Well begun, Well Ended

New Folding Table by the Fire Pit

 To tie into Thursday's blog, I start with this photo of the folding table in its new place of honor next to the fire pit. And since we started here we'll just continue with the campout dinner of the night - a sunset German treat! Bratwurst, Sauerkraut (twice cooked which enhances the flavor), Bavarian Rye bread, and course washed down with good beer. Wunderbar!

Sunset over Fire Pit

A German Feast - Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, Bavarian Rye Brot, und Bier!

But I digress - the reason for the campout was of course, to complete the well this weekend. We started by drilling all day Saturday - we paid for the compressor so might as well get another day in. After drilling my informal measurements said we were around 56 feet deep. We decided to attach the original vacuum to the return line and empty the well out Saturday evening and see how much water stood by Sunday morning.

I used our 35 gallon trash barrel to measure how fast the water was being pumped out with the vacuum and found we removed water at the rate of 8 gallons per minute. We pulled a lot of water out of the hole but never vacuumed all the water out. The level was pulled down a very long way - a bright flashlight could reflect off the water a long way down.

Sunday morning I used a string and a float to measure the water surface depth. By inspection, I could definitely see the water was higher than where we had pumped it out the previous evening. With my string & bobber, I measured a depth of 31 ft. That means overnight we recovered 20 feet of water.

I can't wait to measure the well next weekend!

Photo down the hole as we vacuum the silty water out.

I made a video of Kenny, Inge, and I installing the casing. I will need to edit the video for length before  I post it on youtube and here. Below Kenny and I pose over the installed casing. We poured 12 bags of fine pebbles around the casing. I measured the results and found that at 24 foot depth, that we needed another 4 to 6 bags to get above the water intake slits. I'll do that next weekend and on top of the pebbles place sand, then fill in the rest of the hole with the well tailings. After that we'll frame in a concrete form for the well pad where the well house will be built.

Well Casing and Construction Crew

We stretched out the vacuum system which I bottomed out in the well and marked for the official depth measurement. Kenny is holding the tape at the mark below to give you a perspective of how deep this well was drilled and the next photo shows the depth of 54 foot.

By the close of day Sunday, we put away all the compressor hose and broke up and put away the tailing return 1" PVC pipe. The system is perfectly ready to use again another day for another well.