Water well drilling

[Chick]

Have any of you dealt with using the small drilling rigs, that use a gasoline engine, to drill your own water well? Do you know the cheapesyt and best place to purchase a swivel?

 

[jackinok]

I assume you mean one of the rigs like deep rock and others build?yes ive used one, own one in fact.Go down to your local rental place,and see if you can buy a swivel for a horizontal boring machine.I use pipe from one of these also as drill pipe,so you may have to take a lenght of your pipe with you to make sure it fits,or can be adapted to, your drill stems collar.I just bought rig and power head only,and its been years ago,but it seems like deep rocks pipe was a different size or something(?)..anyway thats what I've allways used with no problems.

 

[Leroy]

Never around but I would have to say depends on ground and water conditions. Where we have to go 200' deep in rock and hard clay I do not think they would work but where my Grandma said here dad would take a sand point on a 20' length of pipe and drive with a sledge hammer and get water and when that supply of water dried up he would be able to pull that well pipe up and move to a different location then yes I think they would work. They would probably not pass a health inspection tho. The location that grandpa did that is
now just accross the road from a large gravel pit and the water level in that pit is perhaps 5' below ground level.

 

[Lew Best]

(quoted from post at 09:52:43 05/10/11) I assume you mean one of the rigs like deep rock and others build?yes ive used one, own one in fact.<<snip>>

I pickrd pne up at an auction about a year ago but the engine is locked up tight. I have another engine that'll probably adapt to it. It has 75' of drill stem; appears to be 3/4 pipe thread? Deep Rock has no "details for use" on their website; only say "complete instructions icluded" when you buy one.

My main curiosity is how you drill the hole (I'll probably have to drill 25-30 feet) through sand & gravel & prevent the hole from collapsing when you withdraw the drill stem & bit?

I jetted with 2" pipe for a 1&1/4" pvc well point (per manufacturer's instructions) then you drop the well point and its pipe in the hole & pull out the 2" pipe. They say the hole will collapse around the well point as you remove the 2" pipe.

The jetting went well & I hit water at about 8 feet; at about 12 feet I apparently hit gravel though & couldn't jet any deeper. My neighbor said that at 20-25' you can get plenty of water so I want to try it deeper (my pump pulls the hole dry literally in seconds with the water at 8' & bottom of the hole about 12 feet).

My land is very sandy until you (apparently) hit that gravel layer; no idea how thick the layer is. There used to be a lots of gravel pits around here; there are 2 "gravel pit lakes" within probably 300-500 feet of my "proposed well." Unfortunately they're not on my property or I'd just try to pump water for my garden, fruit trees, etc. from one of the lakes.

Any tips, insight, etc. appreciated!

Lew in "very dry" central TX

 

[BCnT]

neighbor had one...or i should say part of one...he made his swivel...he also made his drill stem but he didnt have the correct couplings and they would start breaking off about 100' down...if you make your own theres weld on fittings with ACME threads

Lew...use drilling mud to keep hole from collapsing and to keep circulation while drilling...i'm sure you got oil field supply's some where near you...they can tell you exactly what type you need for your soil.

 

[Lew Best]

Lew...use drilling mud to keep hole from collapsing and to keep circulation while drilling...i'm sure you got oil field supply's some where near you...they can tell you exactly what type you need for your soil.

Thanks; I'll see what I can find out. The nearest oil drilling activity is peobably 100 or so miles from here though.

Lew

 

[jackinok]

what I did for bits was to take a piece of my drill stem,cut a 1/4 or 3/8 flat piece of metal to slide around it and weld it on bottom end.then i would grind it to a point weld end of pipe shut both sides of it and drill about a 1/4" hole each side into end i welded shut for jets.total thing was @ 6" long and 3" wide.after this was done I would hardsurface the wearing edges.
deep rock sells bits,and also reamers if you want to go that route.
above my bit about 2'(each section of drill pipe ,on mine at least is 5' long)i would weld three "wings " on as a reamer to bring my hole size out to around 5" or so.the secret is to have a good pump to keep circulation up as your drilling so you remove the cuttings.deep rocks instructions says ,as I recall ,to drill the hole completly ,and then ream it out.but i did both at once without problems.I didnt use any drilling mud unless started having trouble with cave ins or pipe getting stuck.As i recall we drilled five wells with it,that I was involved in,and dad did some for neighbors i think,and the deepest was 200ft believe it or not!
the only real problem i encountered was if bit or reamer hit just the edge of a rock it would tend to kick bit off to the side and you would wind up with a really crooked hole.which meant you might have to set a small casing to get it in unless you had some way of driving it.but submersable pumps are available down to 2" now.
actually its pretty surprising how fast one will drill,if you only wanted to go 25' or so you could do that easy in an hour or two around here.

 

[Lew Best]

Thanks! those tips DEFINITELY appreciated!

Lew

 

[jackinok]

oh and one other thing,IF you useboring machine pipe as drill stem,you can use those bits also,they work good also.if you have to drill some hard rock that may be the way to go.all that i ever recall hitting was some sand rock,and while it certainly slowed it down it still drilled quite well for what it is.I thinkthe slowest drilling I found was around 10 minutes per foot in the hardest thing we encountered.most of the time you could turn loose of the little winch handle and it would almost fall in the ground,maybe 1/2 to 1 min per foot.I would imagine if you had some really hard rock you would need a good comercial bit,or it would be faster just to move over.