How To Drill A Well In Your Own Backyard! Instructional DVD by How To Drill a Well

I give this DVD 8 out of 10 acorns

How to Drill a Well in Your Own Backyard is a 2 DVD set that comes along with a printed booklet and together, they cover the entire process of drilling a water well on your own property. They cover everything from beginning to end in a lot of detail so be prepared to pay close attention and maybe watch the videos twice if you're going to attempt to drill your own well.  This DVD set is very densely packed with information... in a good way.  The host certainly put a lot of thought and work into this series.  It's not specified, but I think there's at least 5 hours of information between the two DVDs.
 
The first DVD outlines the equipment, setup, choosing a drilling site, and the entire drilling process, including troubleshooting while drilling. During the video, the host provides a wealth of information on making the drilling go smoothly as well as tips and tricks to keep you from getting stuck during the process. The host goes into great detail about each step of the process and makes sure to not leave even a tiny detail out.  I couldn't think of anything that was left out.  While most people won't need to drill down more than 100 feet to find water, the host show that his methodology will work far beyond that depth and he gives details on how to do that too.

The second DVD includes the sections about finishing, casing and cleaning the well and also how to seal it from the outside to keep it clean and clear.  The second DVD also has a complete video guide to building your own drill from parts you can easily find online or in many home improvement stores. There's even a section on making your own drill bits if you're into welding.  Repair, maintenance and cleaning of the drill is also covered in DVD 2.  If your the type of person who likes to build their own tools, this is a good guide, but you can also buy the drill "ready-to-go" from the maker of the videos.  

As a supplement to the DVDs there is also a printed booklet with much of the same information as the videos.  It comes in quite handy if you want a quick reference but the video is much more detailed.  There is also a lot of supplementary material on their website and youtube channel in case you need a little extra help.  

All in all, I think that if you're in a location where it's safe and legal to drill your own well, then this is a great guide on how to do just that.  The only drawback to this guide is that some of the video is shot from an angle or distance that makes it a little tough to see exactly what's going on.  This is particularly the case on the section about disassembling and trouble shooting the drill itself. Aside from that, I can't think of anything that they left out.  

Thanks for posting this! In my area the water table is hit at about 46 feet and legally a well has to be at least 50 feet deep. I'm on a shared well with my neighbor but he has been hooking up additional users (renting out parts of his buildings and installing a "family member unit" for his daughter) so instead of the two households that the agreement is for there is in reality 4 at the moment, another soon to be hooked up and potentially a 6th user depending on if he rents part of a new building he is having built - based on the design I think this is likely. Due to this I'm worried about my water pressure being negatively impacted plus I don't like not having control of my water system - it is all installed in his house (the controls, etc. the well is just outside his main house). He just operates a business out of his house and lives off site so he is not interested in setting up a backup generator or a hand pump for when the power goes out.

I have been wanting to have my own well but it has been a bit too expensive. If I could do the work myself that would be great!

The well log for the shared well shows brown sands loam from 0 to 2 feet, brown sand w/ clay from 2-19ft, sand - w/ seepage 20-24ft, cemented sand w/ gravel 24-41 ft, silly grey sand 41-46ft, (active - I'm assuming this was where the aquifer was reached) WB grey sand 46 - 58, grey silly sand 58-60ft. The water table in the completed well was holding at 25 ft which implies the cemented sand layer was acting as a fairly impermeable layer.

Do you think the method shown in the video would be able to handle this? If so I'm very tempted to purchase the video and try installing my own well. I used to do well tests for the USGS so I'm familiar with a lot of the system but I never installed one.

Thanks!

Read through the site and watch some of the videos to get an idea if it's something you think might work for you and your land, then check your local codes.  If that's all good, I'd say that the DVDs would be a good guide for you.  My understanding is that the toughest layer you'd be dealing with is the gravel. Because of the size of the pieces, they don't break when you drill them, nor do they pass through the system to be siphoned from the well.  That being said, there are methods outlined in the video to resolve that problem using a secondary siphon without a drill bit on it, to suck out the larger pieces of material.  It's a bit of a slower layer to deal with but from what I've seen, it's pretty doable.


   

Thanks for the response - I will check out the site and see about getting the video. Thanks again for sharing the info on the DVD!

Daron, have you given this a try yet? I'm interested in what you found. - DJ