A PVC Sandpoint for Dummies

sandpoint well

We've noticed on many occasion that the self-appointed contributors to eHow (their contributions now moved to Leaf Group's family of niche sites) simply didn't get the point of the questions they were pretending to answer. Some of the more clueless among them not only missed the point, but got the point that they did address basically wrong. That's what happened with today's nominee, returning DotD¹ Alexander Callos, and his HomeSteady.com post "How to Make a Sand Point out of PVC."

Alexander's problem, much as it was the other four times he's shown up on this site, is that he had no idea what he was talking about. After all, he's the guy who thinks there are parts of a basketball called a "grip." We'll get Alexander's stupidity out of the way first. A PVC sandpoint is a perforated length of PVC pipe lined with a mesh screen. The point sits at the bottom of a driven well, within the aquifer, where it allows water to enter the wellbore but not soil or sediment. In reality, you probably can't make one, though you can buy them.

Callos didn't understand that at all. Instead, he seemed to think the OQ wanted to know how to drive a sandpoint well. To that end, he attempted to reword something he found online (he didn't cite whatever as a reference, suggesting it was probably a forum). The rewording by this journalism grad left a bit to be desired. Here are a few of his more foolish lines:

1. "Find a location in the soil, where it is especially sandy. This will be the location for the sand point." – Sorry, dumbass, the "sandy location" is supposed to be a subsurface zone, not a spot on the surface
2. "Pick up [a] post hole digger and push it firmly into the ground at the mark. Twist the handles and pull out some dirt. Dig at least 4 feet into the ground with the post hole digger." – You don't "Twist the handles" of a post-hole digger, idiot. We also had to laugh at the idea that you could dig a four-foot hole with a post-hole digger! Maybe an auger, but that's not what you said to use...
3. "Hammer [a ten-foot] pipe into the ground with a post driver... Attach a second steel pipe to the first... Hammer the second one down with the post driver until it is near ground level" – Yeah, sure...

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"Remove the two pipes from the ground now that the hole has been made." – After using multiple sentences to describe the process of driving 20 feet of steel into the ground, this moron says only to pull it out. How, Alexander? "Slide the PVC that you threaded together into the hole to form the sand point." – We have no idea where Alexander came up with this step. It isn't in any of his references... Most sandpoint wells use a metal driving point, which has a screen section above it. That way you don't have to "remove" the steel pipe. As an alternative, you can use a large-diameter steel pipe as a casing and slide a matching length of PVC pipe with a point on the end into the casing. There's a really good possibility that Callos conflated the possible situations and folded them into one unworkable method of driving a sandpoint well.

Just one more time our Dumbass of the Day answered the wrong question, getting the answer wrong as well. Feh.

¹ Dumbass of the Day

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