alls well that ends well

so... what have I been doing with all my time, you ask? Well, besides working on some of the internal guts of my Mom's old(er) house... I've been helping out with the digging of our new (dug) well. How do you dig a dug well, you ask? You dig a dug well by digging with a digger that has dug many a dug well. Can you dig that? :)
Ok... sorry... totally uncalled for... but funny in my head, nonetheless!

Essentially this is an old school well... to match our old school country home... and it all starts with the witching of the well .... yup... you heard me... and here's a picture of our second "well witcher" (apparently the first one didn't do such a hot job...) So... here he is dowsing where the water veins might be...
He's using the latest technology... two pieces of wire (possibly from a coat hanger) with non-functional pocket watches at the ends (you can see them if you look closely). It's pretty neat how he pointed out and marked the different water veins (underground streams).
So after marking and then choosing the veins to dig. Oh, we ended up having to dig THREE holes! Third time definitely is definitely charming as we now have a well. Apparently we have too much sand and not enough clay as the walls kept collapsing as soon as we hit moisture.

These are pictures of the digging rig with G.M. at the helm. Mean lookin' auger, eh? So, to put you to sleep... we ended up putting the steel casing in the third one as soon as there was a hint of moisture. This kept the sides from collapsing but we took a risk that the steel would not go deeper if there was too much pressure from the collapsing sandy walls (now held back by the steel tube). BUT it worked and now we have a 26 foot well with currently 10 feet of water in it! YAY! So, that was essentially the last six or so weeks,. Oh there's more to the well than just digging and putting in the steel casing and the concrete tiles on top. We ended up movin' quite a bit of stone (think tiny tiny gravel) that went around the outside of the well... then G.M. climbed into the well to seal joints using a concrete mix and adding bentonite clay on the outside and then packing it with dirt. NOW comes the fun part of digging a trench for the piping to the house... oh did I mention that the well is about a 100 feet from the house with a drop of 70 feet! So, this involves diggin' a trench atleast 4 feet deep and bloody long and digging around the foundation to drill a hole to get it into the house! It definitely makes one appreciate the ease of city living... but at the end of it, we should have a great source of mineral rich (glacier, I was told) water.
So, wish me well! :) (all puns intended!)