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.
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.