Another dry well question.. BIL has a 650 ft dry well in mts of NC. Top 50 ft is cased. Entire well is 6″ dia. By dry, I mean it oozed about a quart of water in 24 hrs. Been hydrofractured, to no avail. I suggested a stick of dynamite w/ a long fuze, done by the light of a new moon at about 3 AM.
I recall that we had a thread on this subj about a yr ago. How much dynamite would it take to crack open the bottom of this dry hole? My guess is about 1/2 lb. There will be water in the well now; about 600 feet of it, so it should generate a good shock wave and crack some bedrock. Probably send a jet like “Old Faithful” aloft, too. Face it, any good ol’ boy farmer worth his salt can get the materials. We aren’t talking enough to start a small war.
Don
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That's odd..I was in them mts. all last summer..well, ten yrs. and it was the wettest summer most ever saw there..
maybe the bottom fell out lower down slope? neighbors drill recently?
there were some bad dry spells the 3 summers before..but last yr. sure made up for it..
Blast away..see what gives, can't get too much worse..
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I went 805' in them thar mountains and was maybe 1/2 gpm. Too many neighbors ready to claim my tnt ruined their house, so we didn't do it. Used it for ground source heat pump vertical loop instead.
It's a good thing you were able to put that expensive hole to good use. I'm curious about how it has worked out- do you know how hot the water is that far down, and any idea how much your heat pump costs to operate?
It's worked "well" for us. If run 24/7, our 4 ton GSHP would add about $100/mo to our electric bill. I think the deep ground temp around here is 59 or so.
A bit of terminology: I'd say you have a "well that come up dry". Whereas a "drywell" is intentionally above the water table and used to dispose of liquids.
I know people who used dynamite to save money on casing. Buy regular pipe and send a nail- and shrapnel-packed charge down the hole to the water-bearing depths. BOOM! Creating perforated pipe in those locations.
You can fracture with explosives (if you can get them) or "hydrofact" (pretty common) or "pneumo-fract" but in either of the latter it takes a really big water- or air-pump to crack the rock formation. Not you 1 hp pancake compressor!
However you fracture, you are hoping the radiating cracks happen to intersect a water-bearing crack. A bit of crap shoot. But after buying a 650-foot hole, it is probably worth a few bucks to bust things up a bit.
David: Gotcha on the terminology. The worst "Drywell I know of was at Newport Army Ammo Plant in Newport, IN. Went down a looooong way. Used to dispose of messy waste from chemical mfg. They came up w/ a fairly decent correlation between earthquake occurence & pumping activity, so closed it down.
This one did not "Go dry." It was dry from the day it was bored three yrs ago. Only 650 ft, so Cloud has trhe local record.
DonThe GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
David: This well was hydrofractured and generated absolutely nothing. Bubba, the fracture rat, scratched his head & allowed as how he'd never seen one that didn't work! Collected his fee & disappeared into the hills.
DonThe GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
This well was hydrofractured and generated absolutely nothing.
That happens sometimes. Maybe just too far from a water-bearing crack. Or the rock was too strong.
Bubba collected his fee & disappeared into the hills.
Ah, the advantage of a performance-based contract! i.e. 5 gpm by pump test and the fee is $2,000. 10 gpm by pump test and the fee is $3,000, etc. 0 gpm and the fee is $0. Helps Bubba decide to not skrimp on the explosive or pump. And doesn't leave you paying for a service that had no value.
David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Edited 4/19/2004 12:05 pm ET by David Thomas
David: This well is only a matter of a hundred feet or so from a reasonably decent producing well. Only one neighbor, so a blast like an elephant breaking wind wouldn't be noticed. Only problem would be destroying the neighbor well. My BiL wasn't aware of the problems w/ well drilling in the mts. He's from Miami, FLA, & the water table is at 3 feet; potable water at less than 50 ft. We, OTOH, are living in the mts of Nawth Jawja, & I did some research before starting and selected my driller based on a guarantee of water/ hydrofracture producing water or no fee. Went 450 ft, got water w/o hydrofracture. No sweat.
As a side issue, you can get some interesting coupling into rock strata that carries for tens of miles then surfaces and no one has any idea where the source of the blast is/was. I have witnessed it occurring at a distance of 35 miles when I was on the hearing end and people I knew were on the blasting end and we were on the phone together. The shock wave is capable of breaking windows under the right circumstances. I've also witnessed 3800lb of nitro glycerine detonate in a mfg facility at ten miles range and do tremendous damage at that range. Not pretty.
DonThe GlassMasterworks - If it scratches, I etch it!
Yeah, vibrations can be wierd. House burned down 1.25 miles away and the dog and I felt it when it collapsed! Like a mini earthquake. I think the effect was heightened by the frozen ground. Like I was an ant on a drum-head during a rum-tum-tum.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska