Thursday, February 26, 2009

Add Water, Mix Well

On Thursday, we went to have a look at a well we’re digging. We don’t know whether there’s water here. This is a test well. The stake on the right side of the frame marks the corner of the property.

I actually had to explain to a friend what the water could be used for.

Some activities just go better with water.

Water is also good for farming. After a long detour, we came around to a different site where we have another well out for maintenance.

To get the water out of a well, you nest several diameters of pipe, each with a specific purpose. This pipe and shaft has all been taken out of the well (which itself is a long pipe sticking straight down into the ground), while we run a camera down the well and take a look at what shape its sides are in.

This is the column pipe that has come out of the well. The smooth sections of pipe hang in the well above the water level. The lengths with blisters and rust all sit below the water level in the well. At the bottom of all this pipe is a set of impellers attached to a shaft. When the shaft turns, the impellers send the water up to the surface.

The general idea is to run the water into one of these rigs, which then deposits the water in the field where the plants are. This one isn’t running right now, because we’re repairing the well.

We picked up a passenger who wanted to come down from the ranch to town for a while to visit family. We had received a phone call after leaving the first well site in the morning, to let us know that the test bore had struck water. So we stopped by again on our way out and back to civilization, to see what we could see.

2 comments:

Kangamoo said...
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Kangamoo said...

I had seen the picture of the boat in the desert, I had to laugh when I saw my uncle water skiing behind it. He knows what to do with a boat.