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How to drill your own water well

drillyourownwell.com

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Re: How to drill your own water well

#51

Post by AngryData »

thih9 wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#52

Post by anakaine »

bobthepanda wrote: post #33
oceanplexian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The permits exist for a reason. If too many people start doing it, it becomes an issue of overdrawing groundwater. This leads to an arms race of digging ever deeper wells to reach the remaining groundwater, and on top of that starts leading to ground subsidence as ground formerly full of water dries out and compacts. Off the top of my head, there is massive groundwater subsidence in the Central Valley of California,…

Importantly, in case it wasn't obvious to readers, hydrocompaction cannot be undone in any meaningful way. Once the compaction happens, water will no longer, and will never again, flow in the compacted area.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#54

Post by dbrgn »

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.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#55

Post by chewz »

aaron695 wrote: post #28

> 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 This one scared the shit out of me - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/72399975850…

> 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.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#56

Post by OfSanguineFire »

praptak wrote: post #41

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-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 bi…

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.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#57

Post by finnjohnsen2 »

dbrgn wrote: post #54

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…

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%

Re: How to drill your own water well

#58

Post by [deleted] »

aaron695 wrote: post #28

> 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 This one scared the shit out of me - https://www.tiktok.com/@smithalayamrajeev/video/72399975850…

[deleted]

Re: How to drill your own water well

#59

Post by jeffrallen »

praptak wrote: post #41

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-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 bi…

The first week I came to live in Guatemala from the USA 3 brothers from a nearby village dies of asphyxiation at the bottom of a hand dug well which had a generator running too close up above.

Don't risk it. Confined spaces are dangerous.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#60

Post by marmakoide »

schobi wrote: post #18

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-…

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.
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