If you have need for water on you land, there is always an option to drill a shallow well by yourself. This is not complicated as it seems. Since I always like to do things in DIY manner, there is gonna need some preparations to be done before starting with actual drilling.
Preparations
Talk to your neighbors. Try to find out wells near you and how deep they are and the level of the water table. This will give you some idea how deep you have to drill or is it possible to do it by yourself. For example if you need to dig 20 meters or more it may be difficult and time consuming.
What do you need before start drilling
1. Metal profile pipes. For example if you need to dig ten meter well, you need at least ten meters of pipes, maybe eleven meters just to be sure. I used pipes 40mm x 40mm, they are heavy, but i was sure they were to hold up all the torture. These pipes should be cut every one meter. That means you would have ten or eleven pipes.
2. Once you cut all the pipes, you will need the same pipe as above, but with smaller dimension, which will tightly fit into the 40x40mm pipe. You will need around three meters of this pipe. This will be cut into 20-25cm parts, which will be used to tightly connect 1meter pipes.
3. You would need a 6" Auger drill bit, something like this. This would be the head you will using to drill with.
4. If you want to use gas auger, that would be the easier route, but it has it's limited capacity (mine was not strong enough to push after five meters depth). I used this one. That's up to you.
There is a cheaper option which will require one meter of 40x40mm pipe.
Check picture below, it will make things more clear.
How to drill a well
1. Take one meter of 40x40 pipe, attach it to the handle or gas auger.
2. Attach other end of 40x40 to the drill head.
3. Choose a place to drill.
Repeat until done:
1. Drill.
2. Take out the pipes from the borehole and clean the drill head from the soil.
3. Once you have all but 10 cm of pipe in the earth attach next pipe to the last one.
4. Put pipes back in the borehole.
After you find the water, the next thing would be to put PVC pipes (i used 4.5" pipe or 110mm) into the borehole, if you left it too long without something to prevent walls from collapsing your whole effort will be in vain. If you dug 10 meters, you will need 11 meters of PVC pipe.
You can use one of the pipes to create a filter for the big particles. Just use 1mm saw to make cuts
It should look something like this.
Once you made the "filter" connect it to go first into the hole and then put all pipes at once in the borehole. You can make the connection between them more secure with some small screws.
After the pipes are in the ground, you can put some gravel around the pipe and try to put at least one bag of it to act as additional filter for the water that will go in the pipe.
The next thing would be to pump the water from the well until it becomes more clear. Now be aware, that this could take some time.
Regarding the pump, you can use the manual pump or submersive pump, that depends on your needs and the capacity of the well. There is possibility that you will find water, but that you will get 100 liters of water per hour, and also you may hit water aquifer and have a bunch of water at your disposal.
My experience with this method
I was having a ton of doubts before starting with the actual preparations and drilling. I had to think all through since I am not the craftsman. The biggest issue was not the process of drilling, but the actual data that was given me from neighbors and cousins that live near there. It was the actual their well depth and water table, some had wells 23 meters deep, some 36 meters and some 40 meters deep. This was quite an issue since with equipment I had, this was quite impossible adventure.
Then I decided to just go with it.
I bought 12 meters of pipe, decided to go as much as I can. Prepared all I needed.
Called my father to help me, and we were on the way.
We managed to drill 5 meters in the first hour. That's because we used gas auger. Since it was struggling with drilling, we decided to switch to the handle from the picture above. In the next two hours we came to the 9 meters and unfortunately we hit some rock. That meant that we've had to stop, but the good news was that water started dripping to the bottom of the hole, after 3-4 meters. I was quite optimistic when we heard some dripping to the bottom and that we're extracting wet clay.
Ideally you want to hit water bearing sand, but if you do hit clay, be aware that water may take a day or two to show up, because clay is more dense and is not permeable as the sand.
The outcome of my adventure was, that in the spring i have around 5 meters of water, which i pump out, wait an hour or two and I can pump it again. In the summertime is around two meters of water.
One important thing is that i recommend to drill in the summer, when the water table is the lowest, because if you find water in the summer, you will most probably have water all year long.
Cost
Gas Auger (i already had it from before but anyway) - 200$
Metal Pipes - Around 50$
PVC Pipes -25$
Manual Water Pump (used) - 40$
Misc hoses and fittings - 25$
Total: Around 350$ with Auger, ~150$ without.
Alternative
Great alternative to this method is here, I would use it for my own project, but I was lacking a lot of equipment and that's the main reason I decided to go my way.
Here is a video of me happily pumping the chocolate from the earth.
Go check the video above and click on the subscribe button. There is also other clips on the channel.
Cheers!
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