Digging a water well, as deep as manageable

Damn, the excavator hanging on the edge of this crumbling sandy hole looks pretty intense. As does people working in that narrow trench.

Wow, it's dangerous to be down in an unreinforced 2 meter ditch in such unstable sandy soil. Made my skin crawl.

In North America when we dig a well we always backfill the the well crocks with clear stone to assist the seams of water to be able to get to the crocks…if you backfill with the same material you dug out then you clog off the seams…plus the clear stone expands the capacity of the well so that you aren’t just drawing from what ever the crocks can hold…those 8-10 ton machines can do a lot of work but it was definitely a bit small for this job…in any case you got through it and the clients now have water!!

You took a very big chance of being buried alive in that narrow unsupported deep sandy trench, it could easily have collapsed on top of you. I drove a jcb 3 for several years and would have sloped the top half of both sides to reduce the chances of a collapse. I wouldn’t dig a trench like that if someone had to get into it!😮😢

Excavator operators are a special kind of mad. I like my working surfaces to be within about 10 degrees of level and pretty incredibly stable.

Wow, that was scary, seeing the walls sliding down and the mud building up... Great job, great video! 👍👍👍

You are living the life i dreamed of, my friend. I would like to be your apprentice.

Osha would be all over this project lol

Great video! Had me on the edge of my seat a few times wondering if you and the excavator were going to be eaten by the hole. Thanks for the explainer at the end, I think most folks here in the states would have just redrilled the existing drill hole deeper.

I've never seen a trailer like this before that delivered the shovel. I've used and hauled a lot of heavy equipment in my life ,but that's the slickest trailer I've ever seen. Just goes to show you that you can learn something every day.

"Imagine putting your fingers here when it shuts" I'm sure we all had that thought :D

I would have put down and compressed some gravel below the first ring to give it a bit stability and as a filter for the water

low producing drilled well are often saved in my parts because they often cost $15-25k to drill. A small pump is placed in the well with special limit switches and timers so the pump does run dry and doesn't start and stop too often. then this water is pumped into storage tanks to have a buffer.

During Covid our well collapsed and I could not get anyone to come and dig or drill me a new one so I rented an excavator and dug my own. I was able to dig down to approximately 9 meters but really wanted to go down to 10. The incoming water would not allow me to go any deeper. Once I placed in the 1m diameter well casing the water came up to about 3m from the top of the well. I have not had any water issues since and have not been able to pump it dry.

If you want to go even deeper with it you can rent a trash pump and start storing some water. Once you have a good amount of water stored up you stack a couple more concrete casings on top of what’s already there and maybe even some weights. Then you start stirring up the mud slurry and you then pump it out. Do this a few times and the casing will slowly start to drop into the ground. It doesn’t work on a older established well. But one you have just loosely dug like this and hasn’t had the chance to really set up like concrete around the casings. It will work. There are companies that sink pilings the same way. Unfortunately I’m seeing now that you didn’t stack them all in line. So there’s no way it would work. Oh well. Lol.

First, your videos are always interesting and informative. Your content is unique. The scenery where you live is beautiful. And of course, I thought you were going to slide down into that hole a few times. Keep it up. Hello from Ohio, USA.

Absolutely love how you put these videos together, the choice of music is fantastic and your timelapse segments are trimmed short enough that it's not boring, but long enough to get a good look at what's going on. The more videos I watch the more I want to visit Sweden, it looks like such a beautiful part of the world. Hope you gave your machine a good wash when you got home!

Holy shit, I thought this would end up being a digger recovery video, you must have big balls man, that’s all I can say because if you weren’t shitting yourself installing those drain pipes I certainly was and I’m in Australia on my lounge chair. I guess you have to make the most of a bad situation when you live in a remote place. Well done to all involved in getting the bore in.

I like your style Mattias, getting the job done with the equipment you have and not giving up when things get difficult. You are right about people commenting on the risks sounding like all the safety warnings at the front of a manual! Keep up the great work.

Lots of water, the sidewalls did not give you a break with calving off either. Nicely done!