I started driving the test well this afternoon. It takes 16 lifts and drops of the driver to move the well point/pipe assembly down 1 inch.



I am taking advantage of the high pond water levels as the water provides a sort of lubrication for the driving process.



The driver is a 4” pipe 2 feet long with a ½” plate welded on the end and handles on the sides. It weighs 24 pounds.



When the pond level returns to normal the well will be around 10 feet from waters edge. The plan is to drive the well point around 6 feet into the ground water table. That is a total of around 9 feet driven with two feet of pipe above ground level.



Since I am expending all this effort the well will also become the irrigation water source for lawn watering etc.

This is the product description for the well point:
Penetrates all types of soil, delivering a combination of EASY DRIVING, effective sand control, corrosion resistance and strength. Three-step bonding method prevents screen from pulling back. Material: 80-gauze ductile iron pipe, Pipe Diameter (in.): 2, Length (in.): 36

The easy driving part is a lie!

This will be my daily work-out for a few days…………………….

What kind of pump will you be using?

I'm hope that you don't run into a hard spot!

Somewhere around here is an iron weight that's welded to a steel tube with an eye on the top. I think it was used to drive wells, although they must have used a pulley system to raise it. IIRC, it weighs close to 100#.

How many pairs of gloves will you go thru?

I have a driver that is about twice the weight/size of Dwight's. Trust me his is the better size. I will get a pic.

JHAP...this one is all yours

No way, I'm on thin ice with Dwight and Ewest as it is, I don't need to stir up any more trouble.

Dang, this is a hard one to leave alone! Wasn't entering "1/16" at a time" one of the 10 biggest lies?

I have as 1 HP 220v shallow well pump that is currently sucking water from the pond. In the second photo it is just to the left. It will be an easy hook up.



I agreed on the hard spot. I would hate to start over!

I tried to find one of those well driving contraptions but didn’t have any luck. The ones they used around here were basically a boom on wheels with a small gas engine. A rope or cable was wound up on a drum and at a certain point a clutch kicked out and let the weight drop. The process repeated over and over until the well was done.

I don’t think gloves will be a problem though my shoulders are a little sore from the lift part. The drop part is really easy.




You have a pass on this one this one, JHAP. Ewest has to prove it though, right?

Dwight, the dropping weight process is called spudding. It was done prior to the use of rotary drilling for wells.

I've got a stupid question and forgive me if it's already been covered: Why go to the trouble of drilling a well next to the pond when you can suck water out of the pond with a pump and it should use less energy than lifting water? In my lakes area lake residents use floating pumps to water their lawns.

In the early 1950s I worked on a seismograph crew. We'd drill one hundred foot holes in minutes. The set-up used ten foot lengths of light-weight three inch casing with a paddle bit on one end and a 90 degree swivel on the other that was connected to a trash pump with a flexible hose. We'd start the water pump and spud in, turning the casing with pipe wrenches. Drill ten feet then add another length of casing. We were working in waist deep water but the set-up would probably work as well on dry land.

The primary reason for the the well is to monitor D.O. in the ground water immediately before is flows through the pond. Water pumping is a secondary function.

Why do you want to know if there is D.O. in the ground water? What will you do if there is and what will you do if there isnt D.O. in the ground water?

Way back in the 2000's I used a good many of them wellpoints. At the fishing park when I pounded those babies down in the ground 10-15 feet water would come shooting out of them.

Nate -- Curious George; oops, I mean Curious Dwight! The man is full of questions. Good ones, too.

Like CB1 said earlier on another post - knowledge is power. With a pond so effected by GW its good to know its character so one can plan for the what-ifs.

My well water @ 66' depth is: Temp 54.9°F DO ML/L .21

I also have GW coming into/leaving the pond at the 12' depth level. It'll be interesting to see how that well water from Dwights driven point compares to his house supply well water since the well point is so close to the pond.

Our house water supply well comes in from 666 feet above Hell.
The well is 290 feet deep, just above the bedrock in these parts....

Interesting! I'm sure you covered that in another post but I missed it! So are you trying to determine if you're getting some subterranean flow from the near by river?

I know a trout farmer in Harrisville, Michigan (very close to the shoreline of Lake Huron and a rapid drop in elevation) that gets most of his groundwater from an artesian well from a higher elevation. He says it has oxygen in it already so apparently there is some voids in the limestone layer it's coming out of? There are lots of sinkholes in the area too that connect to lake Huron.

Hey Dwight,

Around here you could rent a Jack Hammer for 60 bucks a day with the Appropriate Tooling to drive a shallow well. Sure, it is an experience that could shake your brain loose, but it only lasts for a little while.

Do you plan on sealing up the well with the DO probe encased? GW sucks up O2 pretty quick once exposed to differential pressure from ambient conditions, even if it is in a hole.

You could get false readings.

The well will be sealed since it will be used as an irrigation well in addition to access for ground water testing. The well will only be open for a minute or two for the D.O. and temperature observations. Also I will be taking the readings approximately 6 feet below the ground water level to avoid any atmospheric intrusion.

Esshup -- tell the story of your DO just above the spring vs. in the rest of the pond. Interesting.

I drove the last 46 inches in this afternoon.



I back flushed the well for a few hours and will do that again a time of two prior to a pump test.

Dave:

I don't have a "spring" per se going into the pond. There is an 18" layer of clay at 12' below grade that is topped with about 6" of gravel. Below the clay it turns to sand again until another gravel layer is hit at 20' depth, with clay beneath that. I don't know how thick that layer of clay is, we only dug down to 22' when we renovated the pond. Currently the pond is sitting with a maximum water depth of 14'. It's rapidly approaching 48" below full pool.

There was water flowing into the pond thru both veins of gravel when we renovated the pond. There wasn't enough good clay to pack the pond basin, so it ebbs and flows along with the ground water. The pond was renovated in a wet year. I had to run the 15,000 gph trash pump for the 12 hours every day before we were to dig for the day just to get the water down a couple of feet deep.

I shut off the well going to the pond 2 days ago. The first day, the pond level dropped 1", the 2nd day it dropped another 1.5".

I think that was Jeff that had the Spring going into his pond.

oops, sorry for the confusion. I'll have to look up the details and post them after I get back to work.

OK, here is the story I was trying to relay. Esshup and I are working with Dwight Bremer and another pond owner in WI (forum handle is Jeff K.). All of these guys have the "pit" type, or excavated ponds that are down into the water table.

This WI pond is excavated into limestone, and is a pretty darn cool place. Very high water transparency, as you might guess -- 10 feet transparency is common.

The pond also has a spring on the pond bottom that flows directly into the pond. That spring is what is pertinent to this particular thread.

Jeff K. was doing his first dissolved oxygen (DO) measurements. Most of the pond was about 12 ppm DO. However, just above the spring hole (which is in about 5 feet of water), he only got a reading of 6 ppm.

Now, this doesn't answer the question of whether the inflowing groundwater has DO, as water with no DO quickly picks up oxygen when it has a chance, and there could be quite a bit of mixing, too. However, I thought it was very interesting that less than a foot above the spring, he could see the influence of the groundwater with that lower DO.

Dave,

Are you sure Jeff's spring water does not already have some oxygen in it? I say that because I can't imagine it would get up to 6 mg/l almost instantly even with higher D.O. around it.

The trout farmer I referred to in Harrisville, Michigan, that also gets his ground water from limestone rock maintains it already has oxygen in it right out of the ground. The only thing I can think of is there must be cavities in the limestone e.g. caves, sinkholes that aerate the water due to splashing and air cavities or expose it to open air. Is that possible?

Another trout farmer I know in Ohio has incredible artesian well flow and gets it out of a well punched through a confined layer or limestone. I don't know if he has any D.O. in his well water but he does aerate.

Good morning, Cecil! Did you ask "are you sure?" Of course I'm not sure!

Seriously, all I ever learned in school about this entire situation was that "ground water has no oxygen." However, as we typically find, it just seems that things are never as simple as "ground water has no oxgyen." That's the entire point of Dwight's interest in the ground water.

I suspect what we'll find is that exceptions happen, just like the examples you listed.

It depends. Some GW has O2 some does not. The best rule is to always assume GW has no O2. That is IMO why it is almost universally stated that GW has no O2. In my experience the vast majority of GW has little to no O2 as it has dissipated from the formation that contains the water. If the formation has a confining seal then gases can be trapped and under pressure infused into the water or liquid. Temp and pressure effect the form of all substances (ice , water and steam). Also recall that chemistry is at work in the process ( water on limestone or sandstone , air and water on iron , etc) and that can be a big concern as to water quality

You Geologists need to explain all this stuff !

Finally got internet service back. It's been off for 36 hrs. No idea why.

My pond has dropped about 10" in the past week with no well water going into it. It's now as low as it was back in 2008 after the renovation. The well has been turned back on. Hopefully it won't drop any more. 4.5 feet below full pool now.

I took a reading on my well water (from 66' depth) and the DO was .21 mg/l right out of the 2" pipe. Just flowing thru a 20' piece of 4" pipe that was open on both ends increased the O2 to 2.2 mg/l.

I hooked up the test well and pumped it for 24 hours. That is roughly 24,000 gallons through a garden hose hooked near the pump. The water pumps clear and there is no sediment in the test beaker after sitting for 24 hours. We have a good well.

I took a sample without letting the water touch air and put it in a dark room where the D.O. meter resides. After acclimation and calibration I took a reading and found: water temperature 72.2 F, DO 2.55. I am going to keep this sample for a few days and then check it again to see if there are any organisms at work in the water that cause the readings to change.

I need to take samples directly at the well and will, but have some work to do to make that a less problematic operation.

Sucking water: