Congratulations to Patrick in Houston for a successful well! Pat had to work his way through several problems that I will let him tell you about. He used a mud pit to drill and later cut his own well screen.
As information, this site gets more hits from Houston than any other city. It is flat and has a high water table so it is good for this type of “drilling.” In second place is Jacksonville, Florida.
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Finished Well
Good day Mike,
Thanks for the info provided by your site. I just successfully complete my first working well using ideas I got from your site. I did a few things different from your ideas and didn’t know if you would be interested in hearing more about them. If interested, I will provide more details and photos to assist other in doing it also. (I was, he did!)
1. Since I was 400ft from a water supply I dug a catch basin next to my well site to store and catch water from the drilling process.
2. I used a 1 hp dirty water pump in the catch basin connected to a 1.5″ flexible hose delivering water to the drill head.
3. I didn’t use a gravel pack or a well point, Instead I pulled the 2″ pvc drill stem out and replaced it with a new 38’ long 2″ pvc pipe, in with I cut about 200 slots in the bottom 10’ of pvc pipe using a saws all. Inside that 2″ well casing I inserted a 25’ FT long 1″ PVC with a standard foot valve. Thanks for your very informative web site.
Patrick
Houston, TX
About a week later I got this email along with the pictures posted here!
Good day Mike,
Attached is a zip file of the pictures I took during the drilling process. In some pictures you will see an excavator arm which I was using to support the drilling pipe/drill head assembly, it was also used to dig the water catch basin and then fill everything back in when done. The entire project took me over a week, the first 2 days I was only drilling about 10 feet in 8 hours, not contantly drilling…took many breaks. The first 2 days I removed the drill pipe in the evening, after that I left the water running constantly during the rest of the project. Day 3 was very disappointing 18″, after that it went quick, hit the 1st of the sand layers. After the 4th day and reaching 38 feet I let the pump run for a few days, I was tried of drilling and figured the flowing water couldn’t hurt.
I figure it went slow for 2 reasons: 1) The pump—delivered a high volume put no pressure, when pushing down into the clay the water flow would slow or even stop and; 2. The soil—we are in a bad drought and the first 21’ was hard pack & clay
Patrick,
Houston Texas
![](http://drillyourownwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Patrick2.jpg)
![](http://drillyourownwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Patrick13.jpg)
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Drilling!
![](http://drillyourownwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Patrick6.jpg)
Mighty handy to have a backhoe around when
you need to pull the pipe up!
![](http://drillyourownwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Patrick5.jpg)
Pat’s settling pit. This permitted him to re-use his water with a mud pump.
He did not have access to two hoses. With a good mud pump, this is a far superior technique to using two hoses.