike 3y ago
  This is equivalent to people fretting over using plastic drinking straws when certain industrial uses are exempt from environmental laws. The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops that should never be grown where they are and wouldn’t be if our water rights laws made any sense. You tapping in one of these wells means very little in the context of this important topic.
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    > The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops. And collection at spring source from water bottling companies let's please not forget that environmental abuse. Not all aquifers start underground.
stedman 3y ago
Hella ASMR from listening to this guy
jplona 3y ago
For folks interested in the standard process, I highly recommend this channel: https://youtube.com/@h2omechanic https://youtube.com/@h2omechanic. Very informative.
h2odragon 3y ago
"Mother Earth News" is a good resource: (1984) https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/drill-your-own-well-zmaz84sozraw/ https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/d... > Some people ... got their rig stuck three different times in their first well! As they wrote, “We recognize that many of our problems are due to our inexperience …. But our inexperience is not much different from yours.” They have many other articles on the subject; but I'm fond of linking to this one in particular. I helped dig that well. And several others. The fellow in the middle of the picture there is my dad. Using the gantry rig pictured in the article was much easier than just the engine unit (much like a post hole digger they sell in stores now). One of our crew was a gifted machinist who ran that up after we bent the several pipes trying to dig without bracing.
- irrational 3y ago
  > Orville and Dot Synoground of Pine Mountain, Georgia, drilled through 35 feet of solid granite with a Hydra-Drill and a diamond coring bit. They hit the rock layer at 18 feet and kept drilling — cutting about six inches of granite an hour — until they broke through. After three solid weeks of work, Orville and Dot struck water at 165 feet. I honestly don’t think I’d have that level of determination unless I was truly desperate.
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    we were "back to the land" hippies (and had the monthly newspaper targeted toward people like us)... "self reliance" was a goal for many, as well as "can't afford to pay professionals to do it."
- athenot 3y ago
  Thanks for posting this; I have Georgia granite under my feet in random and unpredictable quantities. I've noticed most of the "success stories" in the submitted article happen to be in sandy areas, or with softer ground.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
ltbarcly3 3y ago
I tried this years ago and it ended in failure. From what I learned it seems like your soil down to the level you want to drill to has to be basically 100% silt/sand/clay. In most areas there are various pebbles, some up to the the size of a dime or so, and what I found was smaller particles would wash up and out of the hole, but these pebbles would accumulate on the bottom. I switched from using low-volume water sources to a 1.5HP well pump pulling from a swimming pool. The pool would empty in about 20 minutes, and I would then have to wait for it to refill from a regular hose. However, while this very high water volume was able to clear the pebbles (which is how I know the floor of the hole was covered with pebbles at all, it was maybe 12 feet down at that point), there was diminishing returns and eventually the pebbles no longer cleared the top. I'm sure I was doing something completely wrong, in the end if you have sandy/silty/clay soil you can just buy a sand point (aka driven point) and sledgehammer it down as deep as you need to go. It's a lot more heavy labor but it is also almost certain to work.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  I'm doing a hammer driven well point right now, been pounding for 3 weeks nearly everyday. I get about 1 inch per day exhausting myself. I'm maybe 9 feet down, no water yet. I am getting a lot stonger and it gets eaier everyday. Probably have 20+ hours into this stupid thing already :( Well point is NOT easy.
seahorserocker 3y ago
I tried to use this to drill a well some years ago on the west coast of Florida near the ocean. Worked great through the sand about 20 feet. Then we hit a shale deposit. There was no getting through it. Some pro well drillers came and couldn't make it through either. The neighbor drilled his own well a couple years prior and told us the secret. Blasting caps. We gave up.
- YeBanKo 3y ago
  Blasting cap on the drill bit?
  - Arrath 3y ago
    Usually you pull your spendy drill string out of the ground then lower a charge down the hole to fracture whatever layer is giving you trouble. Turning your drill bit into a fragmentation grenade tends not to be overly productive.
- tomcam 3y ago
  The good news is that the shale was determined to be frackable, so you were able to sell hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and drive to Beverly Hills in your ancient jalopy
dalke 3y ago
I don't think it would be worthwhile to make your own hydraulic drill if there are rental alternatives. More specifically, around 1981 my Dad rented a drilling rig to supply the irrigation pump for our yard in Miami. See, the city was phasing out septic systems, and had installed sewers to our neighborhood. They charged for sewer based on water consumed. By drilling a well he could avoid paying sewage fees for irrigation water. I think he hit water at 8 feet, and put the well down to 12. This was Miami. It also drilled through some limestone.
- bragr 3y ago
  >if there are rental alternatives. That's good advice for almost all tools. The average weekend warrior may never have been to their local tool rental shop, but it's worth checking out! You can rent just about anything, for very reasonable prices, and it tends to be pretty high quality/industrial stuff. For all the tools you only use one a year, it probably makes more financial sense to rent than buy.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. For most DIY I find the cheaper ones good enough, as long as you get some online wisdom first to avoid the occasional turds being sold. Example: chainsaw, drill, jet wash, pruning equipment etc.
    - moooo99 3y ago
      > But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. that heavily depends on the kind of tool and what the likelihood of you using this thing more than twice a year is. A chainsaw, drill, jetwash - very reasonable. Anything more specialiced, you're usually better off renting - especially as one could often use the instructions provided by the experts.
    - bluGill 3y ago
      Sure, but when I rent I get a better quality tool, and I don't have to store it until next time.
camillomiller 3y ago
This guide is great. Before reading it I was always chipping my water. Now I know how to do it!
killingtime74 3y ago
This ignores the most difficult part...getting a permit
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  I think the idea behind doing it yourself is that you don’t need a permit. In the USA, while permits are technically required for a lot of things, the law is widely ignored, and enforcement is lax to nonexistent. Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work.
  - pbourke 3y ago
    You will likely have issues if you ever try to sell property with an unpermitted well. FHA loans have restrictions on the well as do many local jurisdictions that may refuse to convey the property if the well isn’t up to code. My local jurisdiction won’t block the sale but will write an alarming letter to the seller. In the case of a new build or major remodel, you will not be able to get a certificate of occupancy without a state and county verified well here. > Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work. Yeah, it’s your responsibility as a homeowner to get the permit (either get it yourself or see that the contractor does). Even if you don’t think the permit inspectors are doing anything in terms of quality control, the permit helps you to pass inspections as part of the sale process and will limit your insurance exposure if there’s ever an issue. There’s probably fine print in your insurance contract saying that all work shall be permitted as required.
    - bragr 3y ago
      Yeah, it doesn't take a genius inspector to take the as built plans, the list of work permits, and see if that explains current state of the house. And then there's the whole issue of mandatory disclosure forms and how forthcoming you are on those and if whatever you put down aligns with the inspectors find.
      - deleted 3y ago
schobi 3y ago
It is nice to get that many details on a single drilling method. But keep in mind - there are many more techniques for making your own well. Some might be better suited depending on the conditions. There are hand operated drills, 150mm diameter with extension rods up to 10-15m long. If it works for your soil, then this is less messy. I went with digging and a different type of dug well "Schachtbrunnen". I laid a pre-fabricated concrete ring on the ground and started digging inside until it sank into the ground. When it was level, I put the next ring on top. No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.
- XorNot 3y ago
  Huh. This is ingenius in that "obvious once you hear it" way that I wouldn't have thought of. I practical want to try it just because of that.
- mongol 3y ago
  How did you dig? With a shovel? Or some other equipment? How many rings did it take?
  - nightfly 3y ago
    > No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.
  - schobi 3y ago
    Yes - shovel and bucket. I took 50cm rings each, for a total of 9 for 4.5m. They weigh about 300kg each and could be rolled into the garden. I got some scaffolding pipes and built a "gantry" over my hole. We could lower them by attaching a small chain operated pulley.
- marmakoide 3y ago
  I helped my Dad doing just that ! It was fairly easy, it just need patience. It's South West France, in an area with sandy soil. All it took was ropes, shovels and buckets. We connected it to drain pipe buried in the garden, to capture the winter rain water. The water is used for outdoor cleaning, gardening.
thih9 3y ago
Is this for drinking water? And what depths can be reached with this method? I wish these were stated more clearly; I’m guessing “not drinking”, based on: > It is great for saving money on watering your lawn and irrigating a garden. Off topic: as a non native English speaker, the title made me pause. As in, why would I want to drill my water and do it well?… oh, water well, right.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  The quality of the water depends on the location. This particular method of drilling a well works in sandy soil or clay where the water table isn't very deep. If you're in mountains or on any topology with bedrock you'll need better equipment, particularly a carbide or diamond tipped bit. And you'll be drilling potentially hundreds of feet. Something like this would most certainly not work in Colorado, it would probably work in Florida or Louisiana.
- AngryData 3y ago
  I certainly wouldn't drink water out of a shallow well most places. It is worth every penny to get someone to drill a 200 foot well and not have to worry about contamination for drinking.
- NotYourLawyer 3y ago
  No, the website says this is generally non potable water.
- bluGill 3y ago
  They state it is for irrigation only. You can use the same technique for drinking water in some places, but it really depends on local soil conditions (meaning even if your neighbor has safe water you might not get safe water!) and the care taking when drilling the well. If you do try this, after drilling and sealing the well you chlorinate the water (to kill anything you introduced), wait a week, then have a proper lab test, if the lab says it is safe to drink you are fine. The lab test should be repeated every 3 months (almost nobody does, but that is what the labs tell you) You can sometimes work around this by installing filters (RO and otherwise), and UV lights. However you need lab results to tell you what filters to install, and you need to keep those filters maintained.
aaron695 3y ago
> Many folks think they have to dig or drill their well into an aquifer. My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. Hand dug wells are fun to watch on TikTok, most on the tag are old ones, but a few are people digging them - https://www.tiktok.com/tag/handdug%20well https://www.tiktok.com/tag/handdug%20well This one scared the shit out of me - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/7239997585094675719 https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/723999758509... I was looking at this Polish Company selling augers, but I checked local bore records and they were 80m for the aquifer and they were hitting rock pretty quickly in their samples even if I went for ground water - https://www.ebay.com/str/drillpartnerofficialstore https://www.ebay.com/str/drillpartnerofficialstore
- chewz 3y ago
  > My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. It isn't stupid concern for drinking water. You could have neighbours with septic tanks leaking, cesspools or using crazy amounts of roundup for their lawn. But for watering flowers, washing and cleaning ground water is usually OK. You can always make a test of water quality at local authority... Aquifier water is of good quality but getting to it might be expensive.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 3y ago
  Fortunately most dirt is an excellent filter for septic waste. The law requires 40 (double check this number for where you live) of distance between a septic system and a well because at that distance the water that gets through is safe to drink without any more treatment. It doesn't matter how bad your septic system is installed, the 40 feet distance makes it safe. Note that I said most dirt above. There are types of soil that act more like pipes and so raw sewage from a leaking septic system has been found many miles away. Check with a local expert to see what soil you have to deal with.
- gregmac 3y ago
  > My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. It's not just that, dug and shallow wells are also getting surface water run-off -- basically anything on the ground in the immediate area or uphill. There's actually an acronym for this: GWUDI (Groundwater under the direct influence [of surface water]). They're highly susceptible to seasonal changes and rain. The worst ones are people that in a lower-lying area than nearby farms -- nitrates (from animal feces and fertilizers) and pesticides are all extremely expensive to remove from water. When you do a drilled well, the annular space (the hole around the casing) actually has to be sealed (with bentonite) to prevent surface water from getting directly into the well and aquifer. I see no mention of this in the article. Where I live (Ontario Canada) there are environmental laws protecting ground water. Badly done wells can actually contaminate a huge area and affect other people's wells and drinking water.
tamimio 3y ago
The problem is if that leads to water contamination, all it takes some of these homemade drillers to contaminate it “by mistake” with gasoline, oil, or even chemicals, with all what it means to environment and people using the same water.
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  Did you read the article? The method uses no gasoline, oil or chemicals.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    I did, but accidents happen, those are usually farmers and aren’t trained engineers with all safety measures, someone could have an oil tank nearby and someone/car bump into it or similar scenarios.
    - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
      Someone could just as easily have an oil tank near a legally drilled well, and contaminate everything.
      - amluto 3y ago
        In California, that legally drilled well has a sealed cap and a concrete pad at the top. It’s quite unlikely for anything to spill down it unless there is a flood higher than the cap. (Neither of these things is expensive.)
        NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        I think he's talking about mid-construction, before it's capped. That's when there is risk of contamination. I'm not sure I agree that there is a risk then, but let's at least be fair to the argument.
    - kylebenzle 3y ago
enagrimm 3y ago
very insightful
- Joginda 3y ago
  indeed
praptak 3y ago
In Poland it's quite common for people to just hand dig their wells, using concrete rings for the reinforcement of walls. It's legal up to 30 meters depth and up to 5 m^3/day water yield. Article (in Polish but there's pics): https://darmowyporadnik.pl/artykul/36/budownictwo/kopanie-studni-z-kregow-betonowych-metoda-gospodarcza.html https://darmowyporadnik.pl/artykul/36/budownictwo/kopanie-st... Edit: Or maybe I should say "it was" - most new wells are just a vertical steel pipe with a submerged electric pump rather than big concrete rings. These are obviously much more convenient and safer.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  With the recent legislation that every Polish village has to be connected to water and sewage even if the homeowner wanted to remain off-grid, I would expect not expect well-digging to remain popular.
  - jcarrano 3y ago
    It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.
    - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
      It is not as common to water one’s lawn in Poland. It’s not like the country doesn’t get enough rain, and most villagers don’t feel the need to show off perfect lawns to their neighbors as e.g. in the USA.
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        Don’t water the lawn (or fertilise or roundup etc.) in Australia: for some reason it stays green without it: buffalo grass is as tough as nails! Sometimes it goes yellow but it always comes back!
        moooo99 3y ago
dbrgn 3y ago
I wondered how getting a permit in Switzerland would work. According to some sources I found: - You need to request a permit from your city and your canton's water and sewage department - To get a permit, you need a "proof of utility", so you can't just dig a well for fun, it needs to bring some benefit. - You need a written technical planning document as well, including an analysis on the energy- and cost-efficiency of your project - If you want to drill down to the groundwater (for drinking water quality), you need additional analyses being done, to prove that the project conforms to standards and causes no harm. It sure sounds fun to have your own well, but I think I'll stick to collecting rain water.
- finnjohnsen2 3y ago
  You're digging your own well to out society to begin with. It is a scratch in the pain for such a project to have proper paperwork in order. I'm joking ofcourse, but not 100%
- verisimi 3y ago
  Just do it. Live a little.
  - j-a-a-p 3y ago
    Digging a well after dark also adds to the experience.
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  Reminds me of this, what boomers needed vs what I need: https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-137399-258543211-258543570-file-3546347547373-3VhVDZciA https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-1...
  - mindslight 3y ago
    I'm quite sympathetic to the overall trend. But nearly half those listed things are effectively optional things to protect himself or make his life easier - eg you do not need an LLC, but you surely do want one. Another near half are to protect others from himself as he is putting himself out there as a business, as he is employing workers or subjecting customers to his work. There could certainly be more small-business-friendly ways to handle these things [0], but earlier periods weren't solving them and at least now there is an attempt. So this particular critique doesn't ring true for me. The proper comparison is looking at what it takes to do it for yourself or a friend. Of that list, that's probably just permit/inspection, which is hard to talk about generally because it's going to vary per locale. Although you really do want the backhoe. [0] just spitballing an example, worker injury insurance could be provided more by the state from the general fund.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Curiously, you have to already have water
- kozak 3y ago
  I suppose you use a gasoline water pump if you don't. Unless you are in a desert, of course.
RajT88 3y ago
The house I live in has a well. 400 feet deep (why? long story). The thing to be aware of is that there's a few different kinds of additives you might need for well water. The most usual is water softener. Ours isn't too hard, but what we do have is hydrogen sulphate from bacteria in the soil - it requires hydrogen peroxide to make the water smell neutral and palatable.
- SteveNuts 3y ago
  Where do you add that? into the water softener?
  - RajT88 3y ago
    There's a pump which feeds into the water softener tank. We don't use softener, so peroxide is the only thing which goes into it. To the other guy - we drink the well water. It's fine after the peroxide treatment.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
  Why do you need any conditioning for irrigation water?
  - adrianN 3y ago
    You might ruin your soil over time.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Water softeners are common, but they are regional. In some places the ground water is naturally soft and you don't need one. In others you need them. One house I lived in you needed an iron filter, but most people have never heard of such a thing There are lots of other devices in the water treatment catalog that you might or might not need. Only a real water test can tell.
- technothrasher 3y ago
  I had an issue with hydrogen sulfide bacteria in my well water system. If I didn't run any water for a couple days (like, say, I went away for the weekend), I'd get a terrible sulfur smell to my water. When my well pump failed, I took the opportunity while the well head was off to dump a bunch of bleach down the well. Haven't had a problem in years now.
anilakar 3y ago
Step one: move to a place where the municipality does not claim ownership on the bedrock.
ajot 3y ago
Site must have received an HN hug of death, so not sure what method it reccomends. There's a (university research group?) called WOT that uploads videos to Youtube with different low cost/low tech techniques, my favorite one being with a hand drill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRhsoSCXvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRhsoSCXvg
ufjfjjfjfj 3y ago
Drilling a shallow well is easy with basic "tools"... It'd be nice to be able to do a deep well though
zigzaggy 3y ago
My grandfather was a "well witcher" (Appalachian roots here). Many believe that's woo woo or some kind of super power. The man was incredibly intelligent and resourceful and he had a reputation for finding water every single time he dropped the drill into the ground. When I was a kid I used to go to sleep listening to stories of my dad and his dad driving around on a 2 ton truck with a 3 ton drill and how the brakes always went out. Somehow they always lived to tell the tale. Haven't thought about this in a long time. Good memories.
- benoliver999 3y ago
  In The Traveller's Tree by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a travelogue from the Caribbean, he gives an account of water divination. He initially sees it as some voodoo myth, and is taken aback when they repeatedly find water.
  - digitalsushi 3y ago
    Ok, if I point at a random spot in the ground in an area that generally has water, and I said, "dig here and you will find water", and you put 1/5 a mile of pipe down into the earth and water comes up, am I some type of miracle? Would those people work in the desert? I think it's a lotto ticket that always wins.
    - finnh 3y ago
      I think there is a more functional and charitable read of this: not all of our senses are plumbed all the way through to our conscious mind at all times. small little hints (like minor changes in smell, relative humidity, maybe just pattern-matching on the lay of the land) are down in the noise, and pulling out your trusty sticks gives your subconscious a way to send a signal to your awareness. Kinda like acupuncture - does my pulse really have seven levels that mean different things? I doubt it.. but a successful acupuncturist might still be able to diagnose "what hurts" using said technique, when really they've already picked up on other clues from your gait, posture, etc. "subliminal" and "subconscious" are over-used and vague words, but we've all had the experience of wearing a new clothing item and receiving an uncommon number of compliments, including from strangers who wouldn't know it's new. I've always assumed we are unconsciously presenting the new thing with a bit of flair, and that equally-unconsciously draws the eye.
303uru 3y ago
Heh, water table here is at about 350 feet with nothing but boulders and clay between ground level and there. Good luck.
pravus 3y ago
This is interesting. Part of my life was working with a water well driller running a rig for my grand-father's business a long time ago. The technique is virtually identical but with a hydraulic lift for running the drill and uses compressed air to clear the bore. The first step was to find the location and park the drilling rig so it wouldn't sink once the well was dug. Then you'd raise the drill arm, attach a section of pipe and the drill head. You'd lower it down into a round flange that had an opening to one side where all of the cuttings blew out. My job was to shovel the cuttings into a trench to direct water flow once you hit the water line. It was critical to keep water from getting under the tires of the rig. Each section of pipe is 20 feet long and as you drill in you detach the rig head, raise it, get another section of pipe from a rotating carousel and then start grinding again. Once done you pull all the pipe by basically doing the reverse and then perform a similar operation to push casing down into the hole. When the rig pulls away you have a round hole in the ground ready to have another truck come in to insert an electric pump with all the wiring. Then you box everything up at the top and say job done. Oil field drilling is pretty similar as well but the rigs are vastly larger and move way more earth much faster. My dad worked on a rough necking crew and I've been exposed to the oil and gas industry most of my life so this is an interesting tangent.
bochoh 3y ago
My 5 year plan includes building a shed with power, then adding a self driven well and adding the capacity to switch irrigation off city water to the shed source (tm). In the northeast so no real water concerns here
naikrovek 3y ago
never in my life have I read a more positive landing page about drilling your own well. this guy has me convinced that i can drill my own well. i don't need to drill my own well, but if i ever do, i am sure that i can do it, now.
solomonb 3y ago
Is this at all viable in Southern California? My gut says no, but I would love to be wrong.
- amluto 3y ago
  There’s lots of data here: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/current/?type=gw https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/current/?type=gw Oddly a bunch of counties are missing from the results, despite USGS appearing to have some data.
kuon 3y ago
I live in Switzerland and my house is build on a rock, some of the foundation is actually rock and not concrete but it's old from 1750. So that drilling technique is not for my yard. But, this lead me to think, is non rock ground frequent in urbanized area? Is rock ground like my place more like the exception? I'm used to it so I thought it was the norm, but I guess it is not.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
In my days of fighting paranormal activities and beliefs (homeopathy, wells witchers, ...) we were usually told that we do not have open minds and do not accept anything outside of our limited science. For one, you need to have an open mind, but be careful to not your brain fall off (https://youtu.be/RFO6ZhUW38w?si=1Snzh3lhFJ6d381g&t=12 https://youtu.be/RFO6ZhUW38w?si=1Snzh3lhFJ6d381g&t=12) Then, we were very much interested in seeing these unusual things happening. As I mentioned it in a previous comment, I declared at the radio that I would immediately switch my PhD topic (in physics) to study them. Because, you know, Nobel prize. I did not get to see anything unusual, did a uneventful PhD and, well, do not have said Nobel prize. But the important thing was: I wanted to measure. To have an experiment where what was unusual would be measurable. This means that tests with well diggers were a complete failure when they were asked to find water in controlled conditions. OTOH, they were good when in the wild because (probably) they could read the landscape and see signs of water (conscientiously or not). Same with homeopathy: when I have a headache I get an aspirin and before it had time to reach my stomach I feel better. I also once swam away from what I thought were sharks and I probably broke a swimming record because my arms were moving like a blender. This is to say that scientists do not limi themselves - they just want to see and measure something to say that this is a thing. Unfortunately as soon as they do it the whole paranormal things fall apart. But we are still hoping.

338 points by jacobmarble 3y ago

housemusicfan 3y ago

This sounds like a terrible idea, along the lines of "How to perform your own knee surgery"

EgregiousCube 3y ago
Perhaps, but a really cool thing to know, and you're much less likely to hurt yourself. I enjoyed the read :)
msandford 3y ago
Its pitched as just for irrigation, not drinking water. Not nearly as dangerous as a result.
Ariarule 3y ago
What exactly is so terrible as long as you're willing to take a small to moderate risk of getting a PVC pipe stuck in the ground and keep in mind the presented cautions -- consider the water irrigation-only/non-potable until tested (possibly even if tested, although that's not what the site says)?
- ooterness 3y ago
  Badly dug, uncapped wells can also exacerbate groundwater contamination, making the problem worse for everyone else.
alexo67 3y ago
Maybe for use as drinking water, but for watering flowers etc. it is perfect.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Probably want to read this first, particularly if you live in a western USA state: https://waterfilterguru.com/is-it-legal-to-drill-your-own-well/ https://waterfilterguru.com/is-it-legal-to-drill-your-own-we... Shrinking aquifers and neighbors drilling wells just a bit deeper than their neighbor's wells have contributed to a long-standing conflict over water access, see Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner for the historical origins of conflicts. "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting!" - Mark Twain

oceanplexian 3y ago
If you live in a dry, western state, there’s a 100% chance this won’t work. I live in the Southwest, and outside of some exceptions wells go down a thousand feet or more. You ain’t doing that without heavy equipment.
- bagels 3y ago
  USGS has maps of water well depths. 250 feet at my house, definitely would be "ambitious" to diy that depth.
tspike 3y ago
This is equivalent to people fretting over using plastic drinking straws when certain industrial uses are exempt from environmental laws. The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops that should never be grown where they are and wouldn’t be if our water rights laws made any sense. You tapping in one of these wells means very little in the context of this important topic.
- DoingIsLearning 3y ago
  > The vast, vast majority of aquifer depletion is for impractical crops. And collection at spring source from water bottling companies let's please not forget that environmental abuse. Not all aquifers start underground.

stedman 3y ago

Hella ASMR from listening to this guy

jplona 3y ago

For folks interested in the standard process, I highly recommend this channel: https://youtube.com/@h2omechanic https://youtube.com/@h2omechanic. Very informative.

h2odragon 3y ago

"Mother Earth News" is a good resource: (1984) https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/drill-your-own-well-zmaz84sozraw/ https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/d... > Some people ... got their rig stuck three different times in their first well! As they wrote, “We recognize that many of our problems are due to our inexperience …. But our inexperience is not much different from yours.” They have many other articles on the subject; but I'm fond of linking to this one in particular. I helped dig that well. And several others. The fellow in the middle of the picture there is my dad. Using the gantry rig pictured in the article was much easier than just the engine unit (much like a post hole digger they sell in stores now). One of our crew was a gifted machinist who ran that up after we bent the several pipes trying to dig without bracing.

irrational 3y ago
> Orville and Dot Synoground of Pine Mountain, Georgia, drilled through 35 feet of solid granite with a Hydra-Drill and a diamond coring bit. They hit the rock layer at 18 feet and kept drilling — cutting about six inches of granite an hour — until they broke through. After three solid weeks of work, Orville and Dot struck water at 165 feet. I honestly don’t think I’d have that level of determination unless I was truly desperate.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  we were "back to the land" hippies (and had the monthly newspaper targeted toward people like us)... "self reliance" was a goal for many, as well as "can't afford to pay professionals to do it."
athenot 3y ago
Thanks for posting this; I have Georgia granite under my feet in random and unpredictable quantities. I've noticed most of the "success stories" in the submitted article happen to be in sandy areas, or with softer ground.
- yencabulator 3y ago

ltbarcly3 3y ago

I tried this years ago and it ended in failure. From what I learned it seems like your soil down to the level you want to drill to has to be basically 100% silt/sand/clay. In most areas there are various pebbles, some up to the the size of a dime or so, and what I found was smaller particles would wash up and out of the hole, but these pebbles would accumulate on the bottom. I switched from using low-volume water sources to a 1.5HP well pump pulling from a swimming pool. The pool would empty in about 20 minutes, and I would then have to wait for it to refill from a regular hose. However, while this very high water volume was able to clear the pebbles (which is how I know the floor of the hole was covered with pebbles at all, it was maybe 12 feet down at that point), there was diminishing returns and eventually the pebbles no longer cleared the top. I'm sure I was doing something completely wrong, in the end if you have sandy/silty/clay soil you can just buy a sand point (aka driven point) and sledgehammer it down as deep as you need to go. It's a lot more heavy labor but it is also almost certain to work.

kylebenzle 3y ago
I'm doing a hammer driven well point right now, been pounding for 3 weeks nearly everyday. I get about 1 inch per day exhausting myself. I'm maybe 9 feet down, no water yet. I am getting a lot stonger and it gets eaier everyday. Probably have 20+ hours into this stupid thing already :( Well point is NOT easy.

seahorserocker 3y ago

I tried to use this to drill a well some years ago on the west coast of Florida near the ocean. Worked great through the sand about 20 feet. Then we hit a shale deposit. There was no getting through it. Some pro well drillers came and couldn't make it through either. The neighbor drilled his own well a couple years prior and told us the secret. Blasting caps. We gave up.

YeBanKo 3y ago
Blasting cap on the drill bit?
- Arrath 3y ago
  Usually you pull your spendy drill string out of the ground then lower a charge down the hole to fracture whatever layer is giving you trouble. Turning your drill bit into a fragmentation grenade tends not to be overly productive.
tomcam 3y ago
The good news is that the shale was determined to be frackable, so you were able to sell hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil and drive to Beverly Hills in your ancient jalopy

dalke 3y ago

I don't think it would be worthwhile to make your own hydraulic drill if there are rental alternatives. More specifically, around 1981 my Dad rented a drilling rig to supply the irrigation pump for our yard in Miami. See, the city was phasing out septic systems, and had installed sewers to our neighborhood. They charged for sewer based on water consumed. By drilling a well he could avoid paying sewage fees for irrigation water. I think he hit water at 8 feet, and put the well down to 12. This was Miami. It also drilled through some limestone.

bragr 3y ago
>if there are rental alternatives. That's good advice for almost all tools. The average weekend warrior may never have been to their local tool rental shop, but it's worth checking out! You can rent just about anything, for very reasonable prices, and it tends to be pretty high quality/industrial stuff. For all the tools you only use one a year, it probably makes more financial sense to rent than buy.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. For most DIY I find the cheaper ones good enough, as long as you get some online wisdom first to avoid the occasional turds being sold. Example: chainsaw, drill, jet wash, pruning equipment etc.
  - moooo99 3y ago
    > But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. that heavily depends on the kind of tool and what the likelihood of you using this thing more than twice a year is. A chainsaw, drill, jetwash - very reasonable. Anything more specialiced, you're usually better off renting - especially as one could often use the instructions provided by the experts.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Sure, but when I rent I get a better quality tool, and I don't have to store it until next time.

camillomiller 3y ago

This guide is great. Before reading it I was always chipping my water. Now I know how to do it!

killingtime74 3y ago

This ignores the most difficult part...getting a permit

oceanplexian 3y ago
I think the idea behind doing it yourself is that you don’t need a permit. In the USA, while permits are technically required for a lot of things, the law is widely ignored, and enforcement is lax to nonexistent. Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work.
- pbourke 3y ago
  You will likely have issues if you ever try to sell property with an unpermitted well. FHA loans have restrictions on the well as do many local jurisdictions that may refuse to convey the property if the well isn’t up to code. My local jurisdiction won’t block the sale but will write an alarming letter to the seller. In the case of a new build or major remodel, you will not be able to get a certificate of occupancy without a state and county verified well here. > Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work. Yeah, it’s your responsibility as a homeowner to get the permit (either get it yourself or see that the contractor does). Even if you don’t think the permit inspectors are doing anything in terms of quality control, the permit helps you to pass inspections as part of the sale process and will limit your insurance exposure if there’s ever an issue. There’s probably fine print in your insurance contract saying that all work shall be permitted as required.
  - bragr 3y ago
    Yeah, it doesn't take a genius inspector to take the as built plans, the list of work permits, and see if that explains current state of the house. And then there's the whole issue of mandatory disclosure forms and how forthcoming you are on those and if whatever you put down aligns with the inspectors find.
    - deleted 3y ago

schobi 3y ago

It is nice to get that many details on a single drilling method. But keep in mind - there are many more techniques for making your own well. Some might be better suited depending on the conditions. There are hand operated drills, 150mm diameter with extension rods up to 10-15m long. If it works for your soil, then this is less messy. I went with digging and a different type of dug well "Schachtbrunnen". I laid a pre-fabricated concrete ring on the ground and started digging inside until it sank into the ground. When it was level, I put the next ring on top. No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.

XorNot 3y ago
Huh. This is ingenius in that "obvious once you hear it" way that I wouldn't have thought of. I practical want to try it just because of that.
mongol 3y ago
How did you dig? With a shovel? Or some other equipment? How many rings did it take?
- nightfly 3y ago
  > No special tool needed, a shovel, a bucket, some rope, patience and certainly a permit.
- schobi 3y ago
  Yes - shovel and bucket. I took 50cm rings each, for a total of 9 for 4.5m. They weigh about 300kg each and could be rolled into the garden. I got some scaffolding pipes and built a "gantry" over my hole. We could lower them by attaching a small chain operated pulley.
marmakoide 3y ago
I helped my Dad doing just that ! It was fairly easy, it just need patience. It's South West France, in an area with sandy soil. All it took was ropes, shovels and buckets. We connected it to drain pipe buried in the garden, to capture the winter rain water. The water is used for outdoor cleaning, gardening.

thih9 3y ago

Is this for drinking water? And what depths can be reached with this method? I wish these were stated more clearly; I’m guessing “not drinking”, based on: > It is great for saving money on watering your lawn and irrigating a garden. Off topic: as a non native English speaker, the title made me pause. As in, why would I want to drill my water and do it well?… oh, water well, right.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
The quality of the water depends on the location. This particular method of drilling a well works in sandy soil or clay where the water table isn't very deep. If you're in mountains or on any topology with bedrock you'll need better equipment, particularly a carbide or diamond tipped bit. And you'll be drilling potentially hundreds of feet. Something like this would most certainly not work in Colorado, it would probably work in Florida or Louisiana.
AngryData 3y ago
I certainly wouldn't drink water out of a shallow well most places. It is worth every penny to get someone to drill a 200 foot well and not have to worry about contamination for drinking.
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
No, the website says this is generally non potable water.
bluGill 3y ago
They state it is for irrigation only. You can use the same technique for drinking water in some places, but it really depends on local soil conditions (meaning even if your neighbor has safe water you might not get safe water!) and the care taking when drilling the well. If you do try this, after drilling and sealing the well you chlorinate the water (to kill anything you introduced), wait a week, then have a proper lab test, if the lab says it is safe to drink you are fine. The lab test should be repeated every 3 months (almost nobody does, but that is what the labs tell you) You can sometimes work around this by installing filters (RO and otherwise), and UV lights. However you need lab results to tell you what filters to install, and you need to keep those filters maintained.

aaron695 3y ago

> Many folks think they have to dig or drill their well into an aquifer. My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. Hand dug wells are fun to watch on TikTok, most on the tag are old ones, but a few are people digging them - https://www.tiktok.com/tag/handdug%20well https://www.tiktok.com/tag/handdug%20well This one scared the shit out of me - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/7239997585094675719 https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/723999758509... I was looking at this Polish Company selling augers, but I checked local bore records and they were 80m for the aquifer and they were hitting rock pretty quickly in their samples even if I went for ground water - https://www.ebay.com/str/drillpartnerofficialstore https://www.ebay.com/str/drillpartnerofficialstore

chewz 3y ago
> My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. It isn't stupid concern for drinking water. You could have neighbours with septic tanks leaking, cesspools or using crazy amounts of roundup for their lawn. But for watering flowers, washing and cleaning ground water is usually OK. You can always make a test of water quality at local authority... Aquifier water is of good quality but getting to it might be expensive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bluGill 3y ago
Fortunately most dirt is an excellent filter for septic waste. The law requires 40 (double check this number for where you live) of distance between a septic system and a well because at that distance the water that gets through is safe to drink without any more treatment. It doesn't matter how bad your septic system is installed, the 40 feet distance makes it safe. Note that I said most dirt above. There are types of soil that act more like pipes and so raw sewage from a leaking septic system has been found many miles away. Check with a local expert to see what soil you have to deal with.
gregmac 3y ago
> My concern here is ground water will have septic contamination, don't know if that's stupid or not. It's not just that, dug and shallow wells are also getting surface water run-off -- basically anything on the ground in the immediate area or uphill. There's actually an acronym for this: GWUDI (Groundwater under the direct influence [of surface water]). They're highly susceptible to seasonal changes and rain. The worst ones are people that in a lower-lying area than nearby farms -- nitrates (from animal feces and fertilizers) and pesticides are all extremely expensive to remove from water. When you do a drilled well, the annular space (the hole around the casing) actually has to be sealed (with bentonite) to prevent surface water from getting directly into the well and aquifer. I see no mention of this in the article. Where I live (Ontario Canada) there are environmental laws protecting ground water. Badly done wells can actually contaminate a huge area and affect other people's wells and drinking water.

tamimio 3y ago

The problem is if that leads to water contamination, all it takes some of these homemade drillers to contaminate it “by mistake” with gasoline, oil, or even chemicals, with all what it means to environment and people using the same water.

4gotunameagain 3y ago
Did you read the article? The method uses no gasoline, oil or chemicals.
- tamimio 3y ago
  I did, but accidents happen, those are usually farmers and aren’t trained engineers with all safety measures, someone could have an oil tank nearby and someone/car bump into it or similar scenarios.
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    Someone could just as easily have an oil tank near a legally drilled well, and contaminate everything.
    - amluto 3y ago
      In California, that legally drilled well has a sealed cap and a concrete pad at the top. It’s quite unlikely for anything to spill down it unless there is a flood higher than the cap. (Neither of these things is expensive.)
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
        I think he's talking about mid-construction, before it's capped. That's when there is risk of contamination. I'm not sure I agree that there is a risk then, but let's at least be fair to the argument.
  - kylebenzle 3y ago

enagrimm 3y ago

very insightful

Joginda 3y ago
indeed

praptak 3y ago

In Poland it's quite common for people to just hand dig their wells, using concrete rings for the reinforcement of walls. It's legal up to 30 meters depth and up to 5 m^3/day water yield. Article (in Polish but there's pics): https://darmowyporadnik.pl/artykul/36/budownictwo/kopanie-studni-z-kregow-betonowych-metoda-gospodarcza.html https://darmowyporadnik.pl/artykul/36/budownictwo/kopanie-st... Edit: Or maybe I should say "it was" - most new wells are just a vertical steel pipe with a submerged electric pump rather than big concrete rings. These are obviously much more convenient and safer.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
With the recent legislation that every Polish village has to be connected to water and sewage even if the homeowner wanted to remain off-grid, I would expect not expect well-digging to remain popular.
- jcarrano 3y ago
  It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    It is not as common to water one’s lawn in Poland. It’s not like the country doesn’t get enough rain, and most villagers don’t feel the need to show off perfect lawns to their neighbors as e.g. in the USA.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      Don’t water the lawn (or fertilise or roundup etc.) in Australia: for some reason it stays green without it: buffalo grass is as tough as nails! Sometimes it goes yellow but it always comes back!
      - moooo99 3y ago

dbrgn 3y ago

I wondered how getting a permit in Switzerland would work. According to some sources I found: - You need to request a permit from your city and your canton's water and sewage department - To get a permit, you need a "proof of utility", so you can't just dig a well for fun, it needs to bring some benefit. - You need a written technical planning document as well, including an analysis on the energy- and cost-efficiency of your project - If you want to drill down to the groundwater (for drinking water quality), you need additional analyses being done, to prove that the project conforms to standards and causes no harm. It sure sounds fun to have your own well, but I think I'll stick to collecting rain water.

finnjohnsen2 3y ago
You're digging your own well to out society to begin with. It is a scratch in the pain for such a project to have proper paperwork in order. I'm joking ofcourse, but not 100%
verisimi 3y ago
Just do it. Live a little.
- j-a-a-p 3y ago
  Digging a well after dark also adds to the experience.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
Reminds me of this, what boomers needed vs what I need: https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-137399-258543211-258543570-file-3546347547373-3VhVDZciA https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-1...
- mindslight 3y ago
  I'm quite sympathetic to the overall trend. But nearly half those listed things are effectively optional things to protect himself or make his life easier - eg you do not need an LLC, but you surely do want one. Another near half are to protect others from himself as he is putting himself out there as a business, as he is employing workers or subjecting customers to his work. There could certainly be more small-business-friendly ways to handle these things [0], but earlier periods weren't solving them and at least now there is an attempt. So this particular critique doesn't ring true for me. The proper comparison is looking at what it takes to do it for yourself or a friend. Of that list, that's probably just permit/inspection, which is hard to talk about generally because it's going to vary per locale. Although you really do want the backhoe. [0] just spitballing an example, worker injury insurance could be provided more by the state from the general fund.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

Curiously, you have to already have water

kozak 3y ago
I suppose you use a gasoline water pump if you don't. Unless you are in a desert, of course.

RajT88 3y ago

The house I live in has a well. 400 feet deep (why? long story). The thing to be aware of is that there's a few different kinds of additives you might need for well water. The most usual is water softener. Ours isn't too hard, but what we do have is hydrogen sulphate from bacteria in the soil - it requires hydrogen peroxide to make the water smell neutral and palatable.

SteveNuts 3y ago
Where do you add that? into the water softener?
- RajT88 3y ago
  There's a pump which feeds into the water softener tank. We don't use softener, so peroxide is the only thing which goes into it. To the other guy - we drink the well water. It's fine after the peroxide treatment.
kylebenzle 3y ago
Why do you need any conditioning for irrigation water?
- adrianN 3y ago
  You might ruin your soil over time.
bluGill 3y ago
Water softeners are common, but they are regional. In some places the ground water is naturally soft and you don't need one. In others you need them. One house I lived in you needed an iron filter, but most people have never heard of such a thing There are lots of other devices in the water treatment catalog that you might or might not need. Only a real water test can tell.
technothrasher 3y ago
I had an issue with hydrogen sulfide bacteria in my well water system. If I didn't run any water for a couple days (like, say, I went away for the weekend), I'd get a terrible sulfur smell to my water. When my well pump failed, I took the opportunity while the well head was off to dump a bunch of bleach down the well. Haven't had a problem in years now.

anilakar 3y ago

Step one: move to a place where the municipality does not claim ownership on the bedrock.

ajot 3y ago

Site must have received an HN hug of death, so not sure what method it reccomends. There's a (university research group?) called WOT that uploads videos to Youtube with different low cost/low tech techniques, my favorite one being with a hand drill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRhsoSCXvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRhsoSCXvg

ufjfjjfjfj 3y ago

Drilling a shallow well is easy with basic "tools"... It'd be nice to be able to do a deep well though

zigzaggy 3y ago

My grandfather was a "well witcher" (Appalachian roots here). Many believe that's woo woo or some kind of super power. The man was incredibly intelligent and resourceful and he had a reputation for finding water every single time he dropped the drill into the ground. When I was a kid I used to go to sleep listening to stories of my dad and his dad driving around on a 2 ton truck with a 3 ton drill and how the brakes always went out. Somehow they always lived to tell the tale. Haven't thought about this in a long time. Good memories.

benoliver999 3y ago
In The Traveller's Tree by Patrick Leigh Fermor, a travelogue from the Caribbean, he gives an account of water divination. He initially sees it as some voodoo myth, and is taken aback when they repeatedly find water.
- digitalsushi 3y ago
  Ok, if I point at a random spot in the ground in an area that generally has water, and I said, "dig here and you will find water", and you put 1/5 a mile of pipe down into the earth and water comes up, am I some type of miracle? Would those people work in the desert? I think it's a lotto ticket that always wins.
  - finnh 3y ago
    I think there is a more functional and charitable read of this: not all of our senses are plumbed all the way through to our conscious mind at all times. small little hints (like minor changes in smell, relative humidity, maybe just pattern-matching on the lay of the land) are down in the noise, and pulling out your trusty sticks gives your subconscious a way to send a signal to your awareness. Kinda like acupuncture - does my pulse really have seven levels that mean different things? I doubt it.. but a successful acupuncturist might still be able to diagnose "what hurts" using said technique, when really they've already picked up on other clues from your gait, posture, etc. "subliminal" and "subconscious" are over-used and vague words, but we've all had the experience of wearing a new clothing item and receiving an uncommon number of compliments, including from strangers who wouldn't know it's new. I've always assumed we are unconsciously presenting the new thing with a bit of flair, and that equally-unconsciously draws the eye.

303uru 3y ago

Heh, water table here is at about 350 feet with nothing but boulders and clay between ground level and there. Good luck.

pravus 3y ago

This is interesting. Part of my life was working with a water well driller running a rig for my grand-father's business a long time ago. The technique is virtually identical but with a hydraulic lift for running the drill and uses compressed air to clear the bore. The first step was to find the location and park the drilling rig so it wouldn't sink once the well was dug. Then you'd raise the drill arm, attach a section of pipe and the drill head. You'd lower it down into a round flange that had an opening to one side where all of the cuttings blew out. My job was to shovel the cuttings into a trench to direct water flow once you hit the water line. It was critical to keep water from getting under the tires of the rig. Each section of pipe is 20 feet long and as you drill in you detach the rig head, raise it, get another section of pipe from a rotating carousel and then start grinding again. Once done you pull all the pipe by basically doing the reverse and then perform a similar operation to push casing down into the hole. When the rig pulls away you have a round hole in the ground ready to have another truck come in to insert an electric pump with all the wiring. Then you box everything up at the top and say job done. Oil field drilling is pretty similar as well but the rigs are vastly larger and move way more earth much faster. My dad worked on a rough necking crew and I've been exposed to the oil and gas industry most of my life so this is an interesting tangent.

bochoh 3y ago

My 5 year plan includes building a shed with power, then adding a self driven well and adding the capacity to switch irrigation off city water to the shed source (tm). In the northeast so no real water concerns here

naikrovek 3y ago

never in my life have I read a more positive landing page about drilling your own well. this guy has me convinced that i can drill my own well. i don't need to drill my own well, but if i ever do, i am sure that i can do it, now.

solomonb 3y ago

Is this at all viable in Southern California? My gut says no, but I would love to be wrong.

amluto 3y ago
There’s lots of data here: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/current/?type=gw https://waterdata.usgs.gov/ca/nwis/current/?type=gw Oddly a bunch of counties are missing from the results, despite USGS appearing to have some data.

kuon 3y ago

I live in Switzerland and my house is build on a rock, some of the foundation is actually rock and not concrete but it's old from 1750. So that drilling technique is not for my yard. But, this lead me to think, is non rock ground frequent in urbanized area? Is rock ground like my place more like the exception? I'm used to it so I thought it was the norm, but I guess it is not.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

In my days of fighting paranormal activities and beliefs (homeopathy, wells witchers, ...) we were usually told that we do not have open minds and do not accept anything outside of our limited science. For one, you need to have an open mind, but be careful to not your brain fall off (https://youtu.be/RFO6ZhUW38w?si=1Snzh3lhFJ6d381g&t=12 https://youtu.be/RFO6ZhUW38w?si=1Snzh3lhFJ6d381g&t=12) Then, we were very much interested in seeing these unusual things happening. As I mentioned it in a previous comment, I declared at the radio that I would immediately switch my PhD topic (in physics) to study them. Because, you know, Nobel prize. I did not get to see anything unusual, did a uneventful PhD and, well, do not have said Nobel prize. But the important thing was: I wanted to measure. To have an experiment where what was unusual would be measurable. This means that tests with well diggers were a complete failure when they were asked to find water in controlled conditions. OTOH, they were good when in the wild because (probably) they could read the landscape and see signs of water (conscientiously or not). Same with homeopathy: when I have a headache I get an aspirin and before it had time to reach my stomach I feel better. I also once swam away from what I thought were sharks and I probably broke a swimming record because my arms were moving like a blender. This is to say that scientists do not limi themselves - they just want to see and measure something to say that this is a thing. Unfortunately as soon as they do it the whole paranormal things fall apart. But we are still hoping.