No local well drillers around can give any info on what to expect on depths for these types of wells.

ARCGIS has some interesting online maps, and their maps for "Water Table Depth - Annual - Minimum" suggest that my water table is approx 100cm below earth's surface. I dont see how this is possible. In fact I think their maps are completely flawed - lots of central alabama is listed as water table from 0 - 25cm deep.

Are there any other sources I can go to in order to see if a sandpoint is appropriate for my area? I have nice prairie soil, shouldnt be too hard to dig at all. Should I just go down to 25ft and if it produces nothing just write it off?

Im in central Alabama, in a town particularly proud of its wells, (but not sure if they are aquifiers or shallows) at that.

 

Welcome to the forums.

I would think that the best source of information would be found in the town itself. If everyone has wells.... someone must have the information.

 

Well its all deep aquafier wells, local drillers dont knowcor arent saying, i guess they could lose business. Or it could be there is no shallow well capability in this area.

 

Augering now. First 7 ft was super easy, 30 min. Easy topsoil. Then hit clay and this is very tough work. Really hard clay. Pulling up what looks like really big pencil shavings 10 ft of this clay so far and taking a break. Getting a little worried that ill suffer through just clay till 25 ft deep. That will suck. This is very hard. Even have a good helper and its still long and hard. One layer of the clay was all white for nearly a foot now its back to red and white again

 

Is that really how they express those depths ?

100cm is exactly 1 Meter . . . . or 39 inches +/- !

And 25 cm is basically just shy of 10" !

That sounds like swamp land.

I can see why you might think their maps are flawed. What's the URL that you're referencing ?

 

This maybe a reason there are no shallow wells.

 

definitely not swampy here at all. http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/vi...2376c63c956ca6 and then just plug in "prattville, al" into the search box.

i did auger to 21ft and stopped for the night. next day water level was 15 ft below ground. so there was 7ft of water in the 6" column. so there was 4 ft of water abouve the 3ft sandpoint. it was all muddy and we quickly pumped it dry before it cleared up. no sand there all just muddy clay. my uncle who was helping swears the last 2 auger payloads were turning more and more sandy but it just looked like wet wet mud to me.

 

Your at the wrong site...

You need to find the test wells in your area and find out what aquafir is in your area..

Dont have time to look now but here is a start..

This test well is 26 ft...

USGS Current Conditions for USGS 343843085403201 DEKALB-1

 

USGS -- Groundwater Watch

Well test heads.....

Now I am looking for aquafiers

 

ok thanks for this ill see if i can figure somethuing out on the maps. but this weekend we will pro try to see how far down we can drive the wellpoint and see if there is anything down there below this wet mud. not giving up yet.

EDIT: ugh there is only 1 well in the database for my county, nowhere close to me, its a 200ft+ well too

 

Decided to pump it dry again. this time no mud! wasnt crystal clear, but definitely NOTHING like it was last sat. had a slight tan (not even brown) tint to it, i guess thats sand? This time got about 3 mop buckets of water before I jheard the sandpoint sucking from its top holes down at the bottom so i stopped pumping. I guess this weekend we will pump it dry as we can and continue augering so as to get as much water on top of the sandpoint as possible. will prep some 4"casing as well and get a few bags of small rocks to pack the outside of the casing. i guess ill also get a foot/check valve to use to keep my prime, and will also prob convert to all PVC and save this galv pipe for if i ever do another one and it requires driving.

Did I just get lucky? we did get a good bit of rain about 3 days ago though. later, i went back again today after nearly pumping it dry and did another round, still no mud,

OK and now its the next day and still no mud, its cloudy though, and still not much volume.

I guess ill just be happy with this!

 

so we pumped it dry and dug a bit more. its definitely wet sand im pulling up. then we drove the sandpoint in about 4 ft. so theres about a foot of wet sand above the sandpoint, and about 8 ft of water on top of that. then 15ft of air up to the surface.

So we filled the water pipe with water a few times and tried pumping. nothing. eventually the water slowy leaks out. we do this a few times, and finally get to the point we cannot keep water in the pipe, it drains out below.

but we stilll cannot pump water up. everything was VERY tight, so im sure there is no air in the system. i guess the sandpoint is just allowing the water to drain, but when it tries to pump water, it sucks all the sand into itself, clogging itself? is this a feasable explanation? or is something else going on?

from the bottom of the handpump to the top of the water level is 19ft.

 

You will need to continue your well point to the impervious layer (clay) below the sand. This is the idea area to start pumping. I don't know what size well point you have used but the smaller the well the less volume of water you have to pump. The sand is pervious and any water you add will go out into the sand layer.

 

its a 3ft x 1.25" sandpoint. im trying to get it deeper, but I thought I needed to get it into some coarse sand with less clay?

 

Again, you need to get down to an impervious layer to get the water to stay in the well. The impervious layer is like the bottom of a pail. If the bottom leaks the water won't stay in. Clay or bedrock will be the bottom of the aquifer.