Since we dug the well, 15 years have passed, and all this time we have not experienced any problems with water – neither in winter nor in summer. The keys were beating at the bottom and, if you got closer, you could hear a quiet pleasant murmur.
And suddenly, one spring, the water level began to drop sharply. We even had to lower the pump lower several times. However, one day, not at all beautiful for us, the equipment did not help: no matter how we lowered it, we could not get to the life-giving moisture. And it was a real disaster – the well dried up, and we were left without water.
Diagnostics
Phone calls on advertisements for the repair of water intake sources were unsuccessful. The situation that happened to us did not cause anyone to be optimistic. To solve the problem, a creative approach and technical virtuosity of performance were required. Only on the second day of the search we managed to find well craftsmen who agreed to try to find a way out.
Three cheerful and savvy-looking “diggers” (the so-called builders of wells) arrived. They had a variety of tools: winches, winches, lanterns, etc. In itself, this already gave some hope.
They quickly dismantled the well house, and one of the workers went down. Long minutes of waiting went by. Finally, the researcher was brought to the surface. His face was full of disappointment. The verdict was as follows:
- the old casing made of galvanized steel is very rotten and deformed: sand seeps through it and washes the water vein;
- the water level, apparently, fell by one and a half meters, and why is unknown;
- it is necessary to change the casing, but the old one, clamped with soil, will be difficult to replace, if not impossible at all;
- it is necessary to deepen the mine, but there are calcareous stones at the bottom, which lie in dense and strong layers. They need to be pricked and lifted – the work is extremely difficult, if at all feasible;
Sadly, no one saw any other way out: we did not want to drill a 160-meter deep well at all. Firstly, it is expensive. And secondly, water from such a depth requires purification from iron and additional filtration. That is, it is necessary to install an entire filter system, which will require additional costs. At the same time, the well watered us with the purest spring water without any purification.
As a result, the “diggers” agreed (albeit without a guarantee) to try to carry out some resuscitation measures.
Dismantling of the old casing
To begin with, they hooked him with a rope and tried to pull him out of the ground. Everything turned out to be not so simple: the cable cut through the rusty iron like a knife through butter. I had to attach special plates to the top of the rusty iron with bolts with large washers to increase the gripping area. After this procedure, it was still possible to pull out the casing and lift it up.
Deepening of the well
When one of the workers went down into the well, he saw a pitiful sight: sandy soil with stones, which had previously been held by the casing, was now crumbling inside the mine.
Before we managed to get to the rocky base, we had to lift a large number of buckets with crumbled soil. It is also good that the lower part of the mine was previously almost cut down in limestone: it did not collapse itself, and to some extent protected the walls from complete destruction and shedding. And in the stone layers there were numerous cracks through which water oozed. Obviously, this was the same aquifer that had previously fed our well.
The worker with great difficulty began to uproot lime stones with a crowbar. With the help of ropes, they were lifted to the surface. With each limestone layer developed, the water became more and more. It periodically had to be pumped out by a drainage pump.
So it was possible to develop a mine to a depth of a little more than a meter. And then there was a real quicksand – fine, like dust, saturated with moisture, sand.
The pump was no longer coping, and it was already useless to dig. In a few hours, the water level rose by one and a half meters. In general, it was already quite enough to carry out automatic feeding into the house. It remains only to put a new stainless casing.
Manufacture and installation of the casing
We bought five sheets of stainless steel, from which it was necessary to make a cylinder 3 m high and 0.7 m in diameter. M6 bolts with washers and nuts, also made of stainless steel, were used to connect the sheets and sections. All these materials are very expensive, but for the sake of durability and reliability, we decided not to save.
The manufacturing process is simple. Difficulties were encountered only when drilling holes. A lot of drills were blunted and broken before we managed to carry out our plans. We did not achieve special tightness: ground water had to seep into the product.
So, the casing was ready. They removed the washed sand from the bottom, as far as possible, and began to carefully lower the structure. In order to correct it as we move down, one “digger” had to go down into the well. We calculated the diameter of the product correctly, so it easily entered the shaft cut through the limestone.
Then they got rid of excess water again to clean the bottom and put a small filter mesh folded twice on it. It and the casing were tightly pressed to the bottom of the well with heavy granite stones. All the installation work has been completed, but the water is still very muddy. But its level turned out to be quite decent – more than one and a half meters.
The final stage
To remove the sand, we had to pump the well for a very long time: the smallest grains of sand from the quicksand continued to seep into the mine. One thing was pleasing: the flow was so powerful that the pump almost could not cope.
After two weeks of pumping, we decided to equip the water supply system with an additional mechanical cleaning filter. As a result, a month later, the purest water came out of our taps again.
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