Digging your own well?

I recently saw something where a woman dug her own well, singlehandedly with a pipe and a sledge hammer.

Has anyone on the forum actually done this and how many days/hours did it take you? I am interested not for drinking water but for watering the garden, which is a tad removed from the house.

It sounds like you're describing a sandpoint well
 installation.

I haven't installed one yet, but my property had two when we bought it -- one in the basement supplying the house, and badly contaminated with lead shot, and one in the old cow-barn that we haven't tested or used. I'm sort of planning to put one in at the back of the property.

This thread has a fun picture of a well being dug at Wheaton Labs:

https://permies.com/t/54084/permaculture-projects/Digging-extendable-post-hole-auger#444545

How deep is your water table and what soil do you have between it and the surface?  

A manual pump well, like a pitcher pump.  Can realistically lift between 12 and 20 feet depending on the design of the pump and the casing size (weight of the water column.)

If you are not deep you are golden.  If you are deeper you will need a high lift manual pump.  Very expensive and hard to find.  That might get you to about 25' of water column.  Deeper than that, you may have to get creative.

Also driving a well point is possible, if you are going through light soil.  If you hit rocks or a horizon of difficult material, it is not so easy and one runs the risk if bending the casing as it goes down.  Irresistible force meets immovable object.  There are many Youtube videos on how to use a garden hose to loosen the soil and make a homemade 'mudpump' rig.

All in all, it is very possible if you have the right soil and the water table is not too deep.

Jack Edmondson wrote:How deep is your water table and what soil do you have between it and the surface?  

It's pretty high—we have a creek on the property (though on the other side, maybe 100 feet away) and there is standing water in that area during much of the summer. Under the topsoil there is clay with hardly any sand.