Project description
My plot is in a village about seventy kilometres out of town and there is no mains water there, nor will there ever be. Carrying canisters from the neighbours has worn me out, so I want my own drinking water on site. To be clear from the start: I am not asking for a borehole and not for any treatment or filtering equipment. I want a classic hand-dug shaft well built of concrete rings, the kind both my neighbours have. One of them reached a good water-bearing sand at about eight and a half metres, the other at nine and a half, with sand and small gravel underneath, so I expect my layer somewhere between eight and eleven metres, which means roughly ten to twelve rings plus a margin.
The scope I have in mind is this. First we pick the spot together, keeping at least thirty metres between the well, the septic tank and the compost corner. Then the shaft is sunk with the rings going down as the soil is taken out. Rings one metre inner diameter, tongue and groove, pinned together with steel brackets so that frost heave in spring cannot tear or shift the column. Joints sealed from the outside, nothing chemical on the inside surfaces. At the bottom a filter of washed gravel and coarse river sand about forty centimetres thick, on a timber grid if you run into quicksand. Around the two upper rings a proper clay lock: a trench about half a metre wide and a metre and a half deep, backfilled with fat clay rammed in layers, then a blind area sloping away from the head.
The head itself I want tidy: two rings above ground, a timber house with a pitched roof, a hinged lid with hasps for a padlock, and a windlass with a galvanised chain and bucket. If you believe an insulated lid with a hatch makes more sense because I may add a submersible pump next season, say so and price both options. All the excavated soil must be taken off the plot, there is nowhere to spread it since the garden is planted. Please pump the well out twice, let the water settle and show me a clean bottom before we close the job. I can allow up to nine working days, there is access for machinery, power and water on site. In your reply tell me how you dig, how many people are in the crew, what you do if quicksand appears, and whether you guarantee the joints against leaks.
The scope I have in mind is this. First we pick the spot together, keeping at least thirty metres between the well, the septic tank and the compost corner. Then the shaft is sunk with the rings going down as the soil is taken out. Rings one metre inner diameter, tongue and groove, pinned together with steel brackets so that frost heave in spring cannot tear or shift the column. Joints sealed from the outside, nothing chemical on the inside surfaces. At the bottom a filter of washed gravel and coarse river sand about forty centimetres thick, on a timber grid if you run into quicksand. Around the two upper rings a proper clay lock: a trench about half a metre wide and a metre and a half deep, backfilled with fat clay rammed in layers, then a blind area sloping away from the head.
The head itself I want tidy: two rings above ground, a timber house with a pitched roof, a hinged lid with hasps for a padlock, and a windlass with a galvanised chain and bucket. If you believe an insulated lid with a hatch makes more sense because I may add a submersible pump next season, say so and price both options. All the excavated soil must be taken off the plot, there is nowhere to spread it since the garden is planted. Please pump the well out twice, let the water settle and show me a clean bottom before we close the job. I can allow up to nine working days, there is access for machinery, power and water on site. In your reply tell me how you dig, how many people are in the crew, what you do if quicksand appears, and whether you guarantee the joints against leaks.
Other / Miscellaneous Cash, Bank transfer
