Restoring an abandoned farm well for drinking water!

Exploring the bottom of our old well at our new homestead, I am glad I decided to tackle this task, there were some unpleasant surprises at the bottom that had been there quite a while!!

[@Yellowjacket1977]

Thanks for this video! When we got "City" water in 1982, we stopped using our 3' hand-dug well at my parent's house (much to my disappointment). Now they are both gone and I live there now with my family, and we want to restore it, maybe for drinking and certainly for our garden. It's only 21' deep, but never ran dry and gave us a constant supply of cold, clear water. I'm 65, so I will have to hire someone to go down there for me and clear like you did. What did you use to scrub the sides? Once it was cleaned and settled, did you put any bleach or any gravel in the bottom? Thanks!

[@clutch5sp989]

Same situation here...we bought the house property and use the well only for garden. It's 36" dia concrete sections maybe 25' deep. I'm trying to invent or tinker with ideas something that may help get it cleaned out estimating maybe 48" of muck at bottom. NO...I'm not going in there.

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

Hey 👋 sorry for the late reply, so at the bottom I just scooped up the muck and put it in a bucket and had my father haul it up and dump it. Once I reached the bottom of the well casing I stopped digging. On the way up I cleaned the walls and joints of the casing with bleach and just a stiff brush. I also sealed the top 3 or so joints with hydraulic cement to help stop muddy water getting in. After everything was finished I dumped a gallon of bleach in the well.

[@EthanPDobbins]

​@@clutch5sp989 there's well companies that will blow out wells to clean them.

[@Shelleys4Seasons]

Man that gave me anxiety! Im so scared of holes especially wells!

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

They definitely are not something to play around with.

[@thetinkercook5430]

I'm buying an old house with an abandoned well. I'm going to have to do the same thing and make a better cover. Thanks

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

Just make sure the casing is in good shape first

[@alternateName600]

I'd be worried about air quality. Or CO2 concentrations down there. Hopefully you had a fan to force some air to bottom

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

Oh I definitely did! It would have been a bad day without one.

[@thomasjay975]

Nice, got that old gross sand out, now u can put in some fresh material for filtering, not sure with your budget, but you could always set up a filter system directly in the well house, so you pump it directly into the filter, into a holding tank, then to your home.

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

That is the plan, we hope to put a particulate filter in and if needed a UV filter for bacteria.

[@johndunigan9995]

You have some nerves of steel to be down there working😅

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

Yeah it took alot but it was my only option!

[@michaelbuckner5374]

You’ve got more nerve than me lol

[@1bigdogthe]

The only thing your missing is an O2 sensor.

[@EthanPDobbins]

Or just ventilation blowing air down in. Well diggers/workers historically used forced air for anything much over 10-15 feet deep.

[@larryag99]

Too funny that you felt the need to spend 5-minutes tamping down the sure to come negative comments from the keyboard warriors, and any legal blow back from idiots that try something that they saw on TH-cam and end up in the hospital, or worse. What a world we live in today. I suspect that if you weren't doing a TH-cam video all the overkill on the rigging would not have been necessary. Now, with that out of the way... seems like you could have just contracted for a industrial strength pumping truck and sucked all that stuff out of there, no ?

[@Grazing-M-Acres]

Yes I felt I needed to make sure everyone knew I wasn't recommending this method. We thought about using a pump truck, but it would have cost a lot of money, however it was definitely our back up plan!