Terry Stokka has lived in Black Forest for 29 years. He is president of the Friends of Black Forest, chairman of the Black Forest Land Use Committee and chairman of the Black Forest Water & Wells Committee.
Disclaimer: This column does not necessarily represent the views of The New Falcon Herald.
Guess what exciting thing I did last week?
By Terry Stokka
For most of you, drilling a well is probably as exciting as a toothache or watching paint dry. As chairman of the Black Forest Water & Wells Committee (https://www.blackforestwater.org.), that topic is of interest to me. If you have a private well, you probably don’t lose any sleep wondering if you will have water in the morning.
Those of us with wells enjoy clear, pure water without concerns about chlorine, forever chemicals or bad taste. But how does that water get to your faucet from deep in the ground?
Last week, I watched a crew drill a new well for my neighbor. The actual drilling took two days and the remaining day of work will install the pump. I want to thank Ross, Josh, Garrett and Emelio from Kunau Drilling for allowing me to observe, and I apologize if my 100 questions interfered with their work.
They arrived with a huge drilling rig, a water truck, a truck with a water/bentonite mix, a truck with pea gravel, a truck with a welder and a trailer hauling a skid loader. The drilling rig was a 40-foot vertical derrick that held the drilling pipes while they drilled down. The drill pipes screwed together one by one as the 6-inch bit went deeper and deeper. The bentonite mixture was pumped through the nose of the drill bit to flush the cuttings up to the surface and clean out the hole. The well permit allowed the well to be up to 560 feet deep so the drilling operation took 28 cycles of adding a new drill pipe to get to the bottom. The rig operator held a screen under the cuttings every so often to see what was being pumped out of the hole and took notes to indicate gravel, sand or clay (several different colors and kinds). That information would later go on the drill log to register the well.
After several hours of drilling, they were at the bottom and it was time to remove the drill pipes so 28 drill pipe sections were removed one at a time. Then a larger 8-inch bit drilled down 42 feet to install a steel pipe that would protect the well at the surface and below. That pipe was surrounded by concrete before the crew left for the day.
The next morning, the crew cleaned out the hole once more so they connected 28 drill pipe sections one at a time to drill all the way to the bottom while the bentonite mix flushed out sediment and drill cuttings. By this time, they had been to the bottom twice and had connected and disconnected the drill pipes 112 times. I was impressed with their efficiency and teamwork, as they worked like a finely tuned machine.
Next, they placed the casing into the hole. The 4-inch PVC casing was glued and screwed together as they put the 20-foot sections together, which added 28 more connections to the mix. The bottom 400 feet of casing was perforated with tiny slots to allow the water to flow in and feed the pump. In order to minimize sediment and clay from coming into the pipe, they dribbled pea gravel into the hole around the PVC casing a little at a time so it would fall all the way to the bottom and surround the pipe. Garrett got the not-so-enviable job of shoveling the gravel into a hopper that trickled the gravel out over a five-hour span. Not very stimulating but it had to be done that way — sort of like watching grass grow.
In a few days, another crew will install a 70-pound cylindrical pump to pump that water to the surface in a 1-inch PVC pipe from 500 feet down. Then a plumber takes it from there to connect the PVC pipe through the steel pipe and dig a trench below the frost line to the house.
How much did this project cost? I don’t have the exact figure but I estimate about $30,000 to $35,000. Considering the manpower, equipment, man-hours and knowledge required, it clearly is a job for experts. We don’t think about that when we turn on the faucet but maybe from now on we can all be more appreciative that experts and equipment exist to bring that clean, safe water to our homes.
