Driven Point Wells for Dummies

Well head with hand pump

Ahhh, the pastoral life: living off the grid and not depending on any gummint or corporation to provide your necessities. You can shoot your own meat, generate your own power, and grow your own 'taters. What else do you need, huh? Oh, yeah – you need water. So let's skip on over to that font of all human knowledge, eHow.com, to figure out how to get water. We've heard that the easiest way is to use a sandpoint or driven point well. But how to dig one? Let's let one of the anonymous morons of eHow.com's early days "inform" us on "How to Drill a Driven Point Well." The post's now at SFGate.com, where it's been attributed to the "Hunker Team" (suggesting that it passed through Hunker.com on the way there),

Of course, this being eHow, said moron must first tell us what a driven point well is and why they work (as far as he or she knows, that is):

"If you are located in an area where the land subsurface is sandy and the water table is within 10 to 25 feet of the surface, you can drill a driven point (sandy point [sic]) well. It is the easiest and the least expensive method of obtaining well water; however, most pumps can only effectively lift water down to 25 feet because the volume of water being pumped continually drops as you go deeper."

"Land subsurface"? Don't you mean "soil," oh anonymous one? And no, a pump at the surface can lift water as much as 150 feet, depending on the diameter of the casing (i.e., well pipe) and the pump design. That 25-foot maximum depth seems to be a tenet of faith among eHowians, though people who know more than jack like to use 80 feet as a rule of thumb instead.

Not only is anonymous ignorant of wells and the drilling of wells, he's also grammatically-challenged. Consider this sparkling prose about how to start your well:

"Use the post hole digger to augur [sic] a starter hole where you want the well to be located. The hole only has to be 3 to 4 feet deep before you can start driving pipe down."

Well, you might use a powered auger to dig the initial hole, though the tool generally known as a "post-hole digger" isn't based on a screw, it's a clamshell type affair that's muscle-powered. You probably want a power auger if you plan on digging a four-foot diameter hole, though. As for "auguring" a hole, anonymous probably didn't mean predict one – he meant dig one. Dumbass.  Anonymous also says to "Drive the point with a sledge hammer..." Again, no: you drive a well with a slide hammer, much like you'd pound in a fence post. Using a sledge hammer (we can see where anonymous confused them: "sl_d_ hammer") is a good way to drive the well (or fence post) crooked, since the force is usually delivered at an angle.

No, anonymous doesn't know jack about wells; he or she just reworded something from elsewhere; in the process munging it up. That's why the anonymous eHow contributor is the proud recipient of the Dumbass of the Day award. Feel free to leave a comment, anonymous, and we'll engrave your name on it...

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