Why, internet? Why!? I can't believe that after all of these years I finally fell victim to believing something I saw on the internet was true. That never happens. Not to me. I always do my due diligence. But this time, the shit planets aligned and what I thought was a popular and simple solution to a problem was not.
We want to do everything we can ourselves. Drilling a water well not excluded. I know it sounds like a huge undertaking, and it is, but we're the Scribners. So I did a ton of research; you know, the real kind. The internet kind. I found there's a thing called a sand point. It's a four foot long tube with holes in the sides covered with fine screen. On the end of this tube is a heavy point. This tube connects to a length of steel pipe. Then a fence post driver or sledge hammer is used to beat the point and pipe into the ground by hand like a giant nail. Once the pipe is close to the ground, another pipe is screwed on and the process starts over again until you reach a depth of about 25 feet. This method is widely used in sandy soils in areas where the water table is high. That, I thought, is exactly our conditions. After all, you've seen the pictures and videos of our wet land. During wet seasons it seems like our water table is at 2 feet.
Sand points, drive caps, heavy couplers and all other components to this system are widely available from multiple manufacturers. I ordered mine from Home Depot. And they're relatively inexpensive too. Especially when we were hearing tales of a deep well in our area costing $10,000.00! Now granted even with a high water table a hand driven sand point well will not yield a ton of water, BUT there are plenty of videos online of folks driving one and having ample water to flush toilets, wash dishes and even take showers. Our small cottage should do just fine on a shallow well.
I watched many videos of people hammering away at their sand points. Some are 2 minutes long and others are much longer. The common complaint I derived from my research was simply how labor intensive it was. So what? I'd be happy to get after it. So we purchased everything we needed and got to it.
The first thing no one tells you is you will fuck up your pipe thread. No question about it. After we drove the first 6 feet the threads where the drive cap (a heavy steel cap screwed on the top of the pipe to hammer against) were driven inside themselves and folded under.
Enter a high dollar set of pipe threading tools.
The second thing no one tells you is the drive cap will crush from the heavy pounding.
Buy several extra drive caps and continue.
The third thing and granted, I knew this upfront, it's VERY LABOR INTENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING. I thought I could handle it. No fucking way. It'd kill anyone who tried. At least it would in my soil. Which brings me to the fourth thing...
All conditions will be different. Any videos or blogs or testimonials online only know of how it went for them, and no one posts failures. I thought my soil was sandy. It is. After about 20 feet of sticky clay and hard rock. Driving by hand on my property proved to only destroy pipe, couplings, caps, threads, my back and most of my family relationships.
So we put it on hold. And while we continued to build on the cottage my dad decided he could whoop the well and began building a small drilling rig for me with the idea that we could drill the hole and then drop the sand point directly in. Voila. No hand driving. This gesture was massively impressive and very much appreciated. I'm very lucky to have such a dad.
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| This rig is quite impressive, but not as impressive as my dad himself. |
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| As we drilled we saw the excavated soil changing colors and textures eventually becoming a wet cornmeal like sand. |
We pulled the pipe we had already driven by yanking on it with my tractor's front end loader along with car jacks. About the only thing harder than driving this goddamn thing is pulling it. After we wrestled it out we used my dads rig and drilled to 25 feet and dropped the sand point back in, which stopped at about 18 feet or so for some unknown reason. So I drove it by hand fairly easily to its max depth. Of course, we had to re thread the top pipe after it collapsed from even moderate driving then we finally and anxiously hooked up the pump. No water.
We used the tractor and jacks to muscle out the pipe again and could find nothing wrong. Per my research I installed a check valve at the top side near the pump. While the pipe was pulled, I decided to move the check valve to the bottom just above the point thinking that would aid in priming the well. Excited again we tried to drop it back in the hole but it only went in about 6 feet and stopped. The well had collapsed. As did my boner. There was no way I was driving it further so we quit yet again.
After a few weeks, I decided to re drill the well one final time. As requested by my wife, this time I went deeper. But I noticed while drilling that I could pull the drill pipe up about 6 feet from the bottom and when I would lower it, it would begin to drill the bottom 6 feet all over again. That's when I realized my well walls were collapsing while I was drilling. I could drill about 16 feet or so and the cuttings would flush out. But below that, sand would just collapse and settle in around my bit. I could never go any deeper without it filling itself back in. So I pulled the drill pipe and decided to try to drive it again. I placed the sand point and 25 feet of pipe down until it stopped. We had to hand drive about 8 feet. Which we did, again, just for fucking fun. We filled the pipe with water, hooked up the pump, primed it and this time... no goddamn water. It's as if the bottom of the well is completely clogged or at best like trying to drink a milkshake through a tiny coffee stirrer. It is decided that the internet is a liar and it should be destroyed.
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| Hard to tell I was an inch away from setting everything on fire. |
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| We pumped water from one of our nearby ponds to the drill site. |
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| The water was pumped about 200 feet from the pond to the drilling rig. |
Having now given up for the final time I decided to call a local well drilling service and see for myself what the damage is going to be. WHICH I SHOULD HAVE DONE MONTHS AGO. I quickly learned that unlike the internet, actual professionals can honestly answer questions easily and directly about my exact situation and geographical location. I learned the most the moment I told them where I was located. The receptionist quickly said "Oh. He won't drill in that area. It's too difficult". She went on to say that they use air drillers and that my area was too sandy and wet for that method. I'd need a mud driller which they don't use and which is essentially what my dad built. Except in order to get it to work in this sandy soil I'd need to mix bentonite with the water I pump down the drill pipe to solidify the well walls so the sand doesn't collapse. OH! Easy!
No. Not easy. It's never going to happen. So I called a second local well driller who as it turns out has air drillers, mud drillers and air and mud drillers and is ready and willing to take us on! Hallelujah! He actually drilled the well closest to us, remembers it is 180 feet deep and knows the area well. I told him what I had been doing and he laughed. He said the sand point would have worked if I was about a mile closer to the river but where I am, no fucking way. I told him I wanted a deep well and he asked what I considered deep as he recently drilled 750 feet! I'd like to go 150 - 200.
One reason we wanted to do this ourselves was financial, being we heard rumors that a well would be around $10,000.00. So when we got his quote of $22 per foot with a $2000 minimum my boner came back so strong I opened a paint can with it and got back to work.
Fucking with that damn sand point to date between myself and my dad cost nearly as much as what my new 100+ foot deep well is going to be. What a great big colossal waste of time.
We are tentatively on his schedule to drill in late January, weather permitting. The only caveat is that his rig weighs 60,000 pounds and if our land is not completely dry at the time he will sink like a stone. So we'll see what it do.
In the meantime, we are full stream ahead - pun intended - and currently working on finishes in the cottage! Can't wait to show you all the finished product! I may even include a pic of me running through fountains of sprinklers where it's hard to tell which is more glorious, the plentiful water or my raging boner.
