Well drilling number 1
Yesterday we had an old well redrilled as part of our pasture recovery plan. I already mentioned the needs of cows and their drinking requirements. This is a lot of water to produce each day, combined with the water needs of four families all drinking off of one well that supplies the entire farm. So with all that in mind we hired NW Poole Well Company to come onsite and recommission an old well that was abandoned before We moved here in 1980. In looking at the well it looked like the last pump installed was in 1975 but who knows how old the well itself was.
Ryan with NW Poole thought it would be no big deal to drill out some obstructions and get this old well up to the 10 gallons per minute that we wanted. Turns out that wasn’t quite the way it went. The old well had some sort of flexible plastic pipe that was still intact from about 15 feet down to the bottom of the 150 foot well. It was seriously tough stuff and took FOREVER.
well drilling – 3
This is about 6 hours late, still drilling out the pipe. The well itself was wide open. At 30 gallons per hour for diesel burn that’s a lot of diesel just to remove plastic.
And the end result. At 150 feet, the well was producing about 2 gallons per minute. Ahh yes, now I see why they abandoned it. Duh! Nothing to do but to keep drilling. We went to 205 feet and still only had 7 gallons per minute. But 7 gallons per minute gives us 3900 gallons in a 10 hour solar day which is plenty for winter and we get much more sun in the summer when we might need more water. Plus I am going to install a 1500 gallon cistern inline so that will give us reserve capacity. That’s not part of the engineered plan but it works for the system and is an enhancement to the overall project so I think it should be ok.