Hey All,
Well, me and my bro in-law just drilled and cased our first well. We got to 60' then hit some really hard stuff. We could see that there was water, so we decided to case it and call it good.
So far we are getting around 2 gpm. Hopefully that will increase as we develop the well. Still, it's enough for now.
We used an air drill attached to a PVC pipe. The exhaust of the air drill goes up the pipe and pulls up the tailings and water, which goes through a settling pond and back to the well. We made 51 feet in the first two days, and then 9 feet over two more days. Need to get a better rock bit. The drill was a kit from howtodrillawell.com.
Total cost was around $1200 US. This includes buying and fixing a compressor to run the drill. It needs a lot of CFM. We used a 27 CFM, 12.5hp, gas engine driven compressor that we bought for $300 because it needed new compression rings. Spent $150 in parts fixing it. It cost 2k plus new. Was well worth it, to rent a compressor would have been $130 a day. We ran the poor thing pretty hard, I suspect the compressor is a little tired.
Now that I have the drill, compressor and so on, I can do another well for a few hundred bucks, depending on what well screen I use. This time we made our own well screen but next time I will buy some. I learned a LOT. If anyone is considering using this system, get hold of me, much to share.
Anyway, exciting stuff. I have water! No more trucking water in every two weeks! I can plant fruit trees this year! Move my solar hot tub over from my old place. Take a longer than 3 min shower. Woohoo!
On to a question: Any reccomendations for a pump? All the ones I see so far are more than I need, I'd like to use as little power as possible. I'm only 60' deep and only need 2-4 gpm. Needs to be 120V and have soft start.
Jonathan