Have you thought of digging a well?

This page has been contributed by Neil Maclennan. Note his final comment (about it being fun). He is clearly touting for opportunities to dig yet more wells. I'm sure you can oblige him.

Before we get into Neil's piece, a couple of people have commented that a hole that deep should be shored up with planking. They have a very valid point. All three of us (Neil, Jonathan and Joe) were wary of the dangers of the hole collapsing upon us. We all felt that our hole, in the soil conditions pertaining at the time, was very unlikely to fall in on us. I'm not sure I'd like to do it when the soil is very wet, and so much less stable, though. The point is, if you decide to have a go at well digging, you should consider the danger of a possible collapse of the soil around the hole, and shore it up if you think it necessary. For a bit of light relief, here's a link to a video about well building on youtube. And now for Neil's piece:

Now is the ideal time (3 August 2010) to dig a well with the water table being at a very low level. Jonathan & I, with the invaluable help of Joe, have just dug 1 on my plot. We were somewhat daunted by the idea & worried that there would not be enough water but in the event we seem to have a very good well with lots of water, even in this dry spell.

The way we did it was to go in from the side with steps down to about half the estimated final depth of the well, which in our case was 3 recycled plastic agave syrup barrels stacked 1 above the other. I think wells need to be 3 barrels deep on our allotments if they are not to dry out when you really need them. You have to keep digging until you are standing in 60-80cm of water. Digging through the topsoil, old tip subsoil & clay proved to be very straight forward but it got a bit harder once we hit the river gravel & water. Gravel tends to flow in from the side as soon as you remove it. We got round this by digging inside half a barrel, pushing down the barrel as we removed gravel from inside it. Space is limited by the diameter of the well hole but the side extension makes digging & soil removal a lot easier. It helps to have short-handles tools when you are in confined space at the bottom of the well. You also need a bucket & something that you can scoop the sand & gravel out with. It is a wet & muddy business but great fun.