Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to drill your own water well

drillyourownwell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 233 posts

Re: How to drill your own water well

#141

Post by moooo99 »

beardedwalleye wrote: post #75
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…

That's >1300 US Gallons, which is a little more than what we use in a week as a family of 5.

Wait, that is per day?!

Re: How to drill your own water well

#142

Post by OfSanguineFire »

moooo99 wrote: post #135
jcarrano wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This very much depends on the place. There are plenty of areas of Europe where groundwater at ordinary well depth is no longer potable and the community relies on a reservoir with a different source. So, if your property has an old well, all it is good for is watering a lawn or orchard, washing your car or bicycle, etc.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#143

Post by moooo99 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #112
bragr wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if there are rental alternatives. That's good advice for almost all tools. The average weekend warrior may never have been to their local tool rental shop, but it's worth checking out! You can rent just about anything, for very reasonable prices, and it tends to be pretty high quality/industrial stuff. For all the tools you only use one a year, it probably makes more financial sense to rent than buy.

But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand. For most DIY I find the cheaper ones good enough, as long as you get some online wisdom first to avoid the occasional turds being sold. Example: chainsaw, drill, jet wash, pruning equipment etc.

> But you can often buy cheaper than renting with the caveat of getting a cheaper brand.

that heavily depends on the kind of tool and what the likelihood of you using this thing more than twice a year is. A chainsaw, drill, jetwash - very reasonable. Anything more specialiced, you're usually better off renting - especially as one could often use the instructions provided by the experts.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#144

Post by finnh »

digitalsushi wrote: post #137
benoliver999 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there is a more functional and charitable read of this: not all of our senses are plumbed all the way through to our conscious mind at all times. small little hints (like minor changes in smell, relative humidity, maybe just pattern-matching on the lay of the land) are down in the noise, and pulling out your trusty sticks gives your subconscious a way to send a signal to your awareness.

Kinda like acupuncture - does my pulse really have seven levels that mean different things? I doubt it.. but a successful acupuncturist might still be able to diagnose "what hurts" using said technique, when really they've already picked up on other clues from your gait, posture, etc.

"subliminal" and "subconscious" are over-used and vague words, but we've all had the experience of wearing a new clothing item and receiving an uncommon number of compliments, including from strangers who wouldn't know it's new. I've always assumed we are unconsciously presenting the new thing with a bit of flair, and that equally-unconsciously draws the eye.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#145

Post by pravus »

This is interesting. Part of my life was working with a water well driller running a rig for my grand-father's business a long time ago. The technique is virtually identical but with a hydraulic lift for running the drill and uses compressed air to clear the bore.

The first step was to find the location and park the drilling rig so it wouldn't sink once the well was dug. Then you'd raise the drill arm, attach a section of pipe and the drill head. You'd lower it down into a round flange that had an opening to one side where all of the cuttings blew out. My job was to shovel the cuttings into a trench to direct water flow once you hit the water line. It was critical to keep water from getting under the tires of the rig.

Each section of pipe is 20 feet long and as you drill in you detach the rig head, raise it, get another section of pipe from a rotating carousel and then start grinding again. Once done you pull all the pipe by basically doing the reverse and then perform a similar operation to push casing down into the hole. When the rig pulls away you have a round hole in the ground ready to have another truck come in to insert an electric pump with all the wiring. Then you box everything up at the top and say job done.

Oil field drilling is pretty similar as well but the rigs are vastly larger and move way more earth much faster. My dad worked on a rough necking crew and I've been exposed to the oil and gas industry most of my life so this is an interesting tangent.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#146

Post by benoliver999 »

digitalsushi wrote: post #137
benoliver999 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"These people" are generally called upon when the community is struggling to find water.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#147

Post by darkerside »

finnh wrote: post #144
digitalsushi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there is a more functional and charitable read of this: not all of our senses are plumbed all the way through to our conscious mind at all times. small little hints (like minor changes in smell, relative humidity, maybe just pattern-matching on the lay of the land) are down in the noise, and pulling out your trusty sticks gives your subconscious a way to send a signal to your awareness. Kinda like acupuncture…

Eye tracking probably plays a big role. We are hardwired to notice what other people are looking at.

Also, you bought it because it looked good, didn't you?

Re: How to drill your own water well

#148

Post by mindslight »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #72
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…

Reminds me of this, what boomers needed vs what I need : https://ifunny.co/picture/an-258534577-82-258535541-258535-1...

I'm quite sympathetic to the overall trend. But nearly half those listed things are effectively optional things to protect himself or make his life easier - eg you do not need an LLC, but you surely do want one. Another near half are to protect others from himself as he is putting himself out there as a business, as he is employing workers or subjecting customers to his work. There could certainly be more small-business-friendly ways to handle these things [0], but earlier periods weren't solving them and at least now there is an attempt. So this particular critique doesn't ring true for me.

The proper comparison is looking at what it takes to do it for yourself or a friend. Of that list, that's probably just permit/inspection, which is hard to talk about generally because it's going to vary per locale. Although you really do want the backhoe.

[0] just spitballing an example, worker injury insurance could be provided more by the state from the general fund.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#149

Post by gottorf »

fouc wrote: post #132
myshpa wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's a philosophical question here, which is that as science and technology get better and our ability to measure things improve, the hidden externalities become less and less hidden. Nobody told Grok the caveman not to burn sticks in his cave for warmth, out of concern for releasing CO2 and particulate matter; but nowadays it's frowned upon to use a wood pellet furnace instead of electric heat, for example.

Existence itself is an externality, since everything any living organism does affects every other living organism, however minutely. There probably exists some amount of externalities that we have to choose to ignore.

Re: How to drill your own water well

#150

Post by monkmartinez »

digitalsushi wrote: post #137
benoliver999 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These people do work in the desert. I have a buddy that drills wells here in Arizona and he WILL NOT put a drill into the ground without a Witcher. I have a really hard time with "witching" from a logical POV, but my buddy and his $130k truck/equipment swear by it. I call that putting your money where your mouth is.
Post reply on HN