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I purchased the DVD and plans and built the drilling kit myself. I found the plans to be rather straight-forward, and as a home handyman I had no difficulty constructing the drilling rig. Although it might look like a huge project, it wasn\'t overwhelming if done one step at a time. I had to purchase some minor tools, like a tap and a better grinding wheel, but nothing too expensive. I admit, while constructing it I had my doubts that the thing would actually work, but I was very glad to find out that it drilled just fine.
I deviated from the instructions in a few places (such as water recirculation) and I soon learned that everything in the instructions was there for a reason (you absolutely need some sort of water recirculation system!). The most difficult drilling was in the very beginning; it was slow going until about 10\' or so. But I was pleased to find that the deeper I drilled, the easier the drilling was.
I was drilling through layers of rock, gravel, and clay. When I was in solid rock, I found I would drill only an inch or two in an hour. But when I was in clay or sand/gravel I could drill much faster, perhaps 4\' an hour. I split the drilling up over many days, and only drilled about an hour a day. I hit water at 17\' and stopped drilling around 28\'. So although it took me several days to drill the well, it didn\'t actually take that long in terms of hours. I don\'t really know for sure, but I\'d guess that I averaged around a foot an hour.
I did not rent a large air compressor, but instead ganged 4 smaller air compressors together (although most of them were not all that small). This worked and allowed me to avoid the rental fee of a large air compressor. My system definitely did not work as well as a rental air compressor, but it was free (since I borrowed the air compressors). One reason I split the drilling over so many days was that I did not want to run these borrowed air compressors for too long at one sitting.
I was rather amazed at how the ground up rock and clay would come shooting up the tube; I hadn\'t really believed that it would come out with such force.
Overall I am very impressed with this system. I have never paid for any plans before and was very skeptical about this. But given that I now have a working well, the plans were well worth the price; I couldn\'t have done it without them. Additionally, I emailed Nathaniel several times with questions about details; he responded quickly and his responses were quite helpful.
I think this worked really well and am impressed at their ingenuity. When I wasn\'t drilling through rock it could go really fast, and it wasn\'t that slow even when I hit rock (although it seemed slow). I drilled mostly through clay or gravel (or rock) and the standard bit seemed to work fairly well. My friends are amazed this worked, and I can see how one could easily go deeper.
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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