Pump and tank advice, please, borehole supply in the UK

Users who are viewing this thread

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Yuck............... I CANNOT believe how bad a dead animal would be down there. It's anther good reason for me wanting to put a decent seal over the top of the hole, I think.

Years ago I belonged to a caving club in the Welsh mountains that had a water supply drawn from a stream, high on the hill. In years gone buy some club members had built a series of damns and screens and fitted a 2" MDPE feed pipe down the hill to the club house, where it filled a big concrete tank that was then used to draw water off for washing, cooking etc and running the toilets and showers.

One weekend I was Duty Officer and someone reported there was no water, so it was my job to find out where the problem was. The lower tank was dry and no water was coming from the 2" pipe, which meant climbing the hill to find the problem. The problem was easy to see, a dead sheep was blocking the top tank. Two of us tried to pull it free only to find that we just pulled its legs off, it was that rotten. It took much work with ropes etc to get the thing well clear of the water supply, before we washed as best we could and headed back down to the club house.

We got back to much rejoicing, as all the ladies had enjoyed their showers as soon as the water came back on. We hadn't the heart to tell them they had showered in water liberally dosed with dead sheep...........................
 

Reach4

Well-Known Member
Messages
38,796
Reaction score
4,413
Points
113
Location
IL
Nice lifter! I expect it met your best hopes. I think that sand spread out on the grass would make a nice top dressing.

If you are good enough at cleaning sand from the bottom of the well when needed, maybe one of these would let you pump faster while leaving the sand down the hole without reaching the pump.
http://www.lakos.com/gwi-products/sub-k
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Thanks for the encouraging comments. I think I may well have got rid of of the sand problem but sadly I know that the Lakos unit won't do the job with our very fine sand (although they get full marks from me for giving really good technical advice and having me do a load of settling time tests, before telling me that their motor pump separator wasn't going to work with the very fine stuff we have). I'd be the first to commend Lakos as a really helpful company.

If we pump below 10 litres/minute we're absolutely fine, and with around 225 litres stored in the pressure tanks, plus maybe 40 to 50 litres in the air header tank, we have pretty much a day's use even with the low pump rate. The pump also has an easy time, a it runs only once or twice a day and it is always working against a decent head.

This evening I've been playing with a a suck-through ozone system. I had great results with water quality taste and improvement when I used the break tank and ozone venturi injector, that I thought it worth looking at again. The ozone generator stops working under pressure I found (I fitted one inside a 4 1/2 inch filter case, and anything over 2 bar (around 30 psi) stops the corona discharge). Putting it on the suction side of a small pump, feeding a venturi injector, gets around this problem, at the risk of the ozone damaging the pump. I took a cheap airbrush pump apart this evening, and I think I can get one of these to work as a pull-through system, with the ozone only having limited contact with the pump internals.
 
Last edited:

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
I once bailed 30' of rabbits out of a well that was left open in a field. Just a soup of eyeballs, bones, and hide. It was not pretty and smelled terrible.


That is seriously gross.

It would haunt me for years knowing there had been stuff like that down the well, and knowing that there was a pretty good chance that you'd never got all the bits of rabbit out........................
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Quick update, photos to follow later, but I'm pretty sure (short of putting a camera down the hole) that I've reached the bottom, maybe 8m short of where it's supposed to be. I'll post photos when I get home to show more detail (posting from this mobile connection ain't easy).

Today I added a length of 22mm copper to the "business end" of the lifter, the idea being that I may be able to penetrate packed sand a bit better. I went down maybe another metre then the thing felt like it was hitting something solid. Not much sand is coming up either, the water just looks a bit cloudy from having been stirred up.

I also added a shut off valve to the outlet pipe, so I can pump compressed air back down and out the lower end, the idea being that if there is any packed sand pumping air down into it from the pipe rammed hard into it should help break it up. Anyway, what happened next was a surprise (to me, you guys may well have been able to tell me this was going to happen!). With the outlet valve shut, me literally holding the pipe down to the bottom of the hole with all my strength (remember, full of air, 59m of pipe is like a wild animal trying to float out of the hole!) I opened the compressor on full pressure into the pipe (so that's around 100 psi, maybe a bit over).

Nothing match happened for a minute or two, except for the pipe being harder to hold down hard. Next I heard some gurgling and the smell of H2S, so I knew the air was bubbling out. What I wasn't expecting was the torrent of water up out of the top of the borehole casing, half filling the pit and draining away out of my drain at the base (gave that a good flush, so I know it works OK).

What I'd done was turn the whole liner into one big air lifter, one that shifted impressive amounts of water. What's more the water was still only a little bit cloudy, so signs of the masses of sand I was getting yesterday. Bits of sticky tape, broken cable ties and even a candy wrapper floated out of this torrent, so my gut feeling is that I have reached the bottom of the whole, cleared out all the sand and all that is left is the residual fine stuff that washes in through the screen and filter pack.

Does this sound right to you experts on here?

I'm not planning on putting the pump back down until Thursday, so my plan is to leave the airlifter right down at the bottom, where it is now, lifting gently for the next couple of hours before I knock off for the day, then have a think about getting a camera down there tomorrow to really see what's going on. I have an old reversing (back up) camera that I had fitted to a car I owned a few years ago, and I know it still works OK. I could try casting it inside a pit of pipe with some epoxy resin, with some LED lights around the edge, to make a waterproof wide angle lens camera. I tested it last night and the camera still works, plus I can record video from it on my laptop. So, making it watertight and seeing if I can get some good video of the inside of the borehole, after the water has settled overnight, could be a belt and braces way of checking things out.

If it turns out the hole is only 57 metres deep, when I paid them to drill and line to 65m deep, I shall be a little pissed off, even if the hole does turn out to work just fine.

Photos should follow this evening, but as ever, any ideas anyone may have would be very much welcomed.

Thanks in advance, and thanks again for the help given so far.
 

Valveman

Cary Austin
Staff member
Messages
14,599
Reaction score
1,296
Points
113
Location
Lubbock, Texas
Website
cyclestopvalves.com
That is the way we normally air lift a well. We just run a straight pipe to the bottom and blow air down it, and the water comes up the casing and blows out the top. It works great and we jokingly refer to it as a blow job. :)
 

Reach4

Well-Known Member
Messages
38,796
Reaction score
4,413
Points
113
Location
IL
With the outlet valve shut, me literally holding the pipe down to the bottom of the hole with all my strength (remember, full of air, 59m of pipe is like a wild animal trying to float out of the hole!) I opened the compressor on full pressure into the pipe (so that's around 100 psi, maybe a bit over).
If you turned off the air for a while before closing the valve, the pipe I am thinking the pipe would be full of water.
Bits of sticky tape, broken cable ties and even a candy wrapper floated out of this torrent,
That speaks to the professionalism of the well crew. Maybe keep that stuff for show-and-tell or at least as a memento.
If it turns out the hole is only 57 metres deep, when I paid them to drill and line to 65m deep, I shall be a little pissed off, even if the hole does turn out to work just fine.
Maybe a refund is in order. Do you have a small claims court to present your case at if they don't come up with the refund?

Thanks for the interesting posts, and congratulations on your success.
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Thanks for the reassuring comments. I am going to try and get a camera down the well tomorrow, because I've had suspicions right from the off that these drillers were not exactly the "A Team". The crap I washed out of the hole today pretty much proved that, although the scrappy well head in the pit with the bits of very strained pipe and large holes in the well cap for stuff to get down was further evidence too (see the photos earlier in this thread).

Anyway, here are some of the photos I took of today's work. Most of the day was spent with me doing other things whilst the compressor just sat doing its thing and pumping water out of the hole, but there were a couple of semi-exciting moments.

Here's a shot of the extended business end, with the new length of 22mm pipe fitted. The idea here was to increase the flow velocity at the base and hopefully improve the ability to suck sand, and also by having a reduced cross section the hope was that it might penetrate packed sand more easily, as I seemed to have hit a solid layer, maybe the base of the hole.



I dropped this back down the hole, and allowing for the increased length it stopped at EXACTLY the same depth as yesterday, around 57m below the well head. This got me suspicious that I'd hit the bottom of the well, but I pumped it for an hour or so and twisted around and pushed down on the pipe and it remained at the same depth. It never sucked up gobs of sand, either, just lightly contaminated water with the usual very fine stuff in it.

At the outlet end I fitted a bit of clear PVC and a ball valve, plus I fed the output into a bucket to see what the water looked like. The idea of the ball valve was so I could shut off the water and air outlet and force all the air down out of the bottom of the pipe, in the hope that if there was packed sand it would sort of liquidise it and get it shifting. This is what the new outlet end looks like:



Shutting the outlet valve and holding tight to the pipe resulted in a load of gurgling noises followed by a nice fountain of bubbly water coming out the hole:




This got quite vigorous and flushed out plastic wrappers, broken cable ties etc and half-filled my pit with water. It did check the drain out that I fitted at the well pit base, though, and this did a good job of draining away any water that got in there:



I then just left the thing pumping at around 12 to 15 litres/hour for the rest of the say, but the water coming out was just the normal light grey/green stuff with the very fine sediment, so my guess is that it just makes its way in through the slotted liner and packing, and isn't being drawn up from a pipe at the bottom of the well. I'm near-100% convinced that the well was drilled short, or at least lined short, and that's why I'm hitting the apparent base at 57m down, rather than 65m down. It's not a problem, as the water-bearing layer is at 40m down and is only around 5 to 8m deep, but as I paid for the drilling and lining my the metre it's annoying to have been over-charged. It's the main reason I want to get the camera down there, to be honest, just to see whether or not I really am at the bottom (I don;t know about you guys, but everything I'm seeing tells me that the bottom is at 57m).

As a sneak preview as to what's to come, some may remember the pretty dire looking mess in the well head pit in the earlier photos I posted. Before leaving site today I trial fitted my new liner stub flange with stainless plate custom made to close off the well.



There's a home machined venturi/flow restrictor there (the black acetal piece) and that will be connected via an 8mm (approx 5/16") air line back to the treatment plant shed, where I have a cunning plan to suck ozone though a modified airbrush pump and feed it to that restrictor/venturi to aerate, oxidise and help sterilise the water. The water will be fed to a home modified 1054 tank with a auto air vent set to release any air/H2s at the top, whilst allowing a small spray aeration zone.

It's an experiment, as I can't just buy off the shelf stuff here, but I'll report here as to whether it works or fails.

On the subject of experiments, I had a package arrive today with the parts for this other cabin water filter experiment: https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/meditation-cabin-water-system-off-grid.61892/ so it looks as if my weekend might also be spent playing around with water fittings. Because I anticipate a few problems with getting this cabin experimental filter system working, I ordered a few spare flow regulator cartridges so I can fine tune the back-wash flow rate to be "just" enough and no more. I'll update that thread when I have something of interest to report.

PS: I can confirm that no dead creatures were found in the well, except for one large, live, slug that had crept up under the temporary cover overnight.
 

Reach4

Well-Known Member
Messages
38,796
Reaction score
4,413
Points
113
Location
IL
I then just left the thing pumping at around 12 to 15 litres/hour for the rest of the say, but the water coming out was just the normal light grey/green stuff with the very fine sediment, so my guess is that it just makes its way in through the slotted liner and packing, and isn't being drawn up from a pipe at the bottom of the well.
As I understand it, the hope is that there is a distribution of sand sizes, and that ideally the slots should be small enough to permit some (maybe 50%) of the sand particles to fit through the slots but that bigger stuff will get stopped and build up outside of the slots after a while.

It is common with well caps in a pit that there be a fine-screened air vent pipe that extends up above the seal -- perhaps above ground. I think the vent is to prevent a vacuum in the casing from sucking water, despite the seal, that might rise in the pit to the well seal. I hope that your drain can keep the water level in the pit below the seal -- even in flooding conditions.
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Although I've not done any more on the well over the weekend, and I managed to put off going up and doing the filter job in the cabin in the woods for another week, I decided to see if I could knock up a DIY borehole inspection camera. I didn't want to buy anything, but luckily I never throw stuff away, thinking that it may come in handy some day. So, here is a post just keeping you all up to date on my progress so far, and with luck I may have some video from inside our well next week (if the lash up I've spent the weekend building works).

First off I went around looking through sheds, the attic space, old boxes, you name it, looking for things to use. I had an old rear view camera that I had fitted to a car years ago, and that still worked OK, so that was a start, but it wasn't waterproof, at least not to the 50 to 60m immersion needed. Around 30 years ago I salvaged some old cameras taken off a deep diving submersible (rated to 5000ft depth, IIRC). The cameras themselves were dead, but the very thick machined alloy housings plus the underwater connectors and the 1/2" thick plexiglass front lens, with O rings etc, were all OK. I also found a 60m length of underwater cable with a moulded on underwater connector that fitted the back of one of the camera housings. This had three screened cables (OK for video) and three plain insulated wire cores, together with a steel load wire running up the centre.

I needed some lights, but when I was making an LED front light for my bicycle years ago I remembered having to buy too many very bright white LEDs, and I had an offcut of 1" thick Tufnol board in a workshop, so an hour or so on the lathe later and I had a ring that was a very tight push-fit over the front of the camera housing. I stuck this in the milling machine and drilled 12 holes around the outside edge, equally spaced at 30 deg. I wired in the LEDs, in groups of three with their own resistor, so all 12 would run OK from 12V, as the camera runs on 12V, and it made sense to have the whole thing run of an old battery. I wrapped a bit of tape around the ring and poured epoxy resin around the back to cast all the LEDs in place and make the whole light ring waterproof.

I also knocked up an alloy frame to take an old plastic cable drum, so I would wind and unwind the cable easily (I'm rapidly learning that one of the really good skills to have when dealing with wells is to be able to handle very long lengths of cable and pipe!).

Here are some shots so far of the jury rig I've put together. The only thing I had to buy (not in the photos) was a small box from the local computer store that will convert video to USB and allow me to use my laptop to both watch the video and record it, depending on what I find there may well be legal action hinging on this, as I've had enough with the guys here in the UK I've been dealing with over this well.

First off, this is the complete rig, less the laptop, the old battery for 12V and the little box that connects the video to the laptop USB port:



The camera is over on the left and red and black 12V power cable (with croc clips to connect to the battery) and the video lead and Phono plug are tucked away inside the plastic cable drum.


This is the camera housing, with the added light ring at the left and the underwater cable connector at the right:



Not too pretty but it seems to work OK when tested, and as long as I get one good video from it it's done the job as far as I'm concerned.


Next up, a front view of the camera:



The camera is really tiny compared to the original 1970's technology tube camera that went into this housing, so is packed out and held in place with some old pipe insulation. I scratched the plexiglass front accidentally, but thankfully none of the scratches are through the tiny area where the lens is looking out. You can see the ring of bright white LEDs around the edge and some of the epoxy that's leaked through, but the light they give off seems plenty bright enough and the camera seem to work find in total darkness with just these LEDs, so I guess they'll do the job. I'm just hoping all the seals are OK, I used silicone grease, fitted new O rings and tightened the lens and the connector up really tight, so fingers crossed it won't leak. The same goes for my cable splice, I split the outer cable sheath to get at the cores needed to draw 12V out for the LEDs and used a hot melt underwater cable splice kit and I've never had a problem using these hot melt heat shrink underwater connections before, in fact I prefer the to the cast resin box ones, mainly because they are quicker to make.

Here's a final view of the rig, waiting to get loaded in my car and taken over to the new house to check out the well tomorrow:



If it shows that the well is clear of sand and shallower than the spec (I paid for a 65m well, by the metre, drilled, lined and packed, with the Grundfos SQ1-65 pump fitted, wired and plumbed) then I'm going to see what I can do about getting some money back from the drillers. It may show that there is some other hard obstruction at around the 55 to 57m point, or it may show that there is really hard packed sand there still (although I find that hard to believe given the evidence of some of the "blow job" photos in an earlier post, where the air line was pushed really hard to the apparent bottom of the well).

Whatever happens I should, if this kit works, get home tomorrow night with a better idea of what is down my well, where the slotted liner section is located and what the overall depth ism, as well as if there are any major problems down there. My money is on finding a pretty clean well, with just a bit of residual sand and either the bottom of the well being shallower than specced (and paid for) or there being an obstruction down there.

Should be fun tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to doing this!
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
OK, so I ran the camera down the well yesterday and had a problem (which I've fixed last night) but did get some very useful information (Oh, and the home-made lash-up camera works well!).

First off, when I made up the light ring to fit around the camera I forgot about the internal bore size of the well. The well liner is 125mm OD, 115mm ID and I made that light ring 110mm Whoops..................

So, being just 5mm smaller means it fits (when the pipe is nice and round) but there is only 2.5mm clearance around the edge, so it works like a piston in a cylinder and has to push all the water in front of it up around the side and through the narrow slot. This meant it took 15 minutes to sink to 49m, as deep as I could get it.

Now, the billed spec on the invoice for this well says it was drilled and lined to 70m and I was charged the equivalent of around $150 per metre for that, plus mobilisation charges, charges for the pump, pipe, cable, pressure switch etc. The billed spec on the invoice also says that the slotted liner was 12m long, so should have started at around 58m down. I have another email from the drilling company where they say the slotted liner starts at 53m and the total lined depth is 65m, but that's not what it says on the bill.

We've consistently hit what we've felt was the bottom of the well at around 53 to 55m or so, which is way off the depth of well we were billed for.

Anyway, yesterday, the camera got down through the first 1 3/4 lengths of slotted liner before getting jammed. Here's some (boring as hell!) photo stills from the video:

First off, this is at around 44m down and is the camera approaching the joint between the smooth section of PVC liner and the first slotted section:


This is inside the first slotted section:


This the joint between the first and second slotted sections at around 47m down (all liner sections are 3m long, I believe, so around 10ft):


This is where the camera jammed in the hole, at pretty much spot on 49m down (I pulled the cable tight and measured it), part way down the second slotted liner section:


The camera diameter with the old lighting ring was 110mm, with the new lighting ring it's only 84mm, so I'm hoping it'll descend faster and get past the point where it jammed yesterday.

The fact that the first section of slotted liner is at 44m and there are supposed to be 4 off 3 metre section of it tell me the well total depth is likely to be 56m, right about where we've been bottoming out all the time!

Not sure how these images compare with the professional kit, but they look good enough to me to use to see any major issue. So far the whole liner down to 49m looks OK, with just a bit of rust staining, probably from when I've chlorinated the well to kill the bugs (the water has a lot of iron in it, so adding chlorine tends to cause the iron to turn from ferrous to ferric and make rust stains.

A quick question for the professionals here, does this look as you'd expect?
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Very many thanks for the kind words, I'm very grateful, especially as I'm sort of feeling my way in the dark here (literally, at times!).

Last night I modified the camera to make a new lighting rig, a smaller diameter ring of white LEDs, set in a pit of alloy bar more or less the same size as the camera. This meant cutting down to 9 LEDs, rather than 12, but that worked out fine. The real pain was that the onl;y bit of stock I had around was a length of 3 1/4" diameter 6082-T6 alloy bar (abou the same as US 6061-T6 spec) so I ended up machining 90% of it to swarf on my small Chinese lathe to make the new lighting ring, then drilling 9 holes on the milling machine and fitting and wiring 9 LEDs, with some epoxy resin poured in the back to make it watertight. It worked out OK, here's a photo of the modded camera, ready to do:



And another shot of it turned on, ready to go down the hole:



For reasons that have more to do with me making a case against the drilling company, I took loads of other photos, so here's one of the camera starting it's voyage down into the depths:


You can see how the LEDs light things up down there pretty well, for such small things. I'm impressed with the light from just 9 of these around the camera, they seem to do a pretty good job to me.

Now, blurry as it is, this is the money shot, it's the end cap screwed on to the last section of slotted liner, at 53m below surface (measured and double checked with a witness watching the measurement):



The target depth for this well was 55m (around 180ft) as that was the bottom of the aquifer (according to the hydrogeologist) . So, we had a quote from the drillers to drill to 55m, at 200mm (8" dia), then line with solid 125mm diameter (5") PVC liner down to 43m (around 141 ft) and fit 12m (around 40ft) of 0.5mm (around 20 thou) slotted liner at the bottom, with the lower 20m (~65ft) or so packed around the outside with crushed glass filter media and the rest of the space between there and the surface (around 115ft) sealed between the solid PVC liner and the drilled bore by being filled with Bentonite as a sanitary seal to prevent surface water running down the side of the liner.

The drillers had a whole host of problems, from rigs breaking down, hydraulics failing, spares taking weeks to arrive from Italy, you name it. This was a new house build and they were supposed to be on site for a week, but ended up there for 6 weeks, causing us overrun costs and generally being a pain in the backside.

I had some sympathy with their rig problems, shit happens and I just took it on the chin (or in my pocket) and worked through the problems and delays with them, as they seemed a bit unlucky. They were supposed to leave me with a standpipe, connected to a small (8 litre) pressure tank and switch, that we could hook up and use as a site water supply for mixing concrete, washing stuff down etc whilst we built our new house.

After they had fitted the bloody expensive Grundfos SQ1-65 pump etc, I tried to test the standpipe and blew the breaker. It turned out they'd fitted the pressure switch in the well pit, together with the small pressure tank, but with no drain, so the well pit had filled with rain water. They'd left the plastic cover off the pressure switch the bit that covers the spring and electrical connections, and covered it with a plastic bag (I never found it, so presume they never fitted it). This was all under 6" of water in the well head pit, which is why the breaker had blown.

I was still feeling benevolent towards these guys, as they'd been on site for weeks, and despite having had to charge me extra for drilling to 70m and adding another 15m of liner to get water (!), they'd still lost money on the job because of all the problems they'd had, si I didn't get them to fix this, but did a proper job myself. I removed all their crap, built an above ground cabinet and fitted a new pressure switch etc. The thing short cycled, so I checked the pre-charge in the small pressure tank and found it was full of water on both sides. I checked the date and the thing was made in 2004, so these bastards had fitted a 10 year old broken pressure tank and charged me for a new one. Still I took it on the chin, fitted a new 100 litre tank, new pressure switch and we had a site water supply.

It was never great, often chucking out sand, so after we'd finished the build I decided to check out the well and pump. The pump was set 45m down the (supposed) 70m well, so I fist thought I'd drop it to the bottom and try and pump out the sand. I extended the pipe and cable and was surprised that the pump only dropped about 7.5m before hitting what seemed to be a hard bottom. This would make the well bottom around 52.5m down. I called the drillers, explained the problem and they said the problem was with packed sand and to leave the pump running for two weeks non stop on the bottom to clear it. I questioned this, as I was worried about damaging this pretty expensive Grundfos pump by sucking sand through it. THe drillers confirmed in writing that it'd be fine and was what they always did,

After two week the pump was still stuck at the same place and hadn't gone down an inch. The drillers said they could come out with a big compressor and air lift the hole, maybe a day's work and around $800 equivalent with taxes. They came out, stuck lengths of 1" PVC pipe down and a small 5/16 air line and basically didn't shift anything. After three hours I rang their boss and told him to get them off site, as they weren't doing anything useful and clearly hadn't got a clue. We agreed I'd pay him another $500 equivalent for their time, even though they hadn't done anything useful. They did confirm that there air lift pipe was at 53m down, though.

Next there is the sage above, where I made an air lifter, cleared some stuff, but still couldn't get below 53m. I got back to the driller, he's adamant that his invoice with 70m drilled, 70m lined, lower 12m fitted with slotted liner, is correct.

I've now proven, beyond any doubt at all that this well is 53m deep, and now pretty clean.

Next stage is to post the camera video on to YouTube (as you can measure depth off it just by counting liner joints) and send him the link, together with copies on his invoices, statements regarding the need for airlifting to clear below 53m and the fact he billed me extra to drill from the planned 55m to the final depth of 70m, etc.

He's getting one opportunity to put this right with a refund of some of the costs, then he gets sued and his name gets put on the YouTube video and gets copied to all the UK builder and developers web sites who might want to use his companies services.

Luckily we have a small claims court system set up to deal with rip-off merchants like this, and I have all the evidence in the form of letters, emails, invoices, cheques paid and the video and photos, to prove that he's lied to me in order to extort additional funds. If he refuses to settle, then as well as getting named and shamed he'll get sued. As you can probably guess, I am not a happy bunny, as this drilling company is about to find out.....................
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Sadly that's the only one I had, otherwise I'd gladly let you have one for free. I did have two, but gave the second one away to a diver friend who wanted to make a really powerful underwater torch some year ago.

It's not too difficult a thing for a machine shop, or home machinist, to make from scratch, with the exception of the bit of thick, polished and curved plexiglass at the front. That is just sealed with an O ring, but the shape of it is probably critical to make sure it doesn't introduce distortion.


Making a small camera like this should be straightforward, using a bit of thick wall alloy tube and some machined up alloy ends with O rings, and it may work with just a flat bit of thick plexiglass, as these tiny reversing cameras have a small diameter wide angle lens that may well look through a flat window OK. The camera I used came from ebay (it was one of these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IR-LED-Ni...478?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item35c60474b6 ) and I removed the IR LED ring, as they just reflected back inside the plexiglass - the lights have to be on the outside for the camera to work OK underwater.

The glass front of that camera may be good for the sort of pressure in a borehole, so one thing you might experiment with would be to take one of those cameras apart (the front unscrews, but there is sealant on the thread that makes it had to unscrew from the threaded barrel), remove the IR LED ring and snip the wires feeding it (this is what I did with mine) and put the camera back together. Slide the camera inside a linger bit of tube, get a length of underwater cable with power cores and a coaxial core for video and make up the connections to the camera wires, stuff them inside the tube behind the camera, seal the camera front to the tube with tape and then pour in wire sealing resin in the back. Leave a couple of 12V leads coming out for an LED ring. Get a camera that doesn't have the guide lines on the screen, although there is a guide here: as to how to get rid of the lines on these cameras: http://www.instructables.com/id/Modifying-120deg-viewing-angle-infrared-rear-view-/

With luck you might be able to make a camera that works OK at depth using just the glass lens it comes with and a load of sealant around the casing and cables. with you're own lights around the outside, that's smaller than mine. If I hadn't had the housing with the underwater cable that's what I'd have tried. Nothing much wasted it it didn't work, as the camera was cheap enough. The hard part might be getting a long length of pretty tough multicore cable, but I think that the CCTV guys use stuff like this for wiring up outdoor security systems, so may be worth a try,

Good luck if you try it, I'm pleased with the job mine's done. With luck it'll win me a few thousand dollars back in over-charging from the drilling company!
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
BTW, if anyone is really bored, here's the video of the camera going down the whole 53m (around 174 feet) depth of our well:

The resting water level is 4m down (around 13 feet) down, so the first part has the glare of the LEDs lights shining back up from the water surface. It takes a time after the camera gets in the water for the image to stabilise and the light levels to adjust within the camera, but things like the joints in the liner every 3m (~10ft) are easy to spot and if you look closely towards the end you can make out the slots in the slotted section of the liner.
 

Reach4

Well-Known Member
Messages
38,796
Reaction score
4,413
Points
113
Location
IL
I saw some floaters starting at 2:29.
What I did not see is greensand. You did a really fine job of cleaning that out. I hope that bigger pieces have been built up outside the slots that will minimize future greensand.

For sanitizing, you can get chlorine pellets that sink all of the way to the bottom. That way you can chlorinate below the pump better.
 

Jeremy Harris

Member
Messages
47
Reaction score
10
Points
8
Location
United Kingdom
Thanks for the kind words. Do you know what the "floaters" are? I'm guessing some sort of bacterial growth, as the well has had some dirty pipes and a lot of air chucked down it over the past week or so, and I remember getting some sort of iron bacteria slime stuff when we first cleaned the well out a year or so ago.

I have some of those chlorine tablets, the hard ones maybe 1 1/4" in diameter and 3/4" thick, are those the ones you'd recommend?

Sounds good to clean right down to the bottom; every time I've cleaned the well by just using bleach and pumping it around I've never been too confident that I've got the whole well clean. Having said that, after I shocked it a year ago it has been fine, with nothing showing up in any tests, but then I've not put anything back down into the well since then, either, and I guess it's near-impossible to put lengths of pipe, compressed air etc down a well without getting bacteria in there,
 
Top
Hey, wait a minute.

This is awkward, but...

It looks like you're using an ad blocker. We get it, but (1) terrylove.com can't live without ads, and (2) ad blockers can cause issues with videos and comments. If you'd like to support the site, please allow ads.

If any particular ad is your REASON for blocking ads, please let us know. We might be able to do something about it. Thanks.
I've Disabled AdBlock    No Thanks