Hello, my friend and welcome back! HowToDrillAWell.com sent me a copy of their video on how to drill your own water well in your backyard and asked me to review it. Grab you a cup of coffee my friend and have a seat while we visit.
Seller & Price: The two disk video can be purchased from HowToDrillAWell.com for $29.95 .
Description: The DVD takes you step-by-step through the do it yourself drilling process from assembling the drilling rig all the way through to finishing your well! Drilling a well CAN be an easy, inexpensive process – even to someone without a great deal of technical know-how!
First impressions: At first look, the product looks very professional. It comes with a small booklet and a nice looking package with two CDs in it. The CDs appear to be professionally done and the artwork is very nice. I have high hopes for this video.
Testing Done: I read the booklet and watched both CDs.
PROS:
- The terragrinder system they present works, there are pictures on their site of people using it with success.
- The instructions are simple and easy to follow.
- It will show you how to drill a homemade diy water well and help you locate the materials and rigs needed to do so. You will need to rent a large commercial air compressor and about 200 feet of air hose if you don’t own them or have a buddy that does.
- You can purchase almost everything you need to do it, on their website.
CONS:
- You will also need a good water supply for running the drill. You could use portable tanks on a trailer for the water supply, if there is not any locally.
- You will need to have a drilling bit and air powered motor before you can start. These can also be purchased from their website as well.
- The CDs feel like they are an infomercial for their equipment and supplies.
- The person talking on the CDs keeps repeating things over and over.
Conclusion: If you have the stamina to make it through the CDs, you will learn a lot about drilling water well. It will still cost you upwards of about $800 to actually do it though and it will be a shallow well at that. But if you have no water at all…you may want to do that. You will need the help of several friends as well. This is not for the faint of heart and is a time consuming, grueling process, to say the least.
When I first started doing reviews, I promised to give an honest review of all products and that is still true today. If you need to drill a well, the terragrinder system is one option, but the seller needs to work on their video. It’s very hard to get through. For that reason, I’m giving this product three stars.
I must say that it pains me to give this such a low rating because it’s obvious that the seller tried hard to do a professional job of producing the disk. Yes, you can drill a well using their technique. I think I will hire a professional and pay the little difference for getting it done by someone else instead of this diy method… but that is just me.
Well, that is it for today and I hope you have enjoyed today’s Review and until next time, stay safe, stay strong, and stay prepared. God Bless America!
-Sarge-
A myriad of topographies of your clients, Sarge. In S-Florida, where the great swamp (Everglades) is a stones throw away, we go through several water tables to get good water; but then still need an aerator tank to remove the sulfur (smells like rotten eggs). The old timers and vacation-goers a hundred years ago used to flock to the mineral springs as it was believed to have healing properties. (Proven true personally.)
Thirty years ago, it was not uncommon for a single family well system to be 30-45 feet deep, but you would have to break through the limestone layer (old coral stone) that would be between 2 -8 feet thick. That one problem makes most DIY unobtainable. Below that is very clean and sterile earth. Most present wells are 100 to 140 feet deep now. But go down 800 feet and the water is brackish (partial salt water) unless you are able to tap into one of the underground rivers (thousands of them) that flow out of Georgia down through Florida and out into the Gulf of Mexico.
Our wells also require a start-out of around 8-inches; after boring through the limestone, a four-inch pipe travels downward from there, and a high-strength concrete slur is poured inside the 8-inch pipe, sealing off from water “cross-contamination” from one of the upper level(s).
One final note. Two-thirds of the municipality deep wells in our county are brackish. These are run through a sediment-type Reverse Osmosis. Very little chemical is needed to maintain purity and these sites are extremely protected from vandalism and foul play, (but never say never.)
So, the point is, in Florida, about half of the topographical would be acceptable to put a DIY in. Or, if you are a half-empty-cup kind of guy, about half of the land coverage would be impracticable or illegal (at this point) to put in yourself.
I guess you guys never heard of getting a BLOCK and TACKLE and pounding your well in. Mine is at 100 feet deep.
Yooper, lucky you. Even block and tackle isn’t feasible in my area since the average well is in the neighborhood of 500-600 feet deep and that doesn’t mean you have assurances it will be viable for any significant period.
IF I had the money, I’d put in a well and be able to have the kind of gardens and plants I’d like to have instead of an exorbitantly high water bill.
Thank you for your review. For me, I’d LOVE to have my own well but having one drilled will cost well north of $15K and that doesn’t include the tank or setting up the power supply off the grid.
Plus I’d still have to plumb it into my home via the same route present from the utility company. That part would be the “easy” part. But in my neck of the woods (Desert, actually) the water table is much (!!) deeper than 200 feet so something like this wouldn’t be feasible, no matter how much I’d like it to be.
All that aside, thank you for your honest opinion. You might help someone willing to put up with all the idiosyncrasies of the DVD and it may be advantageous for some to try this method.
I agree! 🙂
I have a video of me drilling a well in my backyard using a fence post auger and several extensions. I still drink water from it years later. It cost me all of 100 bucks.