[AT] Antique well, but maybe not antique technique?

Mark Greer markagreer at embarqmail.com
Fri Sep 23 21:30:09 PDT 2011


By rollover plow do you mean one that you can plow one direction (north) across a field, turn around at the end, flip the plow to use the other 4 moldboards, and come back the same furrow plowing the opposite (south) direction? I've heard them called a two-way plow here. 
Mark


----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Brians" <sales at heirloom-organic.com>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 8:35:35 PM
Subject: [AT] Antique well, but maybe not antique technique?

Today we had excitement at the new leases. I asked the semi-local well video
specialist to come out again to try one last technique on the irrigation
well that has not been cooperating. This 10" diameter irrigation well is an
artesian well, but it was only receiving about 50 gallons per minute into
the bore throught the casing perforations. In our area this is TERRIBLE as
it should have been receiving at least 800-1000GPM of infiltration if all
was proper. The problem is that the iron bacteria plugged up the torch cut
perforations. The well was probably drilled in the 1950s as far as we can
determine and it was not pumped for over 20 years.
     This situation has been completely frustrating because we tried two
techniques to solve the water flow issue. The first technique was called
brushing. This involves placing giant steel "brushes" made out of steel
cable stranded out into something like a bottlebrush and scrubbing up and
down repeatedly (in this case for almost 100' of the casing). Unfortunately
this did not increase the 50gpm that was flowing into the well. Then we made
a tool out of pipe, an old used and then cutdown cutdown disk harrow blade
and some braces, which I attached to 200' of firehose. We connected this to
the PTO pump and proceeded to use it to apply 85-90PSI water blasting to the
sides of the casing. Think shooting a garden hose into the center of a wok
and the water then shooting out from the circumference of the wok. We then
proceeded to drop the hose into the well and blast the inner walls of the
casing. This was partly successful. The flow from the well increased from
the 50GPM to maybe about 200GPM. But that was insufficient to be able to
operate my irrigation pump that requires a minimum of 600gpm to operate
efficiently and to allow irrigating the about 35 acres of sandy loam that
needs to be growing vegetables.
     So after further consultation with my pump contractor and re-viewing of
the well video, we get to today's activities. The Video specialist came out
with his fan and set blasting caps with fuse line in the well. The first
explosion was electrically ignited and we felt it through the ground and
heard a modest BOOM. It then stirred up the sediment in the bottom of the
well, and lo and behold the artesian water flow all of a sudden started
roiling out of the well into the pond surrounding the well and we had a lot
of water up out of the top of the well, increasing slightly during the first
two or three minutes after the explosion. Hmm, looks like 500 gallons a
minute coming up! Does Grant want to have a second explosive detonated in
the well in the other 40-50 feet of perforations? Yup, you bet!!!
     Then they set the second charge to apply force to the rest of the
perforated area in the casing. Another modest BOOM with a jolt through the
ground and then Eureka! The water started flowing up at easily twice the
rate it had just seconds before and it was obvious from the color and makeup
of the water that no damage had been done to the casing of the well! Hot dog
that made us feel terrific unlike the old Wanda Jackson song lyric - hot dog
that made me mad! Yippee! Now to make completely sure. I dropped the suction
into the well while it was flowing this large amount of water out of the
well thanks to the artesian water pressure. Then I primed the Berkeley PTO
centrifugal pump, since after all they nearly always need it even if the
total distance to water was less than 1 foot, and fired up the tractor. Sure
enough, nearly 900gpm and no drop in the level of the water.
     So if I had done what made sense to me immediately, then we would have
had water much sooner and at less expense. Now we need to start madly
irrigating and plow the ground to plant post haste for a crop there before
the mid-winter floods on those fields. But it sure feels good having enough
water available finally there to grow our next crop.
               Grant Brians
               Hollister, California vegetable, nuts and fruit farmer
p.s. Today or tomorrow I need to go pick up the two "new" plows I agreed to
buy yesterday. They are 1960's models probably, one is an Allis-Chalmers
model 800 rollover plow with 4 bottoms and the other is an International
rollover plow also with 4 bottoms. Of course when I say 4 bottoms I mean 4
bottoms go in the soil at one time, the actual numbre of plowshares in each
unit is 8!

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