diy cable tool
Couple of notes on cable tool drilling.
1st try was 45 years ago for drinking water - simple capstan and 200# bit with manila rope.
Got down about 10 ft and hit a basalt boulder - dead stop, bit just bounced - ended up HAND digging a 18 ft well that performed adequately for household water till the drought of 1987 - basically no rain from April till December.
So had to go deeper, could just 'do it' then as already had water rights, etc. Early 1990s there were new law and permit fees for drilling in WA.
Anyway, drilled down to 60 ft. Probably spent 500 hours of time building a tower, welding up walking beam on back of old Datsun truck, etc, etc. and drilling the well with an 800# bit. Some days, as when going thru a 3 ft dia basalt solid boulder (as evidenced by chips brought up) it was literally only inches per hour.
At the end, hit blue clay later at 60 ft with 5 ft of balck sand over it, pumped 29 gpm all day in July and no slow down of flow, biggest pump I had.
That all said, this last summer AT&T drilled a soil test hole 40 ft deep 100 ft from my well with a 3/4 million dollar rotary rig that only took them about an hour total !! - then filled it in immediately. They did go thru some 1 ft dia basalt boulders.
Moral or story. DIY well drilling is fine to do once, just for the knowledge and experience, but at an effective $$ return vs pro job I 'made' less than 1/2 minimum wage for time spent.
Would not do multiple wells - buy a backhoe and dig a lot of 15 ft deep trenches, then you have the backhoe to keep too. Or get a 'package deal' on multiple wells, half the hour cost of the driller for a single well is getting to and from the site.
Moral of story
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