Paradise ponders... Tim and I decided to put off the finishing touches on his new water line until Saturday, when the weather is supposed to improve considerably. We did a few things this morning to make sure his new water line won't freeze tonight (we're supposed to get down into the low 20s), and then called it a day.
I wandered over to see Elray the well driller, and found him with a big smile on his face. He thinks that he's hit good water, with the drill now sitting on the top of what he hopes is a nice thick layer of gravel filled with water. He's bringing up hundreds of gallons of ground water right where the drill is now, at 258 feet down. He's going to pound the casing down another 40 feet, to the bottom of the existing hole, then go down another 10 to 20 feet to see if he can get in the middle of the gravel layer he's hypothesizing is there.
It's interesting to see how Elray judges his progress. He uses a combination of things, including how the water tastes, how the gas exhausting from the well smells, the color of the stuff coming up (a kind of slurry of soil mixed with groundwater), and the debris carried up with the groundwater. From all of this, he gathers a good idea of what he's going through. From having drilled hundreds of wells in the general area, he carries around – in his head – a pretty good picture of the underground geology. All of this he mushes around in his head to come up with a clear picture of what's happening over 200' under his boots. Me, I'd have no clue at all – it would just be random-looking stuff coming up out of the well, and I'd have absolutely no idea what was going to happen next!
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