Digging Wells

*Article courtesy of "A Layman's Guide to Clean Water" and "SHTF Blog - How to Hand Drill a Well"*

Hand dug wells and other manual methods to dig a well have been in existence for thousands of years. Though mechanized methods are more efficient and effective, there are often no options for people and communities in need of water.

People have been making wells without the use of power equipment for thousands of years. Each of the methods described in this section involve hard work, but most can be carried out using locally-available materials and skills.

Digging a well is most certainly not a skillset that comes easily to most people, and I would argue it’s a task that should only be begun after being given deep thought. This is because well-doing is not only incredibly labor intensive but can be incredibly dangerous as well (no pun intended). And to further complicate matters, you never can be quite sure just how pure the water is that you’re raising up out of the earth post-disaster. Before collapse, you can easily test your water for impurities, bacteria, and the like. Such a convenience is not possible post-collapse.

So, what can we do? To begin with, it would help to know a bit about groundwater wells and well construction.

## Types of Wells

### Hand-Dug Wells

Digging a well by hand, using simple tools like a pick and shovel, with a bucket on a rope to remove cuttings, is the oldest and probably the most frequently-used method of getting access to groundwater.

***Advantages***:

* Making hand dug wells requires only common tools and skills, so it can be done by anyone. In many areas men have specialized in this trade as a business.
* Where labor costs are low, this is usually the least costly method of well construction. In an aquifer with low permeability, a large diameter hand dug wells may produce more water than a borehole in the same aquifer.

***Disadvantages***:

* Hand digging a well is very dangerous due to the high potential for cave-ins and lack of oxygen. Digging a well is very hard work for one person. Because it is difficult to dig very deep, hand-dug wells more than 30 meters are uncommon.
* Unless the groundwater seeps in very slowly, it is not possible to dig more than about a meter below the water table. Digging into rock is extremely slow.
* A hand dug well is very difficult to protect from contamination. There are many ways for surface water to seep in, and the typical bucket on a rope used to fetch water easily transmits bacteria to the groundwater.

A hand dug well can be protected by sealing the walls, pouring a concrete apron, putting a lid over the top, and installing a hand pump. But these measures increase the cost of the well.

### Sludging

This ancient drilling method consists of raising and lowering an open pipe in a water filled hole. During the up stroke, the operator holds his hand over the top of the pipe. Just as the pipe reaches the top of the stroke and is starting down, the operator uncovers the pipe.

As the pipe is rapidly pushed down, water and cuttings are forced out the top. The pipe can be as simple as hollowed-out bamboo or joints of PVC pipe with a sharpened bit at the end. With a suitable drilling pipe, a borehole can be advanced to at least 70 meters. Beyond about 10 meters, it is necessary to raise the pipe using a rope and a tripod.

***Advantages***:

* Sludging is much easier and safer than making a hand dug well. The materials required are very simple and can be adapted from whatever is locally available.

***Disadvantages***:

* Sludging is very tiring and requires a crew of people taking turns. It can only drill in soft materials such as silt and sand. Hard clay can be slowly penetrated but rock can't be drilled. Large gravel can't be lifted out of the borehole. The borehole diameter is typically only slightly larger than the diameter of the well casing, so it is hard to install an adequate sanitary seal to prevent contamination from surface water.

### Manual Percussion Drilling

This form of drilling is said to have been used by the Chinese more than 4,000 years ago. It is still commonly practiced around the world today. It consists of repeatedly dropping a heavy drill bit connected to a rope or cable in a hole partially filled with water.

The bit loosens the soil, or chips off pieces of rock. Once enough cuttings have collected in the hole, the bit is pulled out and a bailer is lowered to collect the cuttings. The bailer is a pipe with a one-way valve or flap at the bottom that lets cuttings into the pipe but not out. When brought to the surface, the bailer is tipped up to empty the cuttings.

There are many different ways to raise and lower the drill bit and bailer, such as pulling on a rope or using a flexible pole called a "spring pole"

By adding a sharpened bit and a one-way valve at the bottom of the drill pipe, manual percussion and sledging techniques can be combined to get better penetration than sludging and more efficient cuttings removal than percussion drilling, while being safer than making a hand dug well.

***Advantages***:

* Although manual percussion drilling requires more specialized tools and more skill than making a hand dug well, it is a method that anyone can employ and perfect.
* It is faster and much safer than making a hand dug well and is capable of reaching 70 meters or deeper. With a proper bit design, percussion drilling can also penetrate boulders or solid rock (very slowly).
* The borehole can be sealed to prevent surface water from entering the well and with a hand pump installed can provide a good supply of safe water; another advantage over a hand dug well.

***Disadvantages***:

* Starting the borehole usually requires digging a small-diameter starter hole more than a meter deep. Lifting the drill bit and bailer is hard, but a group of people can pull together to share the work.

### Drive Point

Also called a ''sand point'', this method employs a sharpened hard steel point at the end of a short (less than 1 meter) section of perforated pipe. A strong steel pipe is screwed onto the drive point and the assembly is driven into the ground using a heavy sledge hammer.

***Advantages***:

* This is a very simple, one-man operation that can install a shallow well in only a few hours.

***Disadvantages***:

* A drive point is only effective in loose sand where there is a high water table, such as close to a river or lake. It is very difficult to drive more than about 5 meters. It is not possible to install an adequate sanitary seal so a well made with this method is easily contaminated.

Take a look at the following videos:

* *How to drive a well point for water- step by step in Vermont (Off grid living)* - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwzyh\_61uT0
* *Installing a Sand Point Well at the Off-Grid Cabin* - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTfsWWGrlz0
* *Driving a Sandpoint well quickly and efficiently* - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o43t4eSq5ng

### Hand Auger

This manual drilling method uses a small-diameter open-bottom bucket with angled teeth at the end to cut into the soil. The bucket is attached by a series of steel rods to a T-shaped handle at the top by which the bucket is rotated. As the bucket fills, it is lifted out and emptied. Additional rods are added as the hole gets deeper. Auguring is normally used for taking soil samples, but is has been marketed for use in shallow well construction.

The following instructions are using the Hand Auger method:

## How To Drill A Well

In best case scenarios, hand drilling a well is best suited for landscaping and livestock purposes, but prepping isn’t always about best case scenarios. Honestly, if you’re in a post-disaster scenario, the only option you really have of being successful drawing water from a well would be to drill your own in an area where you can expect to find water relatively shallow to the surface (<50 feet). Why do I say this?

To begin with, the odds that you’re going to have what you need to drive your own well is slim to none. You have to have specialized pipe with perforations on-hand, you need the appropriate driving equipment, and so on. Digging a well with a shovel would take you DAYS, and is not without risks. Poisonous gas build up, lack of oxygen, and cave-ins are all real possibilities when digging your own well. Let alone that you need to figure out a way to get out of the well that you’ve just dug.

As a result of all this, I think your best bet is to focus on drilling by hand. It’s going to take an incredible amount of manual labor, but if water is within range of your extensions (and you’re strong enough to pull the tool out of the hole – numerous segments of extensions get heavy real quick), you have a very good chance of hitting water.

### Equipment Needed To Drill A Well

Speaking of extensions, you’re going to have to make sure that you have plenty of those stockpiled ahead of time as well – I would suggest at least 8 meters worth of extensions.

To do this, you’re going to need a Seymour fence post auger. Other equipment you need to make sure that you have include a foot valve, PVC for casing, PVC for the foot valve, pea gravel and a hand pump.

The foot valve is basically a one-way valve that will reside close to the bottom of the well. It allows water to go into the pump’s PVC without allowing it to exit from the bottom of the well again.

This helps the pump to maintain suction the entire length of the well. Without that foot valve it would take a phenomenal amount of nonstop pumping to even begin to bring water to the surface.

Next, you need to make sure that you have a sizeable amount of PVC pipe (and potentially joints for the size that you choose) to attach from the foot valve to the hand pump. This length of piping is going to be safely nestled inside of the casing – a much larger diameter length of PVC pipe.

### How Deep Can You Go?

Expect a hand drilled well to be about 15-20 feet deep. You’ll have done all of your work for nothing if the water table is deeper than 25 feet where you’ve dug, so the more that you can get the better. That being said, it’s just about impossible to hand drill a well past 50 feet.

### Drilling By Hand

After you have drilled down to the point where you have hit water, it’s time to begin installing your well. Your casing is going to be what enters the well first. You want the bottom six feet of your casing pipe (the part that’s going to be deepest in the well) to have slits cut into it every ½ inch or so for the last six feet of the pipe.

You want to cut these slits around the pipe. Cutting three slits around the diameter of the pipe (without cutting the pipe in half) will allow the bottom part of your casing to fill up with water, allowing the foot valve to have access to water for pumping up to the surface.

Once your casing has been inserted into the well, do your best to make it as vertical as possible. Fill in the empty space around the casing with pea gravel (enough to surround the area where you cut slits into the casing, and a little above it as well). This will help to filter out the dirt and mud that would otherwise fill in your casing and potentially clog your foot valve.

After that job is done, insert the PVC pipe that has your foot valve attached to it with the hand pump attached to the top. If all goes as planned, you should then be able to pump up water from below the ground.

### Final Touches

It’s going to take quite a bit of pumping to clear up the water that’s coming out of your well. Since you’ve greatly disturbed the ground around it, the water is going to be very muddy. You also need to understand that even after the water goes clear, it still may not be safe to drink.

In ideal situations (pre-disaster) you would take a sample of your water to have it tested (not a bad idea for everyday water use if you haven’t done it before). You would then know if there were any dangerous bacteria, viruses, chemicals, or other pollutants in your well that needed to be addressed.

Post-collapse, you’re most likely not going to have that luxury. As a result, you’re going to want to have some form of water purification system in place before you drink any of what you pump up from below. All is not lost in this scenario, however – you still have water, you just need to make sure it is potable. You can boil it, of course, but that then uses fuel.

A better options is to buy a Berkey Water Filter or some other method from reputable companies such as Katadyn or Epic Water Filters.

### Cautions

If you intend to drill a well in such a way pre-collapse, you may want to first check with your local building ordinances. Certain locales require a building permit before digging a well, and there’s the chance that you could get into trouble for doing so without one.

Also, you have to be careful that you don’t drill through the bottom of the aquifer as well. If you do this, you very likely will destroy the aquifer (you just created a drain), and all of your work will have been for nothing. If your aquifer is the same one that your neighbors use, this could create problems.

You also need to know that since hand drilling creates a shallow well, there is a good chance that your aquifer could very well dry up during the drier parts of the year. That’s not to say that it’s a guarantee such will happen – you very well could have a high-quality aquifer with a lot of volume to it. But I am saying that it is a very real possibility. Proper water storage and rainwater collection would be a wise investment of both time and resources as a result.

## Where To Dig A Well

One of the first decisions that you’re going to have to make about your well, is where are you going to dig it? The right location HAS to be determined BEFORE you begin to dig your well, or else you risk wasting a lot of time, energy, and manpower for nothing (you may hit a dry spot), or you potentially risk endangering your family with unsafe drinking water.

To begin, you need to make sure that your well is AT LEAST 15 meters from any septic system or buried fuel tank. The farther you can get it away from these things the better. Nobody wants to drink feces-filled water or a diesel concoction. So, if you’re going to dig, make sure you’re nowhere near either of these obstacles. Likewise, make sure you’re digging at least 30 metres from any pasture used for livestock. Manure runoff from animals can be a serious problem when it comes to potable groundwater.

You also are going to want to avoid digging your well in any marshy area, or at locations where gravity may bring rainwater with impurities/contaminants toward your well. You want your well to be in as safe of a location as possible.

Next, consider if the location you have chosen is likely to have available water within a reasonable depth from the surface. If you dig deep enough, you’re going to hit water, but digging a well that’s 75m+ deep post-apocalypse is going to be virtually impossible, so we need to make sure that our efforts are efficient. It may be worth your time to research water witching/water dousing to learn how some of the old-timers were able to locate close-to-the-surface water.

Locations where green grass can still be found growing during the driest parts of the year may be indicative of an aquifer that’s near to the surface, or… a leach field.

## Disinfecting a Well

Well disinfection and well development are important measures that ensure a safe and dependable source of water.

The final sanitary condition of water taken from a well is probably the most important factor to consider when drilling wells. The goal, after all, is to provide a dependable source of drinking water that is free of sediment and free of disease-causing pathogens. Therefore, time spent on well development and well disinfection is never time wasted. We should be willing to spend at least the same amount of time on these two steps as we spend on the drilling of the well.

Once a well has been drilled, and the above-ground parts properly constructed. A well must be “developed” and “disinfected”. Well development is a process of moving water back and forth through the gravel pack and pumping a large amount of water out of a newly drilled well. The purpose of this process is to remove the drilling mud from the well, break down the “wall cake” that the drilling process creates, and remove sediment from the well water. It may take a couple of days of continuous pumping to accomplish these goals and completely develop the well.

Note: It is very difficult and problematic to disinfect a hand-dug well.

Disinfection of hand-dug wells is more difficult than disinfecting drilled wells. The quality of water taken from hand-dug wells is often very poor, mainly due to the poor construction of the above-ground elements and unhygienic methods of collecting water. A rope and bucket, for example, may be used to collect water, and the rope and bucket are often left on the ground and exposed to disease-causing pathogens. There is often no sanitary seal in hand-dug wells, and the construction of the above-ground parts of the well does not provide adequate protection from intrusion of surface water and dirt. Because of the large diameter of hand-dug wells (one meter or greater), the volume of water in the bottom of a hand-dug well is often greater than that in a drilled well. The larger volume requires a larger amount of chlorine for disinfection.

A hand-dug well may require disinfection every day before being used. At a minimum, the wells need to be disinfected every week or two. Disinfection needs to be performed, not only on the water in the well, but also on the well casing. In a hand-dug well, this requires scrubbing the walls of the well casing using a brush or broom and a chlorine solution. Buckets and ropes, or whatever methods are used for collecting water from the well, must also be disinfected, or they will contaminate the well when they are used. Therefore, the information that follows pertains only to drilled wells.

As illustrated in the water well diagram, proper well construction (specifically the sanitary seal and pump pad) assures that the well will be protected from the introduction of surface water and pathogens from above ground.

The well drilling process will easily introduce foreign matter into the well. The water in the well and all the parts of the well, including the well casing and pump, must be disinfected using a chlorine solution.

Three things that must be remembered in regards to well disinfection:

1. The amount of chlorine required depends on the volume of water in the well and the concentration of the chlorine source. Water volume is calculated from well depth, water level, and borehole diameter (well casing plus gravel pack). The concentration recommended for “shock chlorination” is 250 ppm, or 250 milligrams per liter.
2. The chlorine should be mixed thoroughly in the well casing, pumped until you smell chlorine in the outflow, then left in the well casing and inside the pump overnight.
3. The chlorine, must be completely pumped out before people drink from the well.

Chlorine is readily available all over the world. It can be purchased as either liquid bleach of 3.5% or 5% chlorine concentration, or as powdered chlorine of 70% chlorine concentration.

If we know the concentration of the chlorine source we are using, the diameter of the well casing, and the depth of water in the well, we can use the "Disinfection Rate" table below to find the amount of bleach or powdered chlorine needed.

Follow these steps:

1. Determine the depth of water in the well (in meters).
2. Find the row in the Well Disinfection table corresponding to the concentration of your source of chlorine.
3. Read to the right until you come to the column representing the diameter of your well casing.
4. Multiply the number in that cell(the Disinfection Rate) by the meters of water in the well to get the liters of bleach(or teaspoons of powdered chlorine) needed to for well disinfection.

 Liters of 3.5% liquid bleach per metre of water
 OR Liters of 5% liquid bleach per metre of water
 OR Tablespoons of 70% powdered Chlorine per meter of water

Example:

* *If the water depth = 15 meters*
* *Your chlorine source = 3.5% bleach*
* *The well casing diameter = 100mm*
* *Disinfection Rate = .08*
* *.08 x 15 meters = 1.2 liters of bleach required*