All about wells: How a water well is drilled 

My Dad was a driller for 25 odd years. Had his own rig and water truck at one point. In the 60's, my mother followed him around the country in an FX Holden, towing an 18 foot Franklin caravan. We often spent months living in the desert in a base camp consisting of the van and the car.

Been a well driller for a couple years here and i work with my boss who has been literally doing it since a teenager. Hes in his 50s now. If its one thing to take away from what ive learned and what hes told me...the flashier and nicer looking the rig, the more junk it is. Down here in fl there are about 3 premium well drilling companies, in my area. Each one is WELL CAPABLE of purchasing a multi million dollar rig. Do they? No..cause the new ones(where everything is hydraulic) are junk. Each of those companies has an old rig from the 70--80s, where everuthing is run off its own individual transfer case and driveshaft. These things are a work of art. Its a true masterpiece to see a contraption of about 6 transfer cases, 10 driveshafts and 2 massive transmissions running all at once and in sync with each other. But! Because everthing is running str8 off gears and drive shafts u dont have to worry about hydraulics breaking or blowing which i heard is extremely common on those new rigs. So if u ever buy a well and they pull up in an old clunker...thank the lord. Cuz you probobably have a crew of guys who have been around and know exactly what there're doing. Also if uve never seen one operate(overall its looks very similar to this rig with hiw tall the derrick stands and where the drill rods are sitting but behind the cab there is a massive flat bed where this contraption in built on) it is truly a work of art to watch it all come together. I still remeber we were drilling a well for a farmer. He has had many wells drilled in the past. He walked up to my boss and said " how come everytime these drilling rigs show up they look like a pile of junk?" My boss says "have you ever seen a company pull up with a new modern rig?" The farmer says "no." My boss says, "yea, cause they know what works and what dont!" Lol

And btw, all the people complaining about the camera should really count their blessings. Not many people take the time to video this process in a down to earth manner, so we can just watch it. Thanks again for this.

I drilled mine with a sledge hammer and two inch drive point. Hit water a 32 feet after four days of pounding in the hottest summer on record. Lived there twenty five years and never ran that well dry once.

Thank you for uploading an interesting video. I had 20 years of experience as a driller in Japan. Air hammering was not my speciality but it was really interesting for me. The first bit they say very expensive seems worn to me and I can fix it by gas welding. I think that the most expensive bit is the last one for drilling rock and it can’t be fixed when it get worn.

Good job. When I was a young Hydrogeologist the crew drilled a 12 inch artesian well 1.2m deep with water temp 104F reaching 10 ft in the air. Now that was a happy farmer

That's one of the coolest pieces of heavy equipment I have ever seen. Thanks a ton for sharing. This is very interesting.

How can you not love watching drilling ? This is a great video for showing it in "real time".

thank you for putting this on youtube! It's straight forward and makes more sense than an engineer talking. Merry Xmas!

That's was great. When I was a young boy in 1959 I watched our well being drilled at 110 feet. The way it was done was they pounded the drill for a long time. The pounded sound traveled to be heard 1/2 mile away. Thanks for your video

6:06 I approve of any task where periodically whacking the equipment with a large hammer is a requirement.

Our drillers drill until they get at least 20-30gpms. The pumps only pull 10 but through the years as the water is depleted, you're covered for much longer. Our Ozark Mo wells run an average of 300-350ft. deep now days with an occasional 600ft. in our area. Depending on depth, you can look at 5000-10,000. for completed (w/pump). Depending on the type of rock, our casing can run 200' easily which adds to the cost. Nice video.

I will be soon. I have 4 solar powered pumps to do a video on. 2 I have been running for about a year , 1 new Sunrotor pump and a prototype 24v gearmotor for a Simple Pump. I can't wait to do these vids.

Excellent. I drilled with my dad when I was a kid. Did it with a Bucyrus-Erie 22W. Man, does a nice rotary rig blow the old 22W out of the water!! This looks so easy and quick. Makes me wanna get back into drilling. Thanks for the video.

I live in central Texas and had a 250' well drilled and completed (casing, concrete pad, submersible pump, controller and hook up) for $11,000. Costs vary by location. Permitting costs very low here. God bless America and the freedoms we have. Well makes +300 gal/hr in the Trinity aquifer.

Great video! I was an assistant driller on a 1988 IR T3 for five years. Great pay, hard work.

American ingenuity gets it done!

WHY ... "why" would ANYONE 'thumb-down' such a worthwhile source of information / thing too learn from ? ... *I really learned / enjoyed this* :- )

Greetings from Europe, Portugal. Thanks for taking the time to share this brings back some memories. I had a borehole sunk 14 yrs ago similar stats the 20cm liner is down 30 meters with an eventual depth of 112 meters to the 3 phase German made pump which is still going strong. When it goes wrong sometime in the future plan is to get a low voltage solar pump that will do the job via the sun which we get plenty of here.

I love it when I stumble on an old one I missed.

Thank you. This is a one of the kind Video. I am 62 years old and this is the first time that I see how a modern well is done. It is sure different from the well I saw done y hand in old days which one bucket of dirt at a time was pulled out with a rope. It's amazing!. Thanks

really interesting to see that happening. 3K for 100m well is a lot cheaper than it costs in Australia.

I work as a plumber and seen alot of water systems , testing water from wells and installing several types of unit's like water softeners etc.etc. and I've only witnessed drilling 3 times in my 22 years of plumbing. The last time was a 60 gallon a minute artisian well and that was at 80ft.which was strange because it was near the summit of a mountain range with an elevation of 3,000 ft.. It was pushing iron magnesium rich water out the well top about 6 inches..lol.. Was crazy..

Very interesting - the process had more steps than I expected. Thanks for taking the video and posting.

I love when guys are to tough for gloves but then handle everything so delicately because they don't have gloves

280' this spring, pvc collapsed on them got to pull it out and install iron, sweet water, 12 gpm, cost 8 grand. North Central Idaho elevation 900'.

Took three years to get a course in water chemistry water wells etc. Should have gotten a three day forklift course for the good it did me.

Never seen this process before. Thanks for the interesting video, thumbs up!

This is why I love RU-vid

Great Well!! Man, I'd love to have a well with those stats! Thanks for sharing this. It was very informative! God Bless!

A bentonite grout is required where I live. It is pumped in from ~ 20ft down filling around the casing up to the surface. The casing is solid and anchored on the bedrock 80 feet down so the bentonite doesn't get into the well but prevents any surface water from following the casing to the bedrock and then into my well. Hope that makes sense.

I know I know- to shakey! I miss too many things when I use the tripod. I need to buy a better camera as well but all my money goes to PVC and pumps. : )

Great introduction

Wow $3K to get a 300 foot well drilled with a million dollar rig? Around here our well drilling crooks wouldn't drill past the roots on the grass for that price.

Man you got a smokin deal @ $10-ft.hopefully they didn’t gouge you fer the pump and such. 92-‘97 I busted knucklez @ American Veterans (AMVETS)Well Drilling-Cerrillos,NM. Your video Brings back good memories of them yrs for me. Looks like it sure aint changed much.still sloppy-muddy!! take care now..

last year (2018)we had ours drilled for a new house.225ft i believe for the cost of $6500 ish..this is in central wisconsin.

Back in my younger days, i dug a well by hand down to 95ft. Encapsulated the hole in rock and dropped a bucket line for water. Wife loved it and all my friends were very impressed.

Awesome video. Thanks for sharing.

Congrats on a great well. 3k is a great price. My American made well pump is 1/2hp, 10gpm and 42 years old! Still going strong. Average lifespan for a quality well pump is 50 years.

I had a new well drilled about three years ago. It costs me more than $5000 for a 140ft deep well with static level about 5 feet from the surface. My soil is mostly sand, then clay, then sand. I found a small dinosaur footprint in one of the larger rocks brought up from the well borer.

Wow, that was the most interesting thing I’ve seen in a long time - that truck is like a mini oil rig! I’ve always wondered what the heck a well is and how it is dug.

Is the camera attached to a paint shaker?

We had a well that they drilled down to about 110 feet, hit bed rock. When the drill broke through it was in a 70' cavern full of water. The driller lowered the pump to the bottom and brought it up from the bottom 8' and locked it down. We had some of the best tasting cold water I have ever tasted.

That was a great price for 300 feet, 10 dollars a foot is about half the cost in Canada

Ahhh, an auger truck. My husband ran one for many years. Even slept in it for a while lol. He'd refer to it as the "Auger Suite".

Sometimes its really difficult to get through the Van Allen belt because of the radiation. I'm glad they could get through it okay though. Great video.

PVC pipe will become oval shaped over time, thus not allowing you to pull the pump from the well when it finally goes out. That means you'll have to drill a new well one of these days. Always use steel casing.

All I asked for was a drilled , cased well , no pumps, no pipe, now wire , no tanks. The companies make their money off of the pkg deals they sell. my well was $9 /ft, $320 casing and $70 permit. ~ $3070

When I had my wells drilled the first driller went 377 and 375 ft in Collin County, Texas and got sandy water. Got another guy and he went 665 feet and we got great water but it was $25.00 a foot = $18000 for the deep well, tanks and pump.

WE WILL NEVER USED GALVANIZED 2 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER METAL PIPE AGAIN. Both our galvanized pipe wells failed. Both have the pump stuck at 320 and 496 feet The pipes corroded. One lasted 5 years. The other lasted 3 years. When we tried to pull the pumps (7000 lb of lift) both pipes broke off the pumps One well at 600 feet was abandoned The other now has a 3 hp pump above the stuck pump. Both stuck pumps are 5 hp. we ohmed both stuck pumps and the electrical is fine. Sentiment from the corroded first well clogged the first PUMP.. A hole in the second well dropped the pressure to 12 psi from 60 psi. WE LEARNED NEVER TO USED METAL PIPE IN A WELL The case inside diameter is 4 inches. The pump outside is 3.75 inches. It is smarter to use a 3 hp pump, PVC SCH 80 ... 1.25 INCH INSIDE DIAMETER and pump to a 1500 gallon above ground tank. Then pump to the fields and houses from the above ground tank.

Nice well!...hope it serves you well for many years to come.

300ft only 3k..man thats cheap

Thanks for filming! Never seen this before, it was very interesting.

Enjoyed this video very much and learned a lot . thanks for taking the time to film , enjoyed very much''

earthquake simulator - well drill edition

Congrats on the well. Water is life...

Zig says he's in so az, pd 28. ft went 925' uses grundfos sq pump w solar 1200 w array 15 gpm tasty ancient artesian water ☺☺

Absolutely. Working on it.

In Australia it cost us around 30-40K to drill 50+ metres to expensive

I'm in eastern SC. The static water level at my house was around 15 feet. Water here is plentiful. My 4" well gives me almost 40 gallons a minutes with a total well depth of about 75 feet.

We had a lot of wells drilled for geothermal fields. Drilling through limestone - the only concern, if they hit a cave, they had to abandon the well. With a cave they couldn't get the tailings to the surface, they would pile up in the cave, collapse and trap the bit.

a lot different from here in Florida we concrete our casing and damn sure don't push it in if it doesn't go to the bottom of our hole we pull it and recirculate it till it goes to the bottom and then we concrete it in pushing it through the casing till we get return on the outside and the flush with water so we are left with around 20' in the inside of the casing and drill that out when we are Drilling the actual well and usually go around 180-500' deep so that we are in the Floridian stream which is the nice water around here but I know nothing about up there it is a whole different bag of worms evidently either way it is weird seeing things done this way when you are used to things one way. I want a job there it seems a lot easier over there lol

Thanks! more to come on the well !

well water production rates...how is that determined? I think people get confused about it. The flow out of the well is based upon the pump of the truck. Replenishment rates are a whole different story.

might be Shakey but I don't care IV never seen one drilled before very interesting. idk much about PVC but IV alwes been told you print and then glue?

They said Grampa back in 1910, and in Minn, hand drilled a well for the farm and raising of 20 cows. Dad in the 1920's had to get up very early to hand pump for hours before going to school.

Interesting. Thanks. One observation... Hold the camera still please.

Great video. and then there was the guy smoking right next to the volatile PVC primer/glue lol.

Will drillers do it deeper in Michigan (Hart well drilling) mason michigan gone but not forgotten.

One fine drilling rig right there!

call me very lucky, our well is only 22FT. Good clean water.

These new rigs are nice, i'm working with equipment made in the 70's and 80's that just cover you in mud and grease, steel case, with 1/2hp pumps with pvc 1" piped inside

That Tri-cone bit was pretty well worn out. Total lack of safety gear was surprising (and refreshing!)

Next time put your camera on a tripod

My well on my farm here in Iowa is 816 ft deep. We recently pulled the pump and sent a camera down to over 500 feet. I did a video of that on my channel.

I love it when someone who has no idea what is happening try to narrate & they just make up names for half the equipment.

Hey man just got this months copy of outside magazine in the mail and was surprised when I saw the article they did on you. Great job and a wonderful article about the preper community, keep up the good work..you're a star now hahah, or better yet Elijah is a star

Hold the camera steady dude!

Me! December 2018 and I find it quite fascinating - and may I say surprisingly cheap!

drills for water - damit struck oil again 🛢🛢🛢🛢🛢🛢🛢🛢🛢

Very educational, thank you.

its dr ring bro, very slow dring and lengthy nd old system. i have high capacity 2000 feet. and fast 100 feet per hour, capacity drilling rig.need one operator n 1 helper only.

No I wished for the well about 5 years ago and my wish came true. I have doused for water and wires and pipes and will do a short vid on that as I have promised before.

Only $3K? ...cheaper than I thought it would be

one of the best videos you have done.... thank you

Many thank for all the good info Please with all the technology you show us. Can you work on your camera shot and your sound.

I know from my previous Firefighting experience that a 1 3/4" Nozzle can flow several hundred gallons of water per minute, especially if the Pumper Operator cranks up the nozzle pressure to 120-130psi. The only way you could do that at a residence is by having a water tank filled with water and either a diesel or electric pump that can feed the water to the hoseline. It would not be a cheap setup.

I own 52 water well drilling rigs and I've been doing this since 1958 and Ive never seen anything like this!!!!

You see that bit at 1:28 ?? I was on a job site once and the well drillers hit a cave... oops... Clunk ... no more $80,000 bit. The crew tried to retrieve it for a day or two. The boss was a tad bit mad, but it's still down there. They had to move over another 200 feet to drill another one with a brand new bit.

Would be curious to hear an addendum about holes dug for ground-source heat pumps. Their objective is not to hit water, but just to get about 250 feet of depth to run a U-shaped pipe to circulate heating/cooling fluid. There are often three to five such "wells" for one heat pump installation. The hole is back-filled with grout after the pipe installation to improve heat transfer between the pipe and the earth. The question is: do you skip installing a casing? It sounds like a casing isn't needed and skipping it would both further improve heat transfer and save money.

in this area of Texas the ground shifts a lot. my neighbors well is 800 feet with steel casing. mine is 500 feet with pvc casing. they both collapsed. I was able to push the broken pump to the bottom and put a 3 inch pump in the well. my neighbor ended up with the driller , drilling next to his old well with no water. then a new well 600 feet away from the old well. the cost was me; $400.00 for a new pump. his $ 23,000.00 for a driller plus the pump and installation of new pump , wiring etc.

Here in Australia, I was charged $2,500 AUD to get a 50 metre bore through 5" steel casing, slotted through three streams, producing 6,500 GPH....... that's 108 GPM.Beats the hell out of a lousy 16.5 GPM & a well depth of 91 Metres.

I would have panned that stuff for gold :)

Very interesting video and I"ve always wanted to see that done. Great job in condensing the all day event to 17 minutes. Thanks for taking your time to film that and I hope it works out really well for you for a long time.

Yes, the casing goes down to the bedrock. The fissures in the bedrock are where the water is at. If you cased down the entire 300 feet you would get no water from your well.

That's the most chill drilling outfit I've ever seen. Typically drillers are pricks.

Who else watching this in 2018

6 hours and you look for close to the lowest area on your property, for a ravine or draw, or area that would naturally have a good recharge rate. If your property is flat then put is close to your power source. for me using Solar water pumps allows a person to put the well in the bets location and bring the power source right to the well head. Their are hydologist in your area that you can contact and they can assess your property for well placement.

can i borrow money from some of your rich guys so i can put in a well? looks like we be packing water forever.

That was awesome... Always wondered how it worked.