Livestock well: drilling

The next day Paul pounded the well casing pipe into the ground.  The pipe went into the ground faster than I expected - especially since earlier the large pay loader could barely budge the pipe.

Adjusting the pounding clamp

Here is a short video of Paul pounding the pipe into the ground.   The last part of the video shows him removing some sediment from the bottom of the pipe, though by the time I took the video it was mainly dirty water.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF97LdmdLLk&feature=youtu.be


The previous post showed the 'shoe' that was welded on the bottom of the pipe.  At the top of the pipe is another 'shoe' to protect the pipe as it is being pounded into the ground..  This 'shoe' is removable.   Note, I placed a number of temporary sturdy boards over the concrete casing to make movement around the site easier and safer.

The pipe was pounded 25 ft into the ground.  However Paul discovered the bottom of the pipe was in clay and no longer gravel.  With the hook he pulled the pipe up almost three feet to get it out of the clay.

After the pipe was in the ground he pumped water out of the pipe using a 3 hp pump that can pump at about 50 gallons a minute.   Notice the dirty sandy water.

After a while the water cleared up.  Or so I thought.  When Paul collected water in a 5 gallon bucket there was a small amount of sand on the bottom.   I thought it was so small as to be no problem.  Maybe, if all I was going to do was run a small pump for the livestock water trough.  But since I have a few old irrigation pipes I plan to get and run a larger pump to pump enough water to water the corral and some surrounding area.  The larger - more expensive - pump would more likely draw some sand and I wouldn't want to damage or wear the pump out sooner because of the sand.

Sand residue from the pumped water

Paul said in the past that sometimes after hours or a day or two the sand would clear up an quit.  He also tried placing the pipe at different depths. Since I had water starting at a depth of 8 1/2 ft he could try different levels and still have enough water.

He tried a few different levels.  The sand cleared up sooner or slower at various levels but we always still had some sand.   We ran the pump into the night and would see in the morning how much sand was in the water.