How To Find A Place And Build A Well At A Summer Cottage

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Every summer resident knows that the farm, as the water carrier exclaimed in the famous film "Volga-Volga", - "without water - and neither there, nor syudy." Therefore, the issue of water supply at the site is of paramount importance. It is good if there is a natural body of water nearby, a public well or a column. And if they are not? … Then your own well will help out, which, if desired, with a reasonable approach and some degree of luck, you can well dig yourself.

The hardest part of building a well is not digging it. Excavation of land, i.e. purely mechanical work, this is perhaps the simplest, albeit rather laborious, job. The most difficult thing is to find the optimal place for the future well.

Of course, you can almost always get to the aquifer. The only question is how deep the mine will have to be dug. In order not to succeed, as once with our brigade … We contracted to dig a well on the estate of the "new Russian". Shrugging off our suggestions about the possible location of the well, he led us to a hillock not far from the house and said: "Guys, I want the well to be here, and that's it!" As a result of this whim of the owner, we had to dig a shaft 22 meters deep until we got to the water. But such a depth is extremely rare. And therefore, in order not to be trapped, the search for a place for a well should be treated in the most serious way.

If you read the literature on well business, then there you can find the same type of advice. For example, such:

• For digging wells, you should choose places that are low, with woods and bushes, where a swamp used to stand, and then dried up.
• The columns of mosquitoes and midges after sunset show that there must be a water vein underground here.
• The fog that spreads after sunset is also a sign of the close standing of groundwater in this place.
• In winter, thawed patches and ice in the snow cover are visible.
• In addition, there is a great variety of folk signs, with the help of which it is recommended to find water sources. Well, let's say they are.
• Bright green succulent moisture-loving plants and shrubs (hemlock, reed, sedge, coltsfoot) grow where the groundwater comes close to the surface of the earth. Or, if birch, alder, willow - all leaned in one direction, then there is water nearby.
• Dogs, horses, thirsty, dig the ground where they feel the water.
• It is proposed to use a lump of defatted wool as a means for finding groundwater. At night it is laid on the ground and covered with a pot or frying pan. In the place where there is water, the lump is saturated with moisture. The frying pan is sweating too.

All these recommendations are correct, but only partly … Because with the help of plants, insects, a ball of wool and other signs, indeed, you can find water, but, basically, only superficial, the so-called verkhovodka. That is, water that flows from nowhere and does not know what microflora it contains. Such water is good only for watering.

Dowsers and walkers with aluminum wires can also locate underground sources, but basically it will still be the same dowser.

Therefore, it is completely pointless to arrange a well in a lowland or on a slope. During floods, during rains, polluted surface waters will drain into it. This threat will always exist, and it is almost impossible to get rid of it. In addition, the place for the well should be at least 20 meters from sources of pollution: a garage, a toilet, a cesspool, a bath.

How can you find the right place? Having dug many wells, from my own experience I can say that of all the existing methods, the best one is the "line" method. It consists in the following: between the wells already available in gardening or a summer cottage village from two, or better from four sides of your site, one or two straight lines connecting them are mentally drawn according to the principle of "north-south", "west-east". That is, so that the lines pass through your site. Like terrestrial parallels and meridians. The point of intersection of the lines is the most suitable place for the construction of the future well.

It may happen that the intersection point is inaccessible or in an inconvenient place. Then it is permissible to step aside from it.

You can also use the aneroid barometer. The barometer scale has divisions of 0.1 mm, which corresponds to a height of 1 m. First, you should install the device near the existing well, and then in the places of the proposed well and compare their readings. The difference in readings is the depth at which the aquifer is located. Suppose, at the existing well, the barometer arrow shows 744.7, and at one of the places of the future well, 744.1. This means that the aquifer is at a depth of 6 meters.

If these methods cannot be applied for some reason, then use the above signs. Often they help out too. There is no other way out anyway!

Now that the location for the well has been determined, it is necessary to prepare the tool and choose a digging method. It is possible to dig both "open way" and "in a ring".

The "open method" is that first a shaft is dug up to the aquifer, and rings are already installed in it. The space between the rings and the walls of the shaft is filled with earth. The significant disadvantages of this method are that the installation of the rings requires a tripod, cable, winch, block. The volume of earthworks is noticeably increasing. In addition, the integrity of the soil structure around the rings is violated, which can further lead to their deformation.

The method of digging a well "into a ring" is used much more often and consists in the fact that a foundation pit about half a meter deep is being dug at the site of the future well. The first reinforced concrete ring is installed in it. Then the soil is removed from the inside. As soon as the ring is compared to the surface of the earth, the next is installed on it - and so on until the end.

With this method of sinking a mine, very few tools are required: a bayonet shovel with a shortened handle (the specific length of the handle depends on the diameter of the rings), the same short crowbar, a bucket with a rope, a scoop and an ax. An electric or other pump with a hose would be useful.

Figure: 1.a - from a bar, b - from a strip

It may happen that at some stage of the digging, the aforementioned sucker will appear. If the pressure of this water, which we do not need at the moment, is large, then it will greatly complicate further penetration. Or even make it impossible. This is where the pump comes in handy.

The simplest gate installed above the shaft will greatly facilitate the work. It is most advisable to build a well at the lowest groundwater table - at the end of summer, in autumn.

The next problem: how many people does it take to dig a well? The optimal number of employees is three. One underneath digs under the rings, the second lifts up a bucket of soil, the third alternately replaces them. To work underneath, to avoid injury, you should only wear a helmet.

The work should be carried out all day long. Because here any delay can lead to irreparable consequences … After all, when digging a mine, the soil around the rings is inevitably weakened, and it is possible that in your absence a top water or unexpected quicksand will break through the rings in the ground. They will wash, and then distort the rings, and then all the previous work will go to smark. This will be a real natural disaster, tantamount to a breakthrough of a water pipe in a city apartment. True, in the city you can call an emergency brigade, but when digging a well, the emergency brigade is yourself. With all the ensuing sad consequences, since you cannot do anything.

How many times in such emergency situations, I was begged to help … Alas, the result was almost always the same - to fill up the mine. So it turns out that money (after all, rings are very expensive) and labor have to be literally buried in the ground.

From my many years of experience, I can say: three people dig a well up to 8 meters deep in three days. If, of course, nothing unexpected happens … Let's say you come across a huge boulder, quicksand, but you never know what else can be found underground.

It is best to use reinforced concrete rings with ridges. They are tightly inserted into each other, as they say - "groove in groove", which ensures sufficient tightness and their immobility during further operation.

If the rings are with even ends, then between them it is necessary evenly, along the entire circumference, to install 3-4 H-shaped metal fastening brackets with a thickness of at least 5 millimeters (see Fig. 1). After their installation, a roller of concrete mixture with a height of about 5 centimeters must be laid along the entire end part of the ring. The next ring, installed on the lower one, will compact the concrete mixture with its weight, and the seam between the rings will be quite reliable. For a concrete mixture, cement of a grade of at least 400 should be used. This technology must be strictly observed in working with all rings, without exception.

Figure: 2.

1 - clay castle;

2 - soil;

3 - aquifer;

4 - bottom filter

Special attention should be paid to the moment of opening the groundwater table, or, more simply, when the aquifer begins. It is always located on a water-resistant layer, otherwise water would seep into the underlying horizons.

The work of the diggers is then noticeably complicated, since the soil, mixed with water, becomes much heavier. In addition, all the time you have to scoop out or pump out the arriving water.

In floating ground, you must first remove it from under the ring, and only then from the middle. Otherwise, the rings may be skewed, sliding to one side. It is necessary to be very careful to scoop out the water and remove the soil from under the ring in the water so that the fingers and toes are not pressed down by the edge of the settled ring.

Often, in our conditions, the aquifer is located on compressed sandstone. And the natural pressure of water forms a column of water 30-40 cm high, with the required at least 70 cm. It is clear that you need to go deeper into the sandstone. However, this is not at all easy to do, since it is just like a rubber one: a crowbar, a shovel just bounces off it. The only way out is to chop the sandstone with an ax. And it is advisable to prepare several axes in advance, and it would also be nice to have a sharpener, since their blades quickly become dull.

Typically, the sinking of the mine ends when the water arrives so intensively that it cannot be pumped out. Or when the height of the water column reaches 70 centimeters. Do not expect the water to pour into the well like a fountain. Not at all necessary. It can only seep into narrow cracks.

If there is quicksand at the bottom of the well or the soil is too soft, then a floor of thick (preferably oak) boards with holes is laid under the bottom ring.

When the excavation is completed, gravel or crushed stone is poured to the bottom, forming a bottom filter. Its thickness depends on the height of the water column. That is, the bucket, completely immersed in water, should not touch the bottom. Otherwise, the water will stir up every time.

Special attention should be paid to the arrangement around the well of the "clay castle" (see Fig. 2, position 1). It is a funnel or excavation in the ground about 0.5 meters wide and 1-1.5 meters deep, filled with greasy, well-crushed clay or heavy loam. The more massive the "clay castle", the less likely it is that contaminated surface water will get into the well. "Clay castle" is laid with a slope from the well. It would be nice to lay sod on top of it.

The head of the well (Fig. 2) should rise 0.6-0.8 meters above ground level. So much so that it is convenient to put the bucket on the shelf: do not stretch or bend over too much.

When the well is built and equipped, it is necessary to analyze the water. But since chemical analysis for individual elements is very expensive, it is possible to limit ourselves to only bacteriological analysis. Any sanitary-epidemiological station (SES) will do it. She will give a conclusion: is the water in your well suitable for drinking or not.

Water intended for drinking should be colorless, clear, tasteless and odorless. If there is some kind of taste or smell in the water, and it does not disappear after several months of operation of the well, use the centuries-old experience of our ancestors - throw silver objects into the well: a spoon, fork, ring, coins. They often greatly improve water quality.

As for the rest, delicious water and long trouble-free service of the well …