Shallow Water Well
Here is a short video showing how to find water and dig a shallow well.
It looked very accessible, and something that could be taught and included in the Open Source curriculum.
OSE Well Drilling History
There's a bunch of pictures of this on the internet, google Open Source Ecology open source well drilling rid or well, or open source well pump. (and please paste pictures below)
- We dug a well in 2008, down to 70 feet or so, but it collapsed upon insertion of casing, down to about 25 feet.
- We put a manual pump on it, and it worked well. We built our own pump cylinder, which was fun - using PVC and a seal. It's quite a decent design - could pump about 100' or more.
- Old well today may still work, haven't tried reconditioning it.
- Well was subsequently disused, as it dried up in the summer.
- We had a 3 foot wide well dug professionally (about 30' deep)- it is available but has never been developed. One issue that came up for us was potential of groundwater pollution from agricultural runoff - for which reason we never used the well and connected to city water.
- At this point, using the 3' well should work - given a proper purification system such as ozone - if we took the effort to do this.
