DIY Drilling a Water Well

[TexasRed]

I'm looking for ideas or plans on how to build my own drilling rig. My aquafer averages 75 to 100 depth in this area according to geological surveys on the internet. Looking for idea's when I tread where others have been. Thanks.

[nothing to lose]

" Has anyone drilled their own water well? "

Sure tons of people have.

 How you drill yours depends on a ton of things. If mostly soft dirt and sand drilling should be easy, kinda a simple auger system on a gas motor. Somewhat like a post hole driller but alot deeper. Maybe mount it to the back of a truck, you may have a lot of torque to fight as it digs/drills. Soft dirt/sand presents a posible problem of cave in also, the well sides can simply fall into the well filling it as you drill it, or fill it after drilled. Many ways to add a casing to prevent that but depends on your site if you even need to or not once below a certain level. You almost always want a casing at the top 20' or so, sometimes maybe for the first 100'

 If your going very deep an auger system may not be the best choice.

If your in a hard rocky soil or hit bedrock you'll need more of a cutting bit to get through it, an auger don't work good for large rocks.

I forget the name, several magazines have an add for a drilling unit to drill your own well. It's basically a stand with a gas mower type engine. The motor is held in place and raised and lowered as needed. There are couplings to attach the drill rods to the motor, also a fitting to pump water into the well through the pipe while drilling to keep the bit cool and flushes the dirt out of the well as you drill it. I think it uses a carbide cutter. Also some type of clutch between the motor and drill rods.

 They sell everything you need, and provide allot of info for various things. Find the ad or maybe someone can provide the info for them. If you look good at their system and talk to them you abot it and how it works you can get alot of good info about drilling your own well and even about bulding your own drilling unit if you study the info you can get.

I would have drilled mine, but I had to go far too deep in tons of rocks and other problems. Even the well drillers with the big professional truck had problems at times doing mine.

 I ended up with a nice bed of chipped rocks for the base of the pump house, and tons washed away into the woods from what they had to drill though. I could not have drilled one here with a homemade rig, but many people can and do.

I had thought about buying the unit I mentioned was in magazines, but when I talked to them they flat out said it would not work for me as I gave them details about what I needed here and my land.

[wpowokal]

I think you are saying water in your area is between 75 and 100 feet.

How sucessful you could be depends on what the strata is, ie is it gumbo shale all the way, cemented sandstone, clay etc it's those small facts which would determin if a novice could be sucessful.

In all honesty for a one off well to that relatively shallow depth, have it done professionally, as I suspect the cost of constructing even a simple rig will outway any savings.

regards Allan down under

[scottsAI]

Hello TexasRed,

Skip the well, use Rain water collection. My future plans.

Inventive solutions to tanks can get water year round for much less than a well.

Even in a desert.

Here a 100 foot well is around $4-6k.

I recently looked into DYI well equipment. Cost the same as one well.

A lot depends on the soil and what the drill has to go through.

To make it cost effective must do two or more wells.

Seriously consider rain water collection, many articles for DIY.

Have fun,

Scott.

[Shadow]

Check out this Link. I have one of these and I've drilled 12 holes anywhere from 40 to 155 feet. I hit water in 5 of the holes at around 70 feet and reemed the holes out to 4 and half inch then run a jet pump down and pumped away. Tons of water but it was no good. Neighbour a mile away has a spring at 60 feet with real good water, thats what I was looking for. We finally dug a dugout and made a seepage well about 40 feet away. Water goes through about a foot thick trench of gravel and collects in a gravel filled cavity where it ispumped to a tank in the basement.

              But as for the little drill I was really impressed with its capabilitys.Not sure what they cost new, but a neighbour had this one in storage for years before I got it going.

               http://www.deeprock.com/diy.htm

                   

[nothing to lose]

 Yep, That's the one I was talking about, thanks for the link and info on it working good for you. Looks like they have larger ones and may drill deeper now than those I asked about years ago? I remember then I was told something about around 200' being the limit, I see them say 300' now, also I think they bore a larger hole perhaps now too with the bigger unit.

I been thinking about drilling some holes for other reasons than a well and one of these small drilling units (or simlilar homebuilt) may work good for me for such things. Perhaps a handy item if you need lots of deep holes even if not actaull wells!

Can't hardly use a post hole digger here to set a post, and certainly not for a 10-20' hole. Besides wells, a unit like that may be good for drilling small deep holes for anchores and small tower bases. Dropping in lines for ground heat/cooling, other things too. Says the small unit drills 4" bore, larger unit 6" bore.

One thing I am thinking about, drill 4 6" holes 10' deep, drop in 2" heavywall pipe, fill hole with concrete. Weld on plate steel top to pipes, should make a nice fast cheap tower base for a pretty darn good tower. And drill 4 anchore holes for the guy wires, pipe and concrete in the holes.

I remember before also the unit can be set up to drill into the side of a hill somehow, not sure what I had read about that since it's been so long. May have been a limit to the angle or perhaps Horizontal? I had there sales package by mail years ago, before internet was common! LOL

http://www.deeprock.com/diy_faq.htm

Some interesting reading in the FAQ section. So far I have not found a price, I hate online companies that don't list prices, How can I buy one tonight if I don't know the price, ha ha.

As I recall, at the time you could buy most of the parts seperatly. If building a home built unit they may be a source for some harder to find parts and cutter bits.

[nothing to lose]

http://www.deeprock.com/downloads.htm

Lots of PDF files, including detailed assembly insructions for the unit.

Almost enough info for a crafty person to built there own.

[BigBreaker]

Having your own drill would be great for a ground source heat pump.  You could bore as many tubes as you need for a very efficient cold sink.  Drop some simple copper loops down the bore holes and back fill with something like concrete that has high thermal conductance.

[luckeydog]

Here in Colorado in some areas it is illegal to collect rain water to use as domestic water supply, even if you are just going to use it for irrigation purposes. you may not want to go asking around for permission to do this you might open a can of worms that you were not expecting. I think this a stupid law but so are some of the people in government. in this case i think it would be better to just do it. some times it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

.

[scottsAI]

Hello luckeydog,

Wow, never heard of that one!

What is the justification of such a strange law?

Near by, cities have laws against private wells, they want you to use their $ water.

Many laws on the books violate your constitutional rights, too costly to fight.

Cheaper to move where you like the laws.

Have fun,

Scott.

[luckeydog]

Here it is.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5356660

I guess they claim it infringes on the owners of water rights?

Whats next??

[scottsAI]

Wow,

Based on that logic the state could claim owner ship of the air and charge you for breathing it.

Laws like that have been defeated in the history of the USA. Looks like Colorado needs a lesson.

As a land owner, you have the right of the natural resources on your property. The real purpose of owning land. This includes Oil, Air, sun, wind, gold, coal, etc, and WATER.

Your rights look like they just get in the way of the greedy state.

From the link, I liked the micro brain thinking of this statement:

"If you have 80,000 homes in Douglas County catching a thousand gallons each, that's 80 million gallons, and that's an impact to people with water rights."

Lets see the area of the roof vs the area your property + street is a couple percent, wow collecting the rain from my roof is going to make a big impact on the amount of water that ends up in the river every year, like none after the first rain.

Next they are going to require the property owners to put up collection tarps to collect the rain so it doesn't get absorbed into the ground, and put it into the river where it belongs:-)

The water if stored will eventually be returned to the river, what you going to do keep millions of gallons of water?

Well people in Colorado when you going to get off your duff and tell the state where to go?

Have fun,

Scott.

[ddrew]

Hey TexasRed, if you want to look at one of these DeepRock drilling rigs, let me know. I bought one on eBay, with intentions of drilling on my land west of Ft Worth. I'm finding that I need to go 300' - 400' which is outside the capacity of this rig.  I'm looking at using it to drill geothermal wells for my radiant heating floors, that I am going to use in the house I'm building.  I might even consider selling it, if you're interested.

I am also interested in the website that you found for well information. Can you post the URL for that website?  I found one, but lost the URL for it.

Thanks,

Dale

Springtown, Tx

[areyourucky]

We drilled our own water well, infact we drilled 3. once we had our on drilling rig, it was cheaper to drill more water wells, than run water pipe to other parts of the land. we have 20 acres. We built our own rig from plans we got from www.drillingfab.com . To build the rig it cost us about 450.00 in materals.To screen and case a 4 inch well it is only 2.00 per ft for casing and we made our screen, from the tips we got in the plans book. We are now starting on drilling our geothermal loop holes. we got a quote for a complete geothermal system for 40k, i figure we can do it our selfs for around 7500.00. I wll keep you posted on progress.. One more thing, when my local driller quoted me 12k for a 150ft well, and i saw his head driller looked like a crack head, i thought, this cant be that hard. we did it.Just make sure you get good real drill pipe, stay away from toy rigs, thats why we built ours.

[areyourucky]

when you say 300 to 400 ft, please remember, the wells logs are not accurate. well drillers post well log numbers like F students doing the exam in 3 minites. well drillers do not get payed to turn in well logs, they are forced to. so at the end on the monthly dead line they scramble to fill these logs, just guessing and throughing in wild numbers. The people with the state that over see this know nothing of this, and weeks before worked at pizza hut. I have personally drilled and hit water where state well reports said they was no water.