Drilling my own water well (In France

[hario]

So background to the story is my parents have retired to France having bought a hectare about 50km east or Bordeaux, in a place called Blanquefort-sur-Briolance, and on that hectare they have planted the most almightly of vegetable patches, c/w chateaux:



Water in France is relatively expensive and only available metered for consumption and waste, so when you water a hectare of veg you also get billed for the equivalent waste production, unfortunately there is no surface water flowing on the property, but as the hamlet is called Aigueparse which according to locals means 'water everywhere' I think their garden is a good candidate to drill baby drill!

I'm going to copy these Texan yanks because boy they sure know how to drill sir.


www.lonestardrills.com/water-well-drills/mechanical-series/ls100/

Basically a small engine turning a drill string through a reduction box, with water / mud pumped down the middle which lifts all the cuttings out the hole. These cuttings are then settled out in the ponds and the water / mud is recycled.

The cutter type used in mud/clay/sand cutting is a called a drag big so we designed one of those by eye:





Migged with 1.0mm wire because nobody could be arsed to do it with the ark of doom.



A technical challenge is pumping water into a rotating pipe, the yanks call it a swivel and it works like so:



So I designed my own, the outer housing will ride on roller beaings sealed with O-rings probably:





Finished, minus radial holes drilled for water inlet:



The swivel is the size it is because we are using scaffold tube as a drill pipe which is 48mm OD, so I got 3" aluminium bar stock.


Bearings will be retained with jubilee clampys first round, if it explodes due to water pressure then I'll come up with something else, probably from metal as per all my friends arguements, I'm just secretly happy I managed to use a bit of tuebo ocar in the construction..


Oh also the engine will be a standard china post hole borer with a 3hp 30cc engine and worm drive reduction box, if it's not powerful we will have to try something else, but this is Mk.1 and we will be drilling in redditch (thick clay seams) at the end of the month to assess feasibility first. I have a small Honda water pump for the 'mud pump' but its 1" hose outlet so we might need a bigger one of those also, anybody got an old Honda water pump going cheaps?

Comments and ideas welcome, more to follow.

Beers, H.

[hario]

Oh balls there are no clear photos of how the final setup will be, I will try and find some!

[randywanger_]

Brilliant idea. Good luck with the project.

[MK2VR6]

Intrigued by this. Good to see the alcohol fuelling the progress! Bookmarked as I'd like to see how well it works. What are the legalities of drilling a feck off great hole into your land? I know it's France, but in the UK doesn't everything below a few metres belong to the queen or something bloody ridiculous?

[omega]

[quote author=" Bookmarked as I'd like to see how well it works. [/quote]

[georgeb]

Now this looks interesting and bookmarked.

Dunno about the UK, but here if you own a bit of land, it's yours down to the center of the earth. Handy that, if you're a mole.

[hario]

It is illegal to draw water from any surface streams and rivers but every farmer and his dog does it around those parts, and every local house has big brick and stone wells from ancient times so we are just going to join in!

Also the neighbours wells either side of the property have the static water level about 7m below the surface, and the hefty boat bilge pump I have can do a 10m head.

There are about a dozen 1m3 water container things in a caged pallet looking thing which I want to pump the well water into with possibly a solar panel / car battery / level switch with a timer type setup.

[colnerov]

Feb 13, 2015 10:45:35 GMT hario said:

There are about a dozen 1m3 water container things in a caged pallet looking thing which I want to pump the well water into

Hi, They are called IBC,s (Intermediate Bulk Container) and they hold about a 1000 litres and weigh 1 Tonne so be aware if you are going to be transporting them about. Be careful of what they have had in them before, otherwise you could have contaminated water. If you are going to store water in them keep them out of the sunlight preferably in the dark, otherwise you will get Algae growth. It will probably be better to leave the water in the well until you need it.

Colin

[Frankenhealey]

Bookmarked and waiting for the next installment as I've been quoted £3.5k for a man to come and do this.

[sasquar]

Feb 13, 2015 12:17:13 GMT Frankenhealey said:

Bookmarked and waiting for the next installment as I've been quoted £3.5k for a man to come and do this.

Hold that thought. Most of the piccys in this thread (France piccys & welding pics excluded) were taken within about 15 miles of you. I was joking with hario an hour ago about going away for the weekend and drilling holes for other people after he mentioned that comment, but you're so close it *might* actually be an option.

[Frankenhealey]

Feb 15, 2015 20:09:55 GMT sasquar said:

Feb 13, 2015 12:17:13 GMT Frankenhealey said:

Bookmarked and waiting for the next installment as I've been quoted £3.5k for a man to come and do this.

Hold that thought. Most of the piccys in this thread (France piccys & welding pics excluded) were taken within about 15 miles of you. I was joking with hario an hour ago about going away for the weekend and drilling holes for other people after he mentioned that comment, but you're so close it *might* actually be an option.

You would be most welcome. We're on alluvial loam and clay so it 'shouldn't' be too difficult

[camerashy]

Physical hydrologist (day job) checking in. Interested to see what your pipe slip solution is going to be. Any idea of the local surficial geology/aquifer depth?

[stevieclj]

Feb 15, 2015 22:11:59 GMT camerashy said:

Physical hydrologist (day job) checking in. Interested to see what your pipe slip solution is going to be. Any idea of the local surficial geology/aquifer depth?

Huh? Very basic english please, me bit fick!

[camerashy]

Feb 15, 2015 23:02:09 GMT stevieclj said:

Feb 15, 2015 22:11:59 GMT camerashy said:

Physical hydrologist (day job) checking in. Interested to see what your pipe slip solution is going to be. Any idea of the local surficial geology/aquifer depth?

Huh? Very basic english please, me bit fick!

The "slip" is what locks stationary the pipe string that connects down to well head so you can add more pipe as you drill down deeper. You usually "case" the top section of the well (20-50ft) which is just an outer pipe casing so you have a clean and straight lined hole in which to drill your actual well into, stops mud, muck and god knows what else getting into your well.

The "local surficial geology" means in plain english, what kind of ground are you sitting on? Clay on limestone, sand on gravel, glacial till (churned up soil left over from the ice age that has no real structure) or thin topsoil on bedrock? to give a few very limited examples. It can make a huge difference to the ease in drilling a well and the appropriate depth to find quality water at. Asking the neighbours where their wells sit at would be a good start.

Here in Canada almost all rural properties are on wells, and just about every single holiday cottage is. Most municipalities offer free well testing for leached agricultural chemicals (ammonia from cow curse word, that kind of thing) and testing for e-coli and other nasty bugs.

This would be worth your while reading as a basic guide.

www.my-green-home-project.com/water-well.html

hario - this will be a fun project, looking forward to seeing how it progresses

[hario]

Feb 16, 2015 0:03:37 GMT camerashy said:

Feb 15, 2015 23:02:09 GMT stevieclj said:

Huh? Very basic english please, me bit fick!

The "slip" is what locks stationary the pipe string that connects down to well head so you can add more pipe as you drill down deeper. You usually "case" the top section of the well (20-50ft) which is just an outer pipe casing so you have a clean and straight lined hole in which to drill your actual well into, stops mud, muck and god knows what else getting into your well.

The "local surficial geology" means in plain english, what kind of ground are you sitting on? Clay on limestone, sand on gravel, glacial till (churned up soil left over from the ice age that has no real structure) or thin topsoil on bedrock? to give a few very limited examples. It can make a huge difference to the ease in drilling a well and the appropriate depth to find quality water at. Asking the neighbours where their wells sit at would be a good start.

Here in Canada almost all rural properties are on wells, and just about every single holiday cottage is. Most municipalities offer free well testing for leached agricultural chemicals (ammonia from cow curse word, that kind of thing) and testing for e-coli and other nasty bugs.

This would be worth your while reading as a basic guide.

www.my-green-home-project.com/water-well.html

hario - this will be a fun project, looking forward to seeing how it progresses

Good question, My initial plan was to weld on lifting eyes onto each length of drill pipe and use a 4x2" timber A-frame with a block and tackle to hoist the string out (fitting the hook onto the eye below the drill pipe section to be removed. But I like the diea of using a slip so we will probably just cut one from some 1/2" plate as per the below images (engineering drawings).



I have begin to radially drill through the swivel to allow the pumped water to enter the drill pipe bore, there are about 15 10mm diameter holes, I think I will need to drill more holes, as I have deecided to source a petrol water pump which pumps out of a 2" pipe instead of 1". This is because there needs to be enough water flow to lift the cuttings up the entire well 'annulus' (gap between drill pipe and well bore wall).


Like I said the neighbours wells have statc water -7m below the surface, that will be sub-surface water table as opposed to aquifer.

Because the plot is a natural clearing on the forrest, it has top soil down to a depth of 2 meters (yes thats right, 2 METERS!) and sandy sub soil for at least 2 meters below that. Below the sub soil will likely be a vein of clay / gravel / sediment before the limestone bedrock common to the region. Our drag type bit does not cut hard rock but I have bought some stellite hard facing rods to give the leading edge some strength to hopefully cut though some limestone if not just for the engineering challenge..

Hopefully there will be a test drill this weekend, I will try and make a video if I'm not too drunk / the auger doesn't kill me.

Beers, H.

[hario]

The forrest clearing where their plot is, the only plausable explanation for the clearing is an alien spaceship landing site.

(Good from iPhone panoramic feature thing)

[chairchild]

very interesting project - keep us updated!


Part of me just thinks... why not make a 14m long drill( twon 7m lengths welded together) and do it in one go Set up some scaffolding to hold the drill motor, and just go down the scaffolding as it gets deeper

[colnerov]

Hi, I wouldn't want to be on the ground holding the drill motor without tieing it off against rotation. Let alone 45' up a scaffold pole. But you press on.

Colin

[crazycruzer]

really looking forward to see this develop! Good luck squire!!

[hario]

This weekend we built it up with its first 1m of drill string, the meter with the cutter on the end, we have to see how this drills before deciding if we need to make another which will cut a different size hole, currently 9" to allow 8" (French 200mm) bog pipe as a well bore sleeve.




It drills at a good speed, we thought it might try and rip our arms off like is does when a helix bit is fitted, however this is much more sedate. It just scrapes up fudge swirl looking cuttings, need to sort out water connection for next time and then attempt depth.



Ran out of time with this last weekend as I had to finish off the W202 C300TD project I'm doing in the other section, as that is the car that will be taking us all down south (quickly..). Talking of driving this is our proposed route:

London - Dover - Calais (eurostar as its £80) Calais- west via Le Mans because racecar, Le Mans - La Rochelle because le de da - west as far as can be arsed / until we see the see. Seeing the sea - Bordeaux because red wine. Then Bordeaux - headding east to Blanquefort..


I am leaving the wagon in my parents barn then we are flying back with ryanair for about £30 each.
The w202 will be safely pickled in the south west until I return!