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

[Dave Rotigel]

Additionally some of them can go east and west as well! (That, however, may simply be due to the knowledge of the operator and not the design of the plow!)
	Dave

On Sep 24, 2011, at 8:38 AM, charlie hill wrote:

> We call them rollover plows here in the southeast too.
> 
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Mark Greer
> Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 12:30 AM
> To: Antique tractor email discussion group
> Subject: Re: [AT] Antique well, but maybe not antique technique?
> 
> 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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