GaryMc Puts in a Well

[garymc]

My cousin offered me the use of a piece of farmland his pivot wouldn't reach that had not been farmed in several years to create a muscadine vineyard. The first thing we did was to put in a well. I'll describe the steps taken in this thread with some pictures. I selected a location for the well and we went shopping for a 20 foot stick of 2" PVC pipe, a 5' length of two inch well tip, a cap for the well tip, an elbow, PVC glue, and a PVC to male Banjo fitting. I dug a hole about a foot deep and 18 inches across, another, slightly bigger, hole about a foot away from it and a shallow trench between the two. Then another shallow trench to the first hole about a foot from the prospective well location. Then we towed in a water tank on a trailer with a 2 inch gas engine trash pump on it. We attached a suction hose (long enough to put it 25 feet into the ground) to the discharge of the pump and the intake was attached to the water tank. The long hose has a 3 foot piece of metal 2 inch pipe attached to the end, "the drill." In the picture I'm holding the pipe end of the hose getting ready to start washing down the well.

 

[garymc]

In this picture the pump is pumping water through the hose and I am pushing it into the ground. At first with the metal pipe above ground I'm actually pushing it. After it gets into the ground several feet as in this picture, I'm basically feeding it and the gushing water and weight of the pipe and hose are doing the work. When the pipe reaches water, probably about 8 or 10 feet in this area, the hole fills with water and starts flowing through the first trench into the first hole that was dug earlier where some pebbles and stuff might drop out, then flows through the second trench to the second hole. After a while the intake hose for the pump is switched from the tank to a hose with an intake filter which is in the second hole, so the water is being recirculated.

 

[garymc]

This picture is just a better illustration of the intake hose pulling water from the second overflow hole.

 

[garymc]

Unfortunately, we got really really busy about this time and I don't have pictures of the slotted PVC well tip. It's a 5 foot section of PVC pipe with little slits a couple of inches long and a teeny fraction of an inch wide. Water is allowed to seep into these slits and it rises up the unslotted pipe to the top of the water table level. I'm guessing 8 or 10 feet from the surface. Anyhow we glued the 5 foot slotted well tip to a 20 foot stick of PVC for a total length of 25 feet. When the hose and pipe reaches or slightly exceeds 25 feet in depth, the hose gets rapidly pulled out and the PVC pipe shoved into the hole before it collapses. So this picture shows the 25 foot pipe sticking out of the ground a couple of feet and I'm scooping up sand and dirt and packing it into the hole around the pipe.

 

[garymc]

This picture illustrates the elbow and male banjo fitting attached to the well pipe. It also shows the female banjo fitting on both ends of the suction hose. Male fittings can be seen on the old pump off to the left. I mounted the pump on a piece of a pallet. I'm currently in the process of killing the grass under and around it so I can put down landscaping fabric, cement pavers, and an outline of cinderblocks to keep the pallet from dancing off the pavers.

 

[garymc]

This picture illustrates that the damned thing actually works! I paid 50 some dollars for all the stuff in post number 1 and washing down this well took about an hour, maybe less. The pump is rated for 150 gallons per minute. I don't know what the well puts out, but it probably is the limiting factor. I need to time how long it takes to fill 2 of these 55 gallon barrels. If it's about a minute, then the well puts out about 100 gallons a minute. That comes to 6000 gallons an hour. So who can guess what kind of irrigation system I hooked this up to?

 

[grapeman]

Interesting post Gary. Keep us filled in with your progress with the vineyard.

 

[rodo]

Wow, you for sure can't drill a well like that in north central Pennsylvania. I guess there aren't many rocks in that ground.

 

[Runningwolf]

Gary that is very cool. Thanks for sharing.

 

[ibglowin]

That wouldn't work here in "lava land"!

Amazing pics. Thanks for sharing Gary!

 

[Corley5]

That's cool! Wish I could do that here

 

[garymc]

I have no idea how deep the soil is here, but it's good for growing things. I got maybe 2 pebbles the size of my fingernail out of this hole and was surprised to find that. When I was a kid I dug a foxhole and could only go so deep because it would be wet. 50 years later irrigation and dredging out the drainage ditches has probably lowered the water table some. It was an interesting experience. No ideas on the type of irrigation system?

 

[garymc]

Interesting post Gary. Keep us filled in with your progress with the vineyard.

I posted an article on my trellis posts, but the article publication thing doesn't work out near as well as creating a thread like this. It's in Tech and DIY in articles.