Example of a good well result

Stargazer

Surin Legend
We just drilled well at one of our rice fields near Rattanaburi/Surin, and got lucky I guess (luckier than with our other 3 wells in various places). The one at our house 2 km away is salty and very hard, so we gave up on that one and use PWA water.

Prices seem to have gone up. (Our house well 3 years ago was 8,000 THB. This one is 15,000 THB. Our simple well driller, who has a rube goldberg drilling outfit on the back of a half-size pickup, started out with an 20 cm drill. There is a hard layer where the sandy clay seems to be consolidating into sandstone, about 4-5 meters down. He stopped there and sleeved with 15 cm PVC pipe, and changed to a 12 cm bit, smaller than I like. But perhaps wise, as the drilling was slow and hard as we went on down to 48 meters.

After jetting the bore with air, we set the 10cm 3/4hp pump at 35 meters deep. We are now able to pump about 65 liters/minute 24 hours a day, a very nice result that is letting us fill our new 800,000 liter lake and khlong in 7-9 days. We expect the yield to decline later in the dry season, but that's OK. Our main long-term concern is with the proliferation of government-subsidized lakes, and wells, that the water table may get over-drafted.IMG_5906.jpeg
 
Mango: we were quoted higher prices also, up to 30,000 THB. There is one well driller around here with a much bigger rig, uses air to blow out cuttings, powered by a truck-mounted massive air compressor. He tried drilling our second well at one rice field near our big lake, in an attempt to get more water. He kept drilling to 100 meters, and never got good water, so he gave up, we paid him just for the diesel for the day. That well wound up eventually being usable at a slow rate, allowing pumping for just 10-15 minutes at a time, at a pump depth of 30 meters. That Franklin (USA) pump appears to have just failed. We're pulling it today to diagnose. If so, it will be the second, very expensive Franklin TriSeal pump to fail (first due to seal failure), and the distributor won't honor the (in USA anyway) 5 year warranty. So we've switched to using cheap Nash pumps from Do Home that carry a 2 year warranty. I've been impressed by Do Home's willingness to honor warranties on tools. I prefer to use low hp pumps (½ to 3/4hp) and pump slowly but continuously. The latest well (noted above) has now been pumping 24/7 for two days at 65L/minute from 35m down.
 

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Mango: we were quoted higher prices also, up to 30,000 THB. There is one well driller around here with a much bigger rig, uses air to blow out cuttings, powered by a truck-mounted massive air compressor. He tried drilling our second well at one rice field near our big lake, in an attempt to get more water. He kept drilling to 100 meters, and never got good water, so he gave up, we paid him just for the diesel for the day. That well wound up eventually being usable at a slow rate, allowing pumping for just 10-15 minutes at a time, at a pump depth of 30 meters. That Franklin (USA) pump appears to have just failed. We're pulling it today to diagnose. If so, it will be the second, very expensive Franklin TriSeal pump to fail (first due to seal failure), and the distributor won't honor the (in USA anyway) 5 year warranty. So we've switched to using cheap Nash pumps from Do Home that carry a 2 year warranty. I've been impressed by Do Home's willingness to honor warranties on tools. I prefer to use low hp pumps (½ to 3/4hp) and pump slowly but continuously. The latest well (noted above) has now been pumping 24/7 for two days at 65L/minute from 35m down.
FIGJAM 2.jpg
 
Mango: we were quoted higher prices also, up to 30,000 THB. There is one well driller around here with a much bigger rig, uses air to blow out cuttings, powered by a truck-mounted massive air compressor. He tried drilling our second well at one rice field near our big lake, in an attempt to get more water. He kept drilling to 100 meters, and never got good water, so he gave up, we paid him just for the diesel for the day. That well wound up eventually being usable at a slow rate, allowing pumping for just 10-15 minutes at a time, at a pump depth of 30 meters. That Franklin (USA) pump appears to have just failed. We're pulling it today to diagnose. If so, it will be the second, very expensive Franklin TriSeal pump to fail (first due to seal failure), and the distributor won't honor the (in USA anyway) 5 year warranty. So we've switched to using cheap Nash pumps from Do Home that carry a 2 year warranty. I've been impressed by Do Home's willingness to honor warranties on tools. I prefer to use low hp pumps (½ to 3/4hp) and pump slowly but continuously. The latest well (noted above) has now been pumping 24/7 for two days at 65L/minute from 35m down.
Well :smirk: well. Do Home got Nash to replace our pump that failed due to broken wire after one year! It took two months over New Years, but did get done. Now we have two Nash 2,500 THB 3/4hp pumps in operation instead of two 16,000 THB Franklin pumps. I'll report later how long they last.
 
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