Sand Point installation question

[wer83]

Good day all, longtime listener, first time caller.

I live in north central Florida and I have been wanting to wash down my own shallow well for some time to use as irrigation (and also in case of emergency during severe weather for toilet flushing, etc.). Anyway, I've read a number of threads here on the forum, as well as read everything I could https://drillyourownwell.com/. Today I decided to give it a go, but decided to use a 1" "exploratory" pipe just to see if I could figure out where the water table is and if this would even work or be worth the effort. Hooked up my drill head, got up on the bed of my truck, flipped the hoses on and man that 10ft stick of 1" PVC tore into the ground like a hot knife through butter. At about 5 feet the color of sand boiling up around the base of the pipe changed color dramatically, and at 6 feet, the "well" started drinking all the water I could pump at it (must have been 15gpm+ with the two hoses.) I continued working it into the ground, eventually getting another ~3 feet in before I just couldn't get it to budge any further down. After doing this for roughly 25 minutes I cut the water off and took off the drill head and got a tape measure just to see what I had. From surface to bottom is just over 9 feet and I hit water at exactly 6 feet. An hour later when I measured again the level was 6 feet 2 inches before hitting water.

I guess I have 2 questions for the honorable experts here:

1. Based on what I've read and seen, it would appear that I have indeed hit water at 6 feet. However my mind is having a hard time believing that there is actually water that shallow. Is this fools gold?
2. I realize I'm going to have to get deeper when I put in my actual production well in order for this to be usable at all (3 feet of water isn't going to cut it) but is it possible to use this "wash down" method with hoses when the sand seems able to "drink" the water at a higher volume than I can push and thus no mud being pushed up to the surface?

 

[Valveman]

When you lose circulation back to the surface, the bit is probably not going much deeper. A well that will take water will usually make water. So, yes you probably have water at 6'. Getting deeper to have some submergence for the pump or footvalve is the problem. Might be best to just drive a sand point.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[wer83]

So part 2:
I pulled the casing up. I had followed Bill Granade's tip here https://drillyourownwell.com/more-from-bill/ and instead of cutting teeth into my PVC I put a 45 degree bevel on the end. I believe this may have not been ideal. I cut teeth into the end on my second attempt and moved a foot over and started another one. Same sort of deal in that the first 5-6 feet went down in about 45 seconds. Then it got difficult but this time, it did not "drink" any water and continued to boil up mud around the base. I continued to work down and around 17 feet all of a sudden it became like cutting butter again and i ran through nearly 10 feet in a couple of minutes, then it got hard again. Once I "punctured" this last hard bit I have no idea what happened but the pipe just started nearly drilling itself and all the water boiling up to the surface stopped and it started receeding as if it was in a free fall and it sounded almost as if there was suction on it, once it had gone all the way down I heard what almost sounded like gurgling at the base and pipe just once again continued to drink all the water I could give it. At this point I'm down about 35 feet and out of pipe so I cut off the water and removed my drill head. Unfortunately ran out of daylight but I'll drop a string down tomorrow and see. I'm cautiously optimistic that I'm going to find good results.

The last bits of sand that washed up before were almost white, extremely fine, and have almost a "slippery" characteristic if that makes any sense.

EDIT: I couldn't wait so I went out with my high tech string with a nut tied on the end of it and dropped it in. Bottomed out at 34 feet deep, had water at the 7 foot mark. I would take this to be favorable.