Sand Point Wells

KDM

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Thinking of driving in a sand point well to provide water to the gardens/trees/critters/etc instead of running 2.34 miles of hoses all over Fathers creation like I have been, but have absolutely no experience with them. Anyone have any insights, advice, horror stories, anecdotes, or have put one in themselves and would like to share some thoughts on how it went, did it work, do you still use it, and a would you do it again sort of thing, I'd appreciate it. My water table is about 15 ft down so pounding one down to depth should work assuming I can avoid rocks. Thanks in advance.
 


Davy Crockett

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I'm looking at doing this too. I've watched videos and it looks like it can play out a good man. If I had flat ground I'd probably try to hire a utility company pole truck to dig as deep as they can but that's not an option where I want the well. Good luck and keep us posted.
 

Allen

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So long as you don't have a clay layer that can smear the screen they work pretty decently if you have reasonable expectations for production. You can get pretty much anything you need for this project at Menards, I think. Not sure if I've ever seen the drive head there.

I've never actually installed a production well with them, but have used them for research a number of times to collect water samples.

I'd probably avoid using the plastic ones to get to 15 ft. If your water table is at 15 ft, you will want to get several feet deeper, like around 20-22 ft. Dissolved oxygen falls very quickly once you are below the water table, but you really don't want to be pulling dissolved oxygen rich water into a well screen. That leads to bio fouling of the well screen, which isn't the end of the world but can be really annoying to have to keep cleaning. Also, any buildings or trees this water contacts will very likely develop an iron coloration to it. Dissolved iron and manganese quickly oxidize when exposed to the atmosphere, take a drive around Fox Island here in Bismarck and you will see what I am talking about.

One thing to keep in mind is that installing a well of any kind does not equate to "free" water. Lifting water is expensive, if you use this for gardening, trees, etc there will be a noticeable bump up in your electric bill.

If you do get the screen below the water table and you can't readily get water from the thing, it likely developed a clay smear over the screen. I've run across this a number of times. You can pull a sand point well using a couple of handyman jacks. Just wrap a chain around the steel pipe a couple of times and then over the jaw of the jack. Not exactly a finesse way of doing it, but it does work pretty well.


Amazon product

Don't use a hammer as shown in the above Amazon post, use a heavy fence post driver. You'll be there a month of Sundays using a stupid hammer, not to mention the risk of messing up your pipe and drive head by a poorly aimed swing at a moving target.

Good luck!
 

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