Hand-dug Well. Any experience?

[gruntled]

As our new house is located on a small road just outside the village proper we don't have piped water available. The recommended plan is to dig a well. It won't have to be deep because there is ample groundwater fairly close to the surface. We were told that people hand-dig a fair size hole, placing concrete rings on top of each other as they go down. Evidently they undermine this concrete well casing and as it settles lower they add rings to the top. using a pump to keep the excavation from filling with water.
I'd like to hear from anyone who has had experience with getting a well dug this way or with some other method.
Right now, the rings are scattered around the well-site but the man who agreed to dig the well has disappeared. After digging 1 meter down he asked our builder for 200 baht for a bottle of something to keep his spirits up. We haven't seen him since.

[peterpan]

Shallow groundwater is usually crap, it doesn't cost much to do a decent bore, ours cost 14k for about 25 m (I think) down.
Perfect drinkable clean water.

[dirtydog]

^probably realised that it was hard work

[a. boozer]

We had a well hand dug, on some ground that the wife owns, after obtaining an exorbitant quote from a local mechanized well boring company. Absolutely amazing, the way that the, middle aged, Thai guy, worked. He would arrive every morning on his motorcycle combination, with his wife, normally two very young children and a teenage boy. With no other tools, other than a short handled pick axe, and the usual Thai digging implements, he made short work of putting in the first few rings. Then an old bicycle wheel was mounted on a spindle above the aperture, to use as a pulley wheel to lift the never ending buckets of firstly soil, and then sand and later fine gravel that emerged from the ever deepening hole, these being emptied by his wife and the teenage boy. As he got closer to the water course, a pump was rigged to remove incoming water. The resulting well was perfectly perpendicular, and a credit to one man's skill and tenacity, all for the labour price of 500 Bht per ring inserted.

[Thetyim]

A hand dug well will only be about 8 metres deep with a 6inch bore you can go as deep as you like.
Unless you are lucky a shallow bore will not have clean water and what you save on the cost of the bore you will spend on extra filters

[dirtydog]

[a. boozer]

Our well was, if I remember correctly, 10 metres deep, and does deliver seemingly clean water. This is probably due to the close proximity of a large stream which has of yet, never dried out.

[blackgang]

everyone around has a cesspit that is maybe 4 meters deep and the shit, piss and dirty water is released out of the bottom of the tiles in the cesspit and then that water in turn runs into hand dug wells and then into your house piping to be recycled one more time.
No thanks on a dug well, not that costly to have a hole bores and cased deep enough to get shallow water but deeper than a dug well.
When I first moved in here there was a 4 meter well and the water looked OK, but you had a smell when you were dried off after a shower and your cloths that were washed in it also had a strange smell, I finally figured it out after a little experience with Thai sanitation and well drilling for house water, so we damn sure change from that system, and now my undies come out odor free.
No fukin way a dug well for me. to damn many rats drown and decompose in em.

[a. boozer]

.
No thanks on a dug well, not that costly to have a hole bores and cased deep enough to get shallow water but deeper than a dug well.
.......................... and now my undies come out odor free.
No fukin way a dug well for me. to damn many rats drown and decompose in em.

B.G. The well we had dug was for irrigation purposes only, we don't live on this particular piece of land.

As a well (excuse the pun) brought up Englishman , I refuse to comment about your 'undies'.

[sunsetter]

same kind of thing ive had dug in my place, 12 meters down, very clean water, although i dont drink it, and theres a fish in there too, so it must be clean.

[blackgang]

same kind of thing ive had dug in my place, 12 meters down, very clean water, although i dont drink it, and theres a fish in there too, so it must be clean.

Yes, thats pobly why some places have stopped importation of Thai fish and shrimp because of the bacteria. cause they only live in clean pure water.

We could not get any water down as deep as 158 meters, so set up to catch rain and store it, now we use it for houshold use and buy potable water for drinking and cooking use.

[gruntled]

It's nice to get home and find so many replies to my question. Yeah, we certainly won't be drinking the well water but I think there's a chance we may get water clean enough for washing. There aren't any cesspools nearby and when we dug the pond it filled immediately with water which was clear greenish blue after settling for a few days. I think a major problem with any well would be to keep the top part sealed to keep rats, frogs, surface runoff etc. from entering. Even if, after testing, it proves only good enough for watering the garden I'll be happy. Anyway, if we have to drill a deep well later so be it.

Meanwhile I can't resist the experiment and I'm hoping to get an outcome like you had, Boozer. Sounds as though the guy used the method I described, did he, digging around the bottom causing the rings to settle and adding more rings on the top?

Dog, interesting photos, especially the one showing the guy in a deep unlined hole. Looks dangerous to me. If the wet mud caves in he won't have much time to rethink his approach. I guess the boss told him it's alright.

[blackgang]

They dig those tiled wells in Northern washington state up in Skagit county, they have a clamshell bucket on cables and clam the dirt out from the inside of the tiles and then just keep stacking them on and clamming out the inside and they go down. slick as hell but up there they have a high water table too that is good water as there is glaciers all around and they do have sanatation laws too, so you can not make a cesspool just anywhere you want to.
Here they have no sanitation laws and no one with enough IQ to figure how bad they are polluting this country, just so the money just keeps pouring into the elected officials.