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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

#131

Post by ghaff »

duxup wrote: post #124
K0balt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And today I am reminded that people in many places must get the state’s permission to build, repair, or improve their shelter, to grow food, to collect rainwater, to dig a well. On property they “own”. You’re literally asking the states permission to have the basic things needed for human survival- shelter, food, and water. While this makes sense to me for a business or an organisation, it strikes me as unconscionabl…

That was the attitude of the dude down the road from me who started his own impromptu pig farm. The folks who are outraged by what they can't do on their own land often also are the folks who don't think beyond step 1 and don't care if their pig shit stinks and runs off everywhere.

It does depend on location. My town, for example, is a "right to farm" community which--while it doesn't give you carte blanche to do anything you want that's agriculture-related on your property--does give fairly broad latitude.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#132

Post by fouc »

myshpa wrote: post #73
fouc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it strikes me as unconscionable for a private individual to have to get permission from the state to survive. It would be nice to be free of the state. But how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced? It seems like the population is too high in most places to be able to tolerate people doing their own thing, with their own property. Not sustainable…

> how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced We do (pretend to do) when it's easy enough. But mostly we don't. Some examples: - (micro)plastic pollution - climate change (greenhouse gases) - deforestation - biodiversity loss - overfishing, bycatch We even subsidize the sectors causing most of the damage. But for for a regular joe wanting to have wat…

yep, we're failing to price those hidden externalities big time.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#133

Post by gibspaulding »

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…

This is really interesting, though I unfortunately don't read Polish.

For each ring deeper, do you dig out under the bottom ring until it slides down and another can be added to the top of the stack? That sounds terrifying having a whole stack of concrete shifting around above you.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#134

Post by fouc »

greenie_beans wrote: post #127
fouc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it strikes me as unconscionable for a private individual to have to get permission from the state to survive. It would be nice to be free of the state. But how do we deal with the Tragedy of the Commons? How do we make hidden externalities visible & accurately priced? It seems like the population is too high in most places to be able to tolerate people doing their own thing, with their own property. Not sustainable…

tragedy of the commons is a myth https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false...

Not sure why you got downvoted.. thanks for the link

Re: How to drill your own water well

#135

Post by moooo99 »

jcarrano wrote: post #62
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.

> It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.

Watering the lawn is just a waste of water, period. Ground water is commonly used as the primary source of drinking water, so even if the water is being extracted from a well, it is pretty much drinking water.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#136

Post by presidentender »

zigzaggy wrote: post #116

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…

My dad drilled water wells in the US after spending many years working on oil wells overseas. His clients would often hire witchers (water witches, water witchers, well witches - I think the distance from Appalachia to Montana clouded the specific vocabulary). You'd have this very old man dodder around the property with a pair of sticks, and when the sticks magically chose to pull together and cross, that's where you'd dig the well.

I do not recall whether the magical approach was any more successful than the traditional approach.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#137

Post by digitalsushi »

benoliver999 wrote: post #129
zigzaggy wrote: post #116

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…

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.

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.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#138

Post by [deleted] »

jcarrano wrote: post #62
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It still makes sense to have a well because it is a waste to water the lawn with drinking water.

[deleted]

Re: How to drill your own water well

#139

Post by moooo99 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #108
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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!

Lawns in the US consume as many resources as they do because the typical lawn you see isn't a species native to the US, instead it was imported from Europe. With the soil being different etc., it is not surprising lawns, especially when they're as big as in the US, require so many resources.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#140

Post by kube-system »

itsoktocry wrote: post #71
holoduke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you alter things outside of your perimeter. If you extract a lot of water you might cause issues at your neighbour.

> Because you alter things outside of your perimeter. Indeed, but you need a permit for a lot of things contained within your property too. Technically, I need a permit to change my front door. Kinda silly, mostly ignored by people, which is probably a worse outcome.

Homes can have neighboring properties and non-owner occupants and there are third-party fire risk concerns with both. It is not good if people build homes which are at risk of spreading fire to neighboring properties, or at risk of harming occupants in case of a fire.

Building codes are a big reason we don't have nearly as many events called "the great fire of [city]" in the 21st century.

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