The comment section on youtube can be an amazing place and a lot of
people were concerned about the safety of this project so we decided to take this video down
and put this warning up front you can't see the safety things that we did behind the scenes to
make sure that we were safe working on this project so please do not try to replicate
this or dig any deep hole in the ground by hand it can be very dangerous the ground can
shift very bad things can happen so please do not try this at home we want you to be safe.
Finally it's the first day of the well dig here on the homestead and it's still cool this morning
so we're working hard uh early on instead of when it gets really really hot this afternoon
and we're gonna be digging a well we're about I don't know a hundred feet outside
the front door of the cabin uh we do have water that's semi-close here we got a pond but it's
nasty brackish water we wanna we wanna get a water source a little closer to us.
Oh look at that water they build their cabin semi-close to water but not too close you don't
want to get washed away and then dig a well a little bit closer to their cabin so that's what
we're doing now uh this well's gonna be oh uh three or four feet in diameter and anywhere from
you know 10 to 12 feet deep depending on exactly where we're going to find water we're going to
line this with some some old kegs we'll talk about that later when we get to that part
of the digging right now it's just the hard work of getting into that soil.
take the fellows
all right there you go
Okay we're down five feet maybe a little bit deeper we're starting to really see what I've
been wanting to see and that is this is really dense clay right here but down about five feet and
probably deeper we have these layers of sand and as we dig them up you can almost see what's going
on once we got past about a foot and a half we got past the soil that has a lot of organic matter in
it and then we got down to the subsoil which was hard gray clay and now we've got these stripes of
sand it's very fine sand but it's sand and that allows the water to kind of move uh kind of
you know sub soil all the way through this entire field now we're on a slope and there's
a sand deposit way up here about 300 feet at the top of the hill which is kind of weird but
so rain comes down at the top of the hill goes through that sand and down into that fine sand
layer and then runs underneath this soil that we have here and obviously we've got this
this water running at about you know five or six feet deep we'll go a couple feet deep deeper than
we are at right now to see if we run into anything else but as i'm standing here the hole's filling
up so unless we want to go a lot deeper this may be the layer of water that we're going to be using
so we'll dig a little bit further keep widening this hole out a little bit see what we run into.
It's definitely getting grittier down here look at that look at how gravely that is.
Now instead of fine sand we hit coarse sand that's what we're looking for.
rocks
There we go I got enough mud out like we can really start to see the water
flow into this we've definitely hit a gravel layer instead of just sand
that's what I really wanted to see so I think we're pretty much to the depth of course we need
to be down deep enough so that you know we can scoop that water out and bucket so it needs to be
you know six eight inches at least uh deeper than that maybe two foot and be a lot better
and then we're we're almost there so uh probably another half a day's worth of digging just to
get it so the water is deep in the in the well and then we'll be ready to put the liner in.
Here we are morning of the third day so we kind of finished off at about seven,
seven and a half feet last night it started filling in with water we could kind of see
it pouring in the big question was how deep would the water get overnight and here we are with our
our testing stick here and we have easily more than two feet of water in the bottom
of this well this is really looking good we got to have enough water in the bottom
so that the bucket comes down kind of turns on its side and then it fills up with water.
We need to put rocks down at the bottom of the well rocks um
you know about softball size so we're gonna dig this out another six
eight inches or so and then put a layer of nice big rocks in the bottom for our liner to set upon.
We want rocks in the bottom so that when the bucket goes down it doesn't scoop up mud off
the very bottom so that's and it also helps the liner not sink down into the well now what are
we using for a liner you've probably seen uh images of 19th and 20th century hand dug wells
like this and they have a brick liner or a stone liner that's really very common for a well that's
going to last a long time a well in this kind of situation probably doesn't have to last more than
three or four or five years so we're gonna do a liner much quicker we're gonna use old barrels
we're gonna knock the two ends out so it's just a hollow cylinder and we're gonna put these down the
well one on top of another probably three barrels deep and this top barrel will be above ground
well liners like this were something that happened they have documentation of these down in Saint
Augustine Florida and also up in our area while they may have used barrels they also used very
large hollow logs for exactly the same purpose so they would use something like a sycamore tree
that grows very large diameter and they tend to grow hollow at times perfect well liner so
i think even in the bark covered house he mentions a button tree log which is a sycamore tree.
there you go
hey now
no
ugh
hmm
i don't know what you're saying it's not tilted
we probably got another oh really
right, lets not overload it
buttons
one more time
oh
We have a functional well this is looking great as a project where I sort of envision it this
has been one of the most successful ones we've ever done here on the homestead this is exactly
like I expected it to be we are seven and a half eight feet deep we have at least a foot and a half
of water in the bottom more like two feet of water the the kegs that we used to line this well worked
perfectly we set them up one on another packed the soil around them everything looks great the
water is clearing up it's cold it's great this well is going to be perfect for the homestead
we just have one thing that we have to finish up with as well we have to come up with some
crane system to bring this bucket up and out of the well to make it a little bit easier
I've got a plan for that we're going to come up with a stick crane that will bring this water
up and out of the well it'll make it really easy so it's been almost three years since we completed
the cabin project the beginning of this whole homestead and you know almost right away we wanted
to do a well we need to have water and finally we've gotten to finish that up and it's worked
out just perfectly so I'm really really happy the way this is coming together and everything
else is coming together it's so exciting hey I want to thank you for being part of this project
watching the videos kind of giving us support we couldn't do it without you thank you so much
and I can't wait to get working on this crane this is going to be the finishing touch to the well.