Methods of Creating a Water Well

Unfortunately I had a hard time finding information about the earliest known wells, were they were at, and who created them. However, I can still go into classification of different wells and how they are made along with the different types of machinery used to make these wells. First off we have the dug wells. These wells are nearly as simple as they sound. A man or several work together digging down into the ground with shovels or any excavating tools until they are into the water table. Note that these were what the earliest wells were. . Once they got into the water table the took rocks, or bricks, anything of that sort, and lined the inner walls of the well to help prevent contamination. Now days when a dug well is created, they take concrete rings for the liner, the further they go down the more rings got dropped down, slowly sinking into the aquifer. These walls or liners weren’t just built for contamination but for human safety, to prevent people from falling down the well.
The next classification is driven wells and hand driven wells, both use the same process. A hardened well point, which is like a pipe that comes to a point on the bottom and has holes along it to act as a screen, is used as a bit to be driven into the ground. You can use either a capable/pounding machine to push the well point down into the ground or you can use a slide hammer which acts as a manual jackhammer to push it through the ground. As you go down you ad sections of pipe as needed and continue pushing the well point and casing down into the ground until the aquifer is reached. Once the aquifer is reached the well is rinsed of all sediment and a sub pump, or pump system is set up and the well is complete.
Lastly you have the drilled wells. Drilled wells can either be created by manual laboring or machinery. Hand drilling involves augering, sludging, jetting, driving, or hand percussion. Using a machine requires rotary, percussion, and down the hole hammering. Either way you must drill your way down through the grown until the aquifer is reached. When you reach the aquifer you send the casing down to the bottom with the screen being the first casing sent down. Once you have put casing all the way to the bottom you blow the well out insuring that you are within the aquifer. There are several steps that you must go through in order to drill a well to code today, but this is simply the different ways of creating a well.
One of the most important facts about well drilling I want to bring forward is that you can not see what you are doing. You have to imagine in your head where you are going through the earth, what your looking for, and you half to remember everything, because mistakes are not cheap in this industry. For my next blog I will walk you through a day of drilling a well.