My neighborhood has started a community garden in the middle of a large, open field. Last year each gardener had to transport water to their own plot. This was easy for a few of us with trucks but most found transporting water quite a challenge. I don't know anything about wells. Can a well be dug that would not need electrical power to produce water? We do not have any electricity at the garden so the well would have to produce water with either a mechanical pump or natural underground water pressure. Does a simple well need a pump?
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Drilling a well by my garden. Feasible?
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Of course its feasible, Bison makes hand pumps for either deep or shallow wells but a well driller could give you a real answer and a cost pretty easily
We have a well for the house. Electric pump. There's also a well a few ft. from the garden gate. Hand pump.
We also have an older shed that we believe may have been the original building on the property. It has a well inside that had an elec. pump before we got here.
Around here you just buy a well point and pipe and pound into the ground for 20-25 ft., and you have water once you put on your pump of choice.
You could build a very simple structure with a roof and collect water in barrels for all to use. Or, just build a greenhouse.
We also have an older shed that we believe may have been the original building on the property. It has a well inside that had an elec. pump before we got here.
Around here you just buy a well point and pipe and pound into the ground for 20-25 ft., and you have water once you put on your pump of choice.
You could build a very simple structure with a roof and collect water in barrels for all to use. Or, just build a greenhouse.
There are books in the library which describe the location, depth and encountered water level for wells dug in municipal golf courses, city buildings and other public work projects. These will help indicate how deep you'll have to go to hit water if these are near your property.
I installed a well on my property and did such research. It was well (no pun intended) worth it because I was able to keep peice of mind before forking out $15K for the dig. If I had not hit water, I would have been out this much.
I hit water in the first 30 feet but the quality was very low. This type of "close to the surface" water is refered to as "mole" water - either because its what seeps into the ground from the hole moles leave or that it flows up and down in a shallow manner picking up ground contaminants along the way.
After going down 300 feet, and punching through the remains of 3 river beds, my 7 gallon per minute water is like Perirre and I use it for in house and irrigation. My water bill went to zero (it used to be thousands) but my electrical bill went up about $40 (oh well
). After only 4 years it has paid for itself. From this point on, its a money maker - a mint in fact. Even my neighbors want to "buy" water from me cause its cheaper than what the city provides ($30 per 1000 gallons above a specific "tere".
Ok all that being said, there are a couple of things I would consider if I were in your shoes given the research and experience I have had.
1) Yes a hand well can be dug. Harbor freight (I think) sells well digging setups what can take you down about 100 feet. Other setups may be sold elsewhere. Be sure that the city ordinance does not prohibit the such a well. Even if it is only 10 feet deep, some nasty neighbor to the lot is likely to report its existence and then there could possibly be a fine.
2) Who owns the lot? A big question. Any improvements/alterations may aggravate the owner.
3) Professional hydrologists can be hired who, for a modest fee (maybe $200) will tell you exactly how far down the water is given that he will probably have accurate maps of the sub-terrain and access to the drilling logs of local wells. If your friends and you spend an hour each per week hauling water and their time is conservatively valued at $15 dollars per hour, doing the math will indicate that this expense is very reasonable. Another VERY inexpensive way to find out how deep the water in the area is, is to talk with other people in the area who already have wells and find out what the static level is. Just don't indicate why you are asking. Otherwise they will think you are trying to steal their water for "some tomatoes" and soon they will not be able to flush their toilets.
4) If you do hit water at a reasonable depth (100 feet perhaps) A wind mill can be used to pump water into a holding bin. You would tap this for your garden. A local high-school machine shop class may take on its construction as a school project so long as the materials were donated. They are not hard to make - check out youtube.
5) Again, if you do hit water, have it tested for nitrides, arsenic, and bacteria. If you pump a lot of water to the surface and it contaminates the surface soil, you may be liable.
6) If you do hit water, clearly mark it as grey water and NOT POTABLE. The last thing you want is a bunch of thirsty school kids crossing the property on their way back from a ball game drinking that water. So I would not put a regular faucet on the output but rather fittings which make it hard for humans to drink from the source or area of application.
I realise that this explanation describes a more technical approach to drilling a well, but here in California, where water is considered white gold, and water wars have been known to break out, I had to consider all the angles. Where you live things might be different.
As a side note, in the process of searching for the right location for my well, I learned some interesting true facts:
1) Jack and Jill went UP the hill to get a pale of water. Its strange but true, often drilling a well higher up on a hill/mountain will yeild water more readily than doing so at the bottom or in a valley.
2) There is no scientific proof that water witches work. Do not fall into the situation where you pay a water witch to locate water. I can site extensive USGS records and reports debunking this "craft".
I installed a well on my property and did such research. It was well (no pun intended) worth it because I was able to keep peice of mind before forking out $15K for the dig. If I had not hit water, I would have been out this much.
I hit water in the first 30 feet but the quality was very low. This type of "close to the surface" water is refered to as "mole" water - either because its what seeps into the ground from the hole moles leave or that it flows up and down in a shallow manner picking up ground contaminants along the way.
After going down 300 feet, and punching through the remains of 3 river beds, my 7 gallon per minute water is like Perirre and I use it for in house and irrigation. My water bill went to zero (it used to be thousands) but my electrical bill went up about $40 (oh well
). After only 4 years it has paid for itself. From this point on, its a money maker - a mint in fact. Even my neighbors want to "buy" water from me cause its cheaper than what the city provides ($30 per 1000 gallons above a specific "tere".Ok all that being said, there are a couple of things I would consider if I were in your shoes given the research and experience I have had.
1) Yes a hand well can be dug. Harbor freight (I think) sells well digging setups what can take you down about 100 feet. Other setups may be sold elsewhere. Be sure that the city ordinance does not prohibit the such a well. Even if it is only 10 feet deep, some nasty neighbor to the lot is likely to report its existence and then there could possibly be a fine.
2) Who owns the lot? A big question. Any improvements/alterations may aggravate the owner.
3) Professional hydrologists can be hired who, for a modest fee (maybe $200) will tell you exactly how far down the water is given that he will probably have accurate maps of the sub-terrain and access to the drilling logs of local wells. If your friends and you spend an hour each per week hauling water and their time is conservatively valued at $15 dollars per hour, doing the math will indicate that this expense is very reasonable. Another VERY inexpensive way to find out how deep the water in the area is, is to talk with other people in the area who already have wells and find out what the static level is. Just don't indicate why you are asking. Otherwise they will think you are trying to steal their water for "some tomatoes" and soon they will not be able to flush their toilets.
4) If you do hit water at a reasonable depth (100 feet perhaps) A wind mill can be used to pump water into a holding bin. You would tap this for your garden. A local high-school machine shop class may take on its construction as a school project so long as the materials were donated. They are not hard to make - check out youtube.
5) Again, if you do hit water, have it tested for nitrides, arsenic, and bacteria. If you pump a lot of water to the surface and it contaminates the surface soil, you may be liable.
6) If you do hit water, clearly mark it as grey water and NOT POTABLE. The last thing you want is a bunch of thirsty school kids crossing the property on their way back from a ball game drinking that water. So I would not put a regular faucet on the output but rather fittings which make it hard for humans to drink from the source or area of application.
I realise that this explanation describes a more technical approach to drilling a well, but here in California, where water is considered white gold, and water wars have been known to break out, I had to consider all the angles. Where you live things might be different.
As a side note, in the process of searching for the right location for my well, I learned some interesting true facts:
1) Jack and Jill went UP the hill to get a pale of water. Its strange but true, often drilling a well higher up on a hill/mountain will yeild water more readily than doing so at the bottom or in a valley.
2) There is no scientific proof that water witches work. Do not fall into the situation where you pay a water witch to locate water. I can site extensive USGS records and reports debunking this "craft".
Ive thought about doing it for my backyard. It would be a great project, interested to see what others have done.
It really depends on the quantity and quality of the kind of water you want. The more you spend, the better quality you get. Most hydrologists consider a good produceing well as a gold mine since it will forever produce water (given a few exceptions). I can tell you that for the money I spent - $20K for the hole, primary, secondary pumps, water tanks and electronics, it HAS been a gold mine. It will enhance the resale of the house easily to amount I spent if not more since the price of water from the city always goes up. Given that I have extensive landscapeing, vinyards and 40 red wood trees, it was a no brainer. The big "if" was if the water was actually down there. After the research I mensioned above, I was sure it was.
Our land is pure clay and as such doesn't really have a surface water table. One can dig down 40 feet here and have a dry hole. Where my well was drilled, they went down through 50 feet of clay and found a 5 foot layer of sand/gravel above the bedrock. We decided not to go into the bedrock so we draw from that layer. The water is very hard and the plants don't much like it. They like the soft rain water we capture in a couple of rain barrels off my woodshed roof. Soft water can better carry nutrients from the soil to the plant.
The wife would not let me setup rain barrels on the downspouts of the house so those go underground and eventually come to the surface away from the house. I've thought of making an underground cistern from concrete well rings at the end of one of these pipes and capturing some rain water off the house roof.
In a really sandy area, you might get away with pounding down a sand point and putting a hand pump on it. A well casing would give you more storage for a slowly recovering well so you can draw it down faster than the recovery rate. Our former home had 4 foot diameter concrete well tiles. They can be hand dug but it is labour intensive.
My father and I hand drilled his well using the washout technique. You wash a hole with a nozzle down through a casing and drive down the casing as you go. We went down 120 feet before we found water.
The wife would not let me setup rain barrels on the downspouts of the house so those go underground and eventually come to the surface away from the house. I've thought of making an underground cistern from concrete well rings at the end of one of these pipes and capturing some rain water off the house roof.
In a really sandy area, you might get away with pounding down a sand point and putting a hand pump on it. A well casing would give you more storage for a slowly recovering well so you can draw it down faster than the recovery rate. Our former home had 4 foot diameter concrete well tiles. They can be hand dug but it is labour intensive.
My father and I hand drilled his well using the washout technique. You wash a hole with a nozzle down through a casing and drive down the casing as you go. We went down 120 feet before we found water.
The simplicity of drilling a well will depend entirely on the geology of the area you intend to drill in. Here in Wisconsin the geology varies so much that a well can be as easy as pounding a 1.25" galvanized pipe with a pointed screen on the end into the ground. Other parts of the state the well drillers are playing Moses trying to get water to come out of granite. Still other parts of the state the water is so deep the drillers charge upwards of $25,000 to drill a well.
If you have shallow groundwater, less than 10 feet say, you might get away with laying a drain tile down and pumping out of that.
As for off-grid pumps. That will depend on how deep you have to lift it. If it's less than 25 feet to water you can get small DC pumps that can be connected by alligator clips to your car battery. If it's deeper the Amish have all sorts of ways of jerry-rigging old handpumps to old lawn-mower engines. If you're thinking of hand-pumping to water a vegetable garden I would think that hauling water from home would be the easier option. If I didn't have a truck, I'd get a small trailer to pull behind a car. Even a car that can only tow 1200 lbs should be able to pull 120 gallons of water.
Heck, maybe the garden club could spring for a rusty old truck to keep parked on site for members to use for water hauling.
If you have shallow groundwater, less than 10 feet say, you might get away with laying a drain tile down and pumping out of that.
As for off-grid pumps. That will depend on how deep you have to lift it. If it's less than 25 feet to water you can get small DC pumps that can be connected by alligator clips to your car battery. If it's deeper the Amish have all sorts of ways of jerry-rigging old handpumps to old lawn-mower engines. If you're thinking of hand-pumping to water a vegetable garden I would think that hauling water from home would be the easier option. If I didn't have a truck, I'd get a small trailer to pull behind a car. Even a car that can only tow 1200 lbs should be able to pull 120 gallons of water.
Heck, maybe the garden club could spring for a rusty old truck to keep parked on site for members to use for water hauling.
Good luck in figuring out what to do, but hand pumping water for a garden? Be along day running that handle.
There is an upper aquifer and a lower aquifer. The upper is what catch all of nature, human trash, waste and run off. Depending on where you are is going to depend on how deep you need to go and how you treat the water if it is for human consumption.
The lower aquifer is old water, usually hundreds of years and a lot cleaner. Wells like this go through layers of clay, sand, gravel and some sort of bed rock in between and they are very deep; by a couple of hundred feet.
Where we live is full of slate quarries full of water, very old water here. But lot of surface water also meaning you usually do not have to go very deep. I was digging a patch out behind our garage to install a driveway and kept getting the skid loader stuck from the water seeping up through the ground after digging down 4 ft.
The lower aquifer is old water, usually hundreds of years and a lot cleaner. Wells like this go through layers of clay, sand, gravel and some sort of bed rock in between and they are very deep; by a couple of hundred feet.
Where we live is full of slate quarries full of water, very old water here. But lot of surface water also meaning you usually do not have to go very deep. I was digging a patch out behind our garage to install a driveway and kept getting the skid loader stuck from the water seeping up through the ground after digging down 4 ft.
Ed S said:
That can be true or not depending on the local geology. Some places have sand from the surface to the water table, some have a layer of clay that is totally impermeable, some have no soil at all, just bedrock to the surface.... The water table could be an inch below the surface or a hundred feet down
Yea, Thats why you hire a hydrologist, find out where your neighbors water level is, or check out the library for the logs of public wells. These are the easiest and cheapest things to do. There is no way to tell where the water is otherwise.
midwestcoast said:
Just going by the classes I had to take when I use to do well work. Maybe it is a local thing.
Most of the wells we operated were between 15 and 30 ft deep to try and clean up the surface water, that was on a peninsula.
And then some of my neighbors wells on the other side of town are over 300 ft deeps to get into the clean water.
I got rudely interupted by work & couldn't finish my prev post. Meant to add tha along with HeatsTwice's tip about public wells, you might also try your City or County Public Health Dep't for records of all local wells. Some State Environmental authorities (like EPA, DNR...) have well databases too. You'll want to check to make sure there are no groundwater use restrictions in the area. Many cities & towns with public water supplies have restrictions in place because the quality of the local groundwater is unknown, or known to be contaminated.
If groundwater is shallow, clean and abundant I see no problem with a hand pump or portable electric pump. A small storage tank might be a good idea to provide gravity fed water without simultaneous pumping.
If groundwater is shallow, clean and abundant I see no problem with a hand pump or portable electric pump. A small storage tank might be a good idea to provide gravity fed water without simultaneous pumping.
does any one have any suggestions on where to get the equipment to drill a shallow well? I couldnt find any at harborfreight.
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