Digging A Well DIY

[UKJASE]

do you think it would be hard to dig a 4 - 5 metre well without all the specialist gear?

has anyone done it before? what tools would i need to do it? would i be able to get a hand auger (the drill tool) here in hua hin? could i hire one maybe? or could a building team do one for me for not too high a price?

our water is trucked in at the minute, and we have a large garden, so to keep it watered i thought maybe we could dig a well.

when the house was getting built in the dry season, the water table was only 1.5 m down, and we are near a lake, so hopefully the ground holds water all year round

any of you guys know the best way i should go about this?

[chiang mai]

Do you want to collect "water in the ground" or "water under the ground", the first one is usually quite easy and cheap, the second one is expensive and often variable.

[cooked]

Farmers' forum mate. I wouldn't attempt 5 metres without specialist equipment, 5 metres is deep. You will need a submersible pump and sheathing of the hole.

[UKJASE]

Do you want to collect "water in the ground" or "water under the ground", the first one is usually quite easy and cheap, the second one is expensive and often variable.

i am not too sure i know what the difference is between these two terms

i just want to use the water for watering the plants. not drinking or showering

if it was the first one, that is easy to do you say, how would i best go about it you think please mate?

[chiang mai]

Do you want to collect "water in the ground" or "water under the ground", the first one is usually quite easy and cheap, the second one is expensive and often variable.

i am not too sure i know what the difference is between these two terms

i just want to use the water for watering the plants. not drinking or showering

if it was the first one, that is easy to do you say, how would i best go about it you think please mate?

If you dig a hole in the ground it will/may eventually fill with water, you can see many such "wells" or water holes on farmers lands. But all that hole does is to collect water from the water table which may or may not be accessible, it's water that drains out of the soil and flows into the hole you've dug and becomes available for your use.

A "well" on the other hand is something that is drilled (or potentially dug) into the strata and finds pockets of water, typically this is very clean water but usually exists quite deep down. In my case my ground water well exists at four metres, the "well" however was drilled to 120 metres which was a costly venture, typically around 800 baht a metre!

Seems like you need the first option, best way is to start digging and/or to hire a handful of 400 baht a day locals to do the work, you'll be surprised at how much progress they can make over a short time.

Hope that helps a bit.

[cornishcarlos]

We got a couple local geezers to dig ours.. No special equipment, dug down to 7m. Using a hoe and a breaker bar, rope and bucket.

Cost 500 baht per ring, 50cm concrete rings x 14

[UKJASE]

We got a couple local geezers to dig ours.. No special equipment, dug down to 7m. Using a hoe and a breaker bar, rope and bucket.

Cost 500 baht per ring, 50cm concrete rings x 14

what will happen if they hit water after 2 metres? how much deeper can they dig below the water line you think, or would they continually pump the water out the hole, so they could still dig (sounds a bit dangerous)

[cornishcarlos]

Ours was done at the height of dry season. I wasn't actually home when they did the digging. We do run dry at times though.

Ask around for other people that have had wells dug in your area..

[Beardog]

If your planning on a well a borehole blows the doors off of a well And not that much more 40,000 -60,000 we Paid 38,000 for a 12 meter dig with a cat & the water was always murky & smelled like dead toads. A borehole is way more efficient & the water is very clear. Remember you need 30 meters from your septic if you have one to avoid feces contaminants in your water supply. Dead serious on that one Our neighbor has floaters in his well. Like mentioned earlier if the water table is 2 or 3 meters the boys are going to have a heck of a time digging while the walls are caving in. A cat is pretty cheap 7500 baht & it's dug for a little more you can have the cat operator put the rings in . You will also need gravel on the outside.of the rings do not get talked into using the dirt or you get murky water forever. School of hard knocks!

[BillyBobThai]

I saw a well dug a few years back by 2 guys. One digging and the other pulling the dirt up. They put in concrete rinks when finished, must have been about 15 feet deep, took them 3 days.

[cheeryble]

Each metre down gets charged at a higher rate it'a a lot more work as you go lower.

[passingas]

However you go about it, especially if you have one dug, make sure gravel is used to back fill around the rings...NOT dirt! Otherwise you will be plagued with silt forever. It will screw with your toilet plumbing and you will be cleaning your filters (especially if you use the concrete rings above ground) every 6 to 9 months. I didn't get to make sure that happened with our well and I am here to tell you....#*@#!!.....I will have to resleeve our well with 70-80cm rings (the original is 1m) and fill in the void with sand/gravel as we come up from the bottom. Could have been done right the first time, but....TIT. pg

[passingas]

Sorry Beardog, I didn't see all of your advice. Please listen to this man and take heed...I'll bet we're not the only ones with this problem. pg

[cheeryble]

Thankyou for e advice Passingas and Beardog.

No personal experience of wells.

Apparently they don't like to do bores in this area because of rocks.

But no they didn't backfill with gravel AFAIK didn't see any..

(That will be the first gripe for the job but as very helpful BIL arranged will be diplomatic.)

Actually BIL said it would need digging lower....only a metre of water....yet the rings are in.

Do they just dig under the lowest ring and let them all slip downwards?

One thing I'm gonna make sure of....

Don't want that damn blue pipe all over the place apparently it can be black and its stronger though a bit dearer.

Edited January 25, 2015 by cheeryble

[dogleg]

We have a concrete 'apron' of about 2m diameter around the rings at ground level. Keeps the chicken/dog sh#t away from the well a bit.

[Seastallion]

We got a couple local geezers to dig ours.. No special equipment, dug down to 7m. Using a hoe and a breaker bar, rope and bucket.

Cost 500 baht per ring, 50cm concrete rings x 14

what will happen if they hit water after 2 metres? how much deeper can they dig below the water line you think, or would they continually pump the water out the hole, so they could still dig (sounds a bit dangerous)

I've dug a well by hand...twice.

Once you reach the water level, it obviously gets quite muddy, but depending on the rate of seepage. When I dug mine, it would fill overnight but not continually flow while I was digging. It meant bailing the hole out each morning with a rope, a bucket, and the wife. Once empty of water, keep digging down so that you have a deep reserve.

It took me two weeks, but that included hauling rocks to the well to line it with.

Word of advice; I had to dig the well because we were suffering a drought (and no roads to truck water in (on a large island)). I knew there was a water table on the flat below the mountain, but being ...not lazy but not wanting to dig more than I had to....I chose the lowest point on the flat land to commence my digging. This was a mistake, as when the rains did come, everything (the land was dry as a bone), every bit of coconut husk, etc, and a lot of dirt washed to, can you guess...the lowest part of the land. My hard-dug well filled with mud and rubbish overnight. I had to dig it all out again the next dry season.

Lesson; place your well NOT on the lowest part of your land.

Excellent excersise.

[cheeryble]

I've dug a well by hand...twice.

Once you reach the water level, it obviously gets quite muddy, but depending on the rate of seepage. When I dug mine, it would fill overnight but not continually flow while I was digging. It meant bailing the hole out each morning with a rope, a bucket, and the wife. Once empty of water, keep digging down so that you have a deep reserve.

Excellent excersise.

That well I had dug in the photos above.....

It goes under ground about a metre then a metre of water.

It's not enough but apparently the guy's pump didn't work and they were being inundated with water.

If it is dug deeper in future do the rings just slip downwards?

[UKJASE]

I've dug a well by hand...twice.

Once you reach the water level, it obviously gets quite muddy, but depending on the rate of seepage. When I dug mine, it would fill overnight but not continually flow while I was digging. It meant bailing the hole out each morning with a rope, a bucket, and the wife. Once empty of water, keep digging down so that you have a deep reserve.

Excellent excersise.

That well I had dug in the photos above.....

It goes under ground about a metre then a metre of water.

It's not enough but apparently the guy's pump didn't work and they were being inundated with water.

If it is dug deeper in future do the rings just slip downwards?

that is what i wanted to know cheeryble......... once the first couple of rings are in, how do you get rings below that, as the hole gets deeper

surely digging away the soil all around the underneath of the existing rings, and waiting for the rings to drop, would be very difficult..... and if the rings got stuck a little bit, and then suddenly dropped a large distance, this would put extra stress onto the rings structure, and possibly damage them

[chiang mai]

Installation of the rings is the very last step, first you have to dig the hole which is wider at the top top than at the bottom, once the correct depth is reached, fit the rings and back fill around them.

[Seastallion]

I've dug a well by hand...twice.

Once you reach the water level, it obviously gets quite muddy, but depending on the rate of seepage. When I dug mine, it would fill overnight but not continually flow while I was digging. It meant bailing the hole out each morning with a rope, a bucket, and the wife. Once empty of water, keep digging down so that you have a deep reserve.

Excellent excersise.

That well I had dug in the photos above.....

It goes under ground about a metre then a metre of water.

It's not enough but apparently the guy's pump didn't work and they were being inundated with water.

If it is dug deeper in future do the rings just slip downwards?

I don't know, but I imagine it would be very difficult and dangerous to try to go deeper once you have put concrete rings in. If you are going to try to extend downwards in the future, it may be better to haul all the rings out.

The advantage of lining with rocks is that if your water is from a "seam" rather than from water-laden soil, the water seeps into your reserve much faster. It's all very pretty to have concrete lining with perfectly vertical sides, but rock lining at about 75 degrees looks nicely rustic and performs very well (pun intended). If I was to do it again, I would extend the lining up, well above ground level (which I didn't do before as I had no cement for mortar and anyway, I was quite over carrying rocks by that time).

Another thing about rock lining is that you can make your well as wide as you want. Wide means more reserve and faster filling. I had to make mine wide (about 3 meters at the top) for the simple practicality of me being at the bottom digging. Mine was, I guess, about 4 meters deep as it was a little more than twice my height. I had over a meter of crystal clear water in the bottom.

[chiang mai]

It wasn't planned but events made it so:

We had a small team drill, yes drill, down to eighteen metres. It took nearly a day left in place is a 4 inch blue pipe stem, all it requires is a pump to integrate it into the existing sprinkler system. Cost, THB 9K. Based on others around me who have similar it's an adequate death and and a decent price.

[UKJASE]

It wasn't planned but events made it so:

We had a small team drill, yes drill, down to eighteen metres. It took nearly a day left in place is a 4 inch blue pipe stem, all it requires is a pump to integrate it into the existing sprinkler system. Cost, THB 9K. Based on others around me who have similar it's an adequate death and and a decent price.

that's a great price mate! i would love to use the team you used

i am guessing you live nowhere near hua hin, right Chang Mai?

[chiang mai]

It wasn't planned but events made it so:

We had a small team drill, yes drill, down to eighteen metres. It took nearly a day left in place is a 4 inch blue pipe stem, all it requires is a pump to integrate it into the existing sprinkler system. Cost, THB 9K. Based on others around me who have similar it's an adequate death and and a decent price.

that's a great price mate! i would love to use the team you used

i am guessing you live nowhere near hua hin, right Chang Mai?

That's correct!

But it's a simple enough process, three guys and a petrol driven pump to push water down the drill bit which in turn is pushed downwards by hand - additional sections are added to the drill bit when they reach their limit, a bit hard going in places where they hit rock which ends up with all three guys jumping up and down on the drill bit, sorta comical really! The final stage is to insert the blue pipe, section at a time, there's no mistaking how deep they've drilled - they drill until they reach water and then keep going until the pump starts to bring up pieces of stone, that way they know the sand layer has been passed and wont block the water pick up pipe which is drilled with holes along the bottom metre of pipe.

The initial cost estimate was 19k for twelve metres which we declined, a friendly local who's done lots of work for us in the past put in a good word and the prices was dropped during a return visit, seems from chatting with the workers/team that 9k is the Thai price.

My challenge now is to find a decent 1" pump that will draw twenty metres. Saxon pumps are usually pretty reliable and have a good name, far better than the Chinese knock offs, I'll start looking in the am.

Good luck, I hope you get sorted.

[Crossy]

My challenge now is to find a decent 1" pump that will draw twenty metres. Saxon pumps are usually pretty reliable and have a good name, far better than the Chinese knock offs, I'll start looking in the am.

For a 20m hole you're going to need a submersible or jet pump, no normal pump can handle more than 10m or so of suction lift

[chiang mai]

My challenge now is to find a decent 1" pump that will draw twenty metres. Saxon pumps are usually pretty reliable and have a good name, far better than the Chinese knock offs, I'll start looking in the am.

For a 20m hole you're going to need a submersible or jet pump, no normal pump can handle more than 10m or so of suction lift

I got a 1 inch jobbie today from Global House that is guaranteed to lift thirteen to fifteen metres, even had them write the guarantee on the sales slip - the water level in the well is around twelve metres which means I've got plenty of leeway. I'll let you know what happens!

[chiang mai]

I forgot to add:

The impeller end of the pump that I bought is as long as the pump motor, it's a pretty weird looking pump to be honest, seems as though it might have multiple impellers.

It's also a very pretty orange color which I feel certain must add to it's ability to draw.

[Crossy]

What model pump do you have so we can check out the specs online?

[chiang mai]

What model pump do you have so we can check out the specs online?

Here you go:

Sorry about the lack of rotation.

[chiang mai]

If I'm reading the table correctly, it looks as though a height range of between 11.5 and 15.5 metres should produce a flow of between 50 and 60 litres a minute, is that correct?

http://translate.google.co.th/translate?hl=en&sl=th&u=http://www.luckystar.co.th/product_detail.php%3Fid%3D61&prev=search

[chiang mai]

FWIW

The new pump is installed and operational, it supports two high pressure sprinkler heads easily, both of which manage a deluge radius of about 16 metres each, three of the same taxes the output.

Contrast the above with a shallow well (three metres) where I am a borrower that will run six high volume sprinkler heads at the same time using a Saxon 1 HP/1 inch pump.

Water level in the new well appears to be 11 metres, pickup pipe depth is 13 metres, well depth is 20 metres.

It all works well enough for me, ahem, plus I have redundancy, based on the season.