The windmill won....

Well, (pun intended) I guess the windmill ended up winning the war after all.

It started off badly when I first looked down the well and it had caved in and was full to the rim with soft dirt. After a lot of effort (a couple hours) I ended up managing to get the hole re-opened by sticking a 1" pvc pipe into the soft dirt that had filled it in then moving up to a 2" pvc pipe and finally pouring some water into the hole. I was proud to have won the battle and got everything ready to get the mud out and get the windmill pumping water the next morning.

After an uneventful night (I didn't see any wildlife on this trip) I managed to muck out about 5 gallons of mud out of the bottom of the 30' well the next morning. The problem was that this is supposed to be a water well so water should have been flowing back in as I pulled the mud out. I thought maybe pouring some water down the well would get it started so I poured about 10 gallons of water into the well and proceeded to pull out about 10 gallons of muddy water. No water was flowing back into the hole! I waited about 30 minutes and there still wasn't any more water in the hole. 4 hours later and I still had a dry hole (there was still about 2' of mud in the bottom of the well) . Depending on how you look at it I either spent 3 weeks with nothing to show for it or I went quite a bit out of my way to get some exercise!

I'm not sure if the well was plugged before I started this whole ordeal or if through my comedy of errors and the hole filling up with dirt it ended up plugging the hole through that. I'm going to call some water well folks in the morning and see if they think there is a chance to renovate the well and get it to start producing water again. More than likely the most likely option is to just drill another well that will be cased and set up correctly for an electric pump so there will be no more need for a windmill.

I just happen to have a co-worker that had his windmill destroyed in a wind storm this year and I will see if he wants to help pitch in some on drilling my new well in exchange for my windmill.

Cathy and Eli are going to be visiting her parents this week, so I'm going to be home alone and I may be able to get back out there sometime again this week and will be trying my best to get things ready for hunting season. Dove season starts this Saturday!!