Monday December 12, 2016 Guerneville CA.
An early start for me
I had to get it going early this morning as the well drillers would be here at 8:30AM.
The hole they drilled a couple years ago dries up near the end of the summer so we need a deeper well hole. This is ok as we actually use spring water, but I’m just preparing for the next guy that owns this place as they will not likely have access to the spring water from the family property. And it also sets me up better in case the family property were I get my water now has to be sold off for any reason.
The well drillers arrive
Here they are stopped out on the road as we figure out how to set things up for the new well.
Where to put the new well
Steve the head guy and I talked about where to drill the well using the counties guide lines as we had to follow the rules.
Once we decided on a spot they started bringing their equipment in. First the trailered machine they call a shaker, which shakes the rock out of the mud from the new drill hole.
Then they backed the big drill rig in and set it up.
The drilling starts
They are all set up and just started drilling.
Here’s the set up. The pump in the hole pumps mud with the rock they are removing over to the shaker to get separated out and then the mud is returned to the well hole through the drill bit to move more rock to the surface.
Here’s the guys in action from the rear.
The shaker at work
Here’s the shaker in action. Small rocks are falling off the back from the drill hole.They watch the rock to see what they are drilling in. The mud pump in the hole pumps the rocky mud to the shaker which separates the rocks out of the mud and returns the watery mud back to the drill bit and into the well hole to repeat the process.
Steve is guiding the big double bit that will make a hole for the eight inch pipe laying on the road. They are putting this eight inch pipe in first and sealing it to bed rock.
Installing the seal pipe
They’ve drilled down about forty feet and are ready to install the eight inch pipe.
Here they are installing the eight inch seal pipe to forty feet.
Sealed to the top with chip sealer
The seal pipe is installed and ready to seal down to forty feet.
They are filling the outside of the eight inch pipe with chip sealer which they just pour down the sides and it hardens and sets up.
They are pouring the final bag of sealer in the hole in this pic.
I want the deep water from the San Franciscan Fault
The idea is to seal the hole down to forty feet with this eight inch pipe so no water or rocks can get into the hole as we want to get water from down deep, not from near the surface, so that’s the reason for the eight inch pipe seal down to forty feet.
Tomorrow, they will drill inside the eight inch pipe with a smaller bit and we will try to find some water down deep.
It’s easy to get water near the surface around here, but that water is also prone to contamination, so the point here is to get the deep water that comes from what they call the San Franciscan fault which is deep water that can be found in this earth quake fault.
Phone company sucks
On another note, the phone company still has not repaired my phone and internet connection. They’ve pushed me out to Wednesday by 8PM, which sorta sucks as it’s their fault the phone line is bad as they made a mistake and changed my home phone number to someone else’s number.
That was my day.
