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.....................