Depth Of Wells

fhdesign

[quote=rino1494;422884]I am on a job right now where the drillers are at 1,150 ft and no water. At 850' they wanted to hydo-blast, but the builder told them to keep drilling. I'll keep you posted.


We have similar conditions in my area, and unfortunately most of the well drillers find nothing more past 1000 ft

Driller1

I am in Michigan. I can look at the DEQ files. Give me a county, township and section number and I can tell you how deep the well likely will be, with or without a screen. If you add a road and crossroad I can be very close.

rino1494

Welcome to the site. What is the deepest you have ever drilled ??

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Driller1

Thanks! 420 foot. In mid-Michigan there are areas that the trick is to screen off in the drift to avoid saltwater. My rig is a Versa-Drill and will drill 1500 foot. The glaciers made drilling in Michigan very from place to place.

K2

In this area before this decade a guy could drill 300 to 350 and be assured of plenty of water but today single residences are required to draw from the next aquifer down which can range from 800 to 1200 ft. At 350 we could do the well, pump, tank etc for about $4k in the old days. Now at 900 ft, its about $14 k and takes another big jump in materials if you have to go deeper than 900'.

Water rights is and always has been an issue in these semi arid states and plenty of people have died over water even well water.

Around here you can get busted for saving rain water. The state division of water resourses says all water belongs to them.

Cdat

Mine is 350 mid Michigan.

Driller1

Mine is 320 foot. About 35 miles north of Midland.

dayexco

my son's father in law is drilling 9000' then going horisontal to get into the bakken oil formation in western north dakota.

they ended up setting up a manufacturing company to build their own "work over" rigs...and are selling them like hotcakes. here's a pic of one of the rigs they build

Attached Images

 

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piercekiltoff

We drill 20 to 600 feet pretty regularly (or used to - it's pretty dead right now).

Typical wells in glacial till are drilled with casing hammers, driving twenty feet of casing welded to the piece before it, typically 6" in diameter. Glacial till holes range from easy sand holes, holes with sand and gravel layers broken by occassional clay layers, to wells with 500 to 600 feet of blue clay overlaying trees and stumps, and my favorite is 100 feet of clay, 280 feet of boulders, sand, and gravel, BIG boulders, followed by loose sand...which is followed by water, once you get the casing through it all.

Rock holes are in sandstone, shale, coal strikes are common, granite formations in the mountains, and a good variety of everything else.

Mud rotary is pretty much non-existent here, though some guys are starting to apply it to geothermal drilling. Almost everyone uses air rotary with casing hammers and/or cable tool drilling rigs.

Flow rates are typically 10 to 25 GPM, though I've seen 60 to 100 GPM out of 6" wells, and as little as 0.25 GPM made workable. I recently completed an 8" hole to 330 feet in Ballard, about 2 miles north of downtown Seattle. At about 280 feet we left wet heaving sand and went into 4" to 6" gravel with upwards of 500 GPM. We actually had to drill to 330 and cement the hole full as part of the contract, but that much water was fun. As soon as I get my SD card out of my camera I'll throw up some pics of the site - a 60,000lb rig, support equipment, and discharge containers all stuck between three two story buildings in a rural/industrial area.

-Pierce K
JKA Well Drilling

naptown CR

I sit at 35' my well is 225' and don't know the flow have never run out of water but pressure is low on second floor but that is 25' above the pressure tank so some pressure drop to be expected.

Can't wait for global warming to break off that glacier in the antarctic and melt greenland. I will have waterfront.

TERM101

Here we cant get about 30GPM at around 180' usually

piercekiltoff

I know I had a driller from Manitoba working for me years ago. He said every well within 200 miles of his house was 200 feet deep and made 30 to 100 GPM. He got here, drilled two wells, then said "I've never drilled a well before". Not that here is necessarily worse than elsewhere, but that some locals have incredibly bad geology for water, some have bad geology for drilling, and others have great geology for both.

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Monroe, Washington, (360)-794-7300
Serving the Entire Seattle Area, including King, Snohomish, & Pierce Counties, WA