💦We still can't believe Riley's crazy idea worked! What should we do with all of this water?!

Getting down in that hole with no shoring is probably the single most dangerous thing you’ve ever done. Please be careful.

Not in a 100yrs would I climb into an unshored hole. Glad you got water.

Great job guys! I would caution you though about getting into excavations. Coming from my own career field in the water and sewer business, you need to look into trenching and shoring requirements. It doesn't take a deep excavation to collapse and put a very small amount of dirt on you to kill you. Please be careful! 1 cubic foot of soil weighs over 100 lbs, and if thats on your chest then you can't breathe

I would definitely mark that area a no parking spot. And please be careful climbing in to open pits like that. Lil Oliver needs both parents around.❤❤❤

Attach a rope or chain to the pump before lowering. If you have to pull it out of the pipe, do not put any load on the production pipe or the power cable. Good luck!

Geting inside of a hole that deep without a trench box is extremely dangerous. Every year people die on construction sites because of this when they neglect safety precautions.

We are building a 4000 square foot shop building in northeast Texas. With that much roof, 1" of rain will produce about 3000 gallons of water. We bought four 3000 gallon rain water catch tanks. Our filtration will be 100 micron, 50 micron, 20 micron, and 5 micron sediment filters. Then an activated charcoal filter, and lastly a UV light to kill any biological content. We have a air presurized holding tank and a pressure activated pump.

The googly eyes on the excavator are fantastic!

In regards to water processing - you'll want to get it tested and make sure it doesn't have heavy metals in it or something like that. It will probably be hard water, so you'll want to do a combination of filters and then a water softener. We use a single filter here, but our water is so dirty that we end up replacing the $120 filter every 3 months or so. Then the water softener uses (for 2 people) about one 40lb bag of salt every two weeks. If your water has biological stuff in it, or if you're going to store it in an IBC tote, you might want to consider a UV light filter. I wouldn't bother with a reverse osmosis system, as those tend to throw away a ton of water as 'waste'. I really hope you're able to produce a decent amount consistently!! Might still need to get water in the winter, but with the road in place you should be able to do that a lot easier!

Nothing beats that cute little baby as an addition to this homestead

My late grandfather who is born in 1900. Talked about developing springs when I was a boy. There was a seep and in the spring there would be water coming out of the ground. This was on a hill and we made a pond with a pipe that we could take water out of a type of gravity, feed, set up. As the years went by, we got more and more water now the spring free flows water year-round it seems to be cleaning out itself of a lot of sediment as more and more water comes out of the ground. Probably would be a good idea to put a drain at the top of your culvert pipe for springtime overflow

So very cool. Make sure to cap it somehow when Oli starts crawling.

A few years back I lived in an old country cabin with a shallow well dug in the basement. I was pretty happy with it until the day I found a drowned mouse floating in it! You not only need to filter the water for particulates, but you need to take precautions to prevent ANY animals (or even bugs) from crawling into the pipe and getting into your water. You should probably have it tested to be certain there's no natural contaminants in the water. Good job!

Yeah! Very exciting! Our concrete place also sells 3 foot diameter 2 foot tall rings that slip on to each other for the purpose of shallow wells. I'm sure they can be found close to you as well. It would allow all the water that is in your drain rock to be available to pump. If this simply isn't enough water in the culvert this is an option to increase your water. Love your idea Riley! Again yeah! I saw another comment about shoring in an excavation. In my past life I'm a retired firefighter/emt. I had this call where a guy was in a trench and it collapsed. He was only buried up between his abdomen and chest. It took hours to get him out safely and he was having a tough time breathing due to the weight of the dirt pressing in on his diaphragm. Please don't go in a hole without someone around and a shoring box would be best. I know you are reckless Riley and by all accounts should have a giant S plastered on your chest. Cause you are amazing. Maybe a harness and a rope so they could pull you out if necessary. I too used to be invincible until one day I came off a roof on to frozen ground and ended up with a open book fracture of my pelvis. Deb and I love you guys and we haven't even met you so we want you around for a very long time.

Yeeahh Free Water!!, Remember in the winter, Snow falls from the sky!! Snow is water falling into a cold zone turning into Snow, so you could save some snow in a tote, that will turn to water. if you run short. Have you secretly got a big building you are gonna build? as there seems to be a lot of Wood piles around the property.!! Good luck with the make shift well hope it works, Thanks for the video Love from UK. x x

Congrats! You Sherlocked this one! Observation and logic win the day! Since you believe your water is likely seasonal, which makes perfect sense, have you considered a large storage tank? Pump the storage full during the spring, when you've got plenty, and use it as a reserve for when the flow rate drops below your needs later in the year - add a couple solar-powered, UV LEDs to the tank, to prevent pathogen contamination. It'll take a few years to figure it all out, but you've made the most important part of it all happen, already - finding a source. Everything else is just planning and logistics. Given the water source, it should be very clean and safe, once the dirt/sediments finish washing out, but testing is always a good idea. As for the notion of an RO system, it's a good idea, just in case of future issues and to reduce mineral load, and can be done without wasting your precious water. The RO can provide you with excellent drinking/cooking water, while the "waste" from it can be collected in a separate tank for use in toilets, showers, watering plants, etc. You could even use it for a small, lined, fish pond - a source of protein, and mental health breaks. I use an RO on my houseboat, filtering lake water for drinking/cooking. If you look on Amazon for "iSpring UVF8 LED UV Water Filter", you'll find a very long life, 12vdc-24vdc, UV sanitizer, for use with RO filters - it comes with an AC/DC wall wart. I have one on the intake side of my RO, and another in the line leading from the RO/tank, to the tap. I skipped the wall wart, and ran connections directly to my solar system's battery bank. Testing has shown the water to be very close to distilled pure. No pathogens, of any sort, and minimal mineral solids. The only filtration that occurs before the RO is a sediment filter, in line, on the intake side of my shallow well pump. At worst, I'd expect your water to be equal to our lake's water, so all the above should work well for you. Regardless, figuring out what to do with, and how best to use your newly found water, is a fantastic problem to have.

That's a ton of lumber stacked up next to the storage shed, I bet something new is planned! Can't wait! BTW, we need more dogs!

The one thing that you should have done was to test for gold at the bottom of your well . All the signs are there for the potential for a small gold mine.

Dig even deeper if possible (say 5' deeper than water level for some reserve capacity) and stack concrete culvert sections up vertically to 3' higher than surface level then back fill around the culvert with gravel. Put a membrane (like on your road) over the gravel and cover with soil.

It makes sense that there is water there as your house is in a very low part of the terrain so all that rain water would accumulate there. Great job, you guys are so resourceful. Can't wait to see the completed project.

Oliver’s facial expression there at the end is so cute!

Fantastic! Hopefully it ends up being a great solution. You might want to keep the equipment and vehicles away from the well. Always little drips and leaks which will take no time to contaminate your shallow well. Have a great week!

Wow, what a stroke of good fortune. You will likely have an excess beyond your dreams when it is wet. Might have to drain off the excess in the spring during snow melt.🙏

Those googley eyes were money well spent...love following the progress you guys have made.

Cool, and its the dry hot time of year. Add your storage and boom.

Oliver is definitely a Happy Camper! Take Care You All! Tom

Oliver is a cute young man and why not he has great looking parents, now Riley you can't be reckless anymore you have two people that depend on you ❤ love you guys

That youngster is so handsome. The boy like more like Riley every day. Great Idea thanks for sharing the journey.

Here in northern British Columbia all the shallow wells are four feet in diameter with the filter cloth rapped around and the drain rock on the outside, for 2 reasons= #1 large reserve of water can sit at the bottom of the well accumulating while you sleep and not freeze using an insulated lid and maybe a heat lamp when really cold. Yo will have to move your cistern inside or burry it. Heat tape can be your best friend if you got power #2 over a long period the well will accumulate micro fine mud, silt and debris that need to be cleaned out or the well will shallow and your pump will pump it throughout your system. Most times it can be pumped out using a sewage truck or heavy duty trash pump but being able to go down the well with a ladder to really clean it out is best. Filters work for a while then they clog up fast 23 years later and I’m still learning the tricks to northern living

Great progress on the well. Oliver is adorable with his smirk style smile :)

I think it is fantastic that you found water and got away without the sides of the hole falling in on you while you did the fine touches. doing your hole in a step like manner may have been a tiny bit safer so the banks arn't as steep... but in the end it worked out for you.... which is cool..... on the other hand Riley mentioned that just down the road is a wet spot that never dries up even in the summer ! a spring ! why not develop it or another one like it closer to the house I expect you have springs all over the place on your property.... walk around in the summer time when it is dry and see if you can find small trickles of water.... we had a spring on our property when I was a kid that we developed, we cleared out the dirt,rocks and brush and got down about 5' onto the bedrock where the water was just pouring out...in 2 spots ! so we build a concrete box around that area and then closed off the drain... this was a big box, about 8' wide and 12' long and 4' high at the far end by the pond.... yes that was alot of dirt to move by hand with a shovel, but we did it.... we poured the concrete by hand into forms we made on the spot...no rebar...that was too expensive!... when we closed off the drain for it to fill up the first time we thought it would take 3 or 4 days to fill, as it was it took under 24 hours to fill !...that spring lasted for the time we lived there over 40 years and never went dry... we did have to clean it every year... and cut the vines out of the cracks in the rocks as they restricted the flow of water. best water on the planet too! if you have a spring on your property Please for your sakes make that your water source it's far better than a well !

This might just work!? You two are so holding your breath and if course, happy with what has happened so far. I'm glad someone came by and is able to give you a hand. I'll be ready to enjoy another episode of this exciting adventure. Hi dear baby!

I built a cabin in Mendocino in 1973. My first water supply was locating a suitable spot like you did. It was shallow, about 10 feet down. It worked for several years but did not use it for drinking or cooking. A few years latter, some critters found its way into the spring box so had to drill a well. Our property sat about 3000 foot elevation on top of the peak. All wells around me were several hundred feet deep. My uncle taught me how to douse for water and determine depth. I walked the hundred acre parcel and found a spot near our cabin showing a depth of 50 feet. The well driller laughed at me, but I told him to drill anyway. At 40 feet we went through a petrified redwood tree and at 50 feet we hit the cleanest water I have ever tested. Well to this day produces 10gpm all year long.

you should have it samples to make sure that it is drinkable😮 no contaminated water😊 But it is exciting to know that you have water that mother nature provided for you good job guys😂❤❤

You guys are magic together. You believe in each other even when the other might be hairbrained. I for one. your dynamic is strong and reassuring

Oh awesome! You can put a huge tank up on the hill above the property to store water in the wet season and have gravity pressurized water to the house. I'm excited for you guys!

I’m sure you guys already have a plan for water filtration and such, but if you don’t, I would check out “red poppy ranch” and his setup. He’s in SE Idaho and is working with a shallow well also. I think he only has to service his filtration system once or maybe twice a year. So I think it’s somewhat cost effective. Congrats on the well, your work ethic pays off!

You should take a look at "red poppy ranch", they built an insulated cistern system, looks like you could store a years worth of water if you wanted to. With your solar excess of energy you could probably look at distilling your drinking water and just filter for septic and washing.

Not sure why but this is my favorite video by far. How exciting to find water!!

Sometimes the kiss principle truly works. We know that the technology in the Water Reclamation plant was a great idea but it's just not ready yet for your application. But when you think about it, you dig a hole in the ground, add some water pipe to it plus a few other bits, and pieces. It can't be more simple. congratulations! Thank you for sharing, Best regards? Bob from Virginia USA

aside from the modern tools "excavator" this is how it is still being done all around the world

You might have a gold mine. You got round rock sand deposit, if you find black sand and quartz, you definitely should pan for gold

Sweet, sweet, baby, Oliver! He is so blessed to have you two as parents! 😊❤❤❤👍👍

Very good idea that seems to have worked. Congratulations. Please don’t take unnecessary risks like climbing down in holes again. I know you have been scolded by everyone watching already. But you have a family that needs you.

If you're doing away with the atmospheric water generator, I'd reuse the holding tank you put in for long term storage. A couple thousand gallons buffer should help you get through months of severe drought. The water coming out of your dug well is likely to have a high clay content -- at least initially. I'd put it through a 5 micron and a 0.5 micron filter to pull the solids out. Use standard 10" filters you can buy cheap from the farm/irrigation supply rather than anything proprietary. If you plan on drinking it, I'd also plan on UV light at the very least but possibly also RO depending on what your water test results look like.

I love the goggly eye on the claw. Too funny.

Excellent job on that shallow well - On another note, that is the CUTEST baby! ;)

Hello from the Netherlands. Congratulations good news that you have found water in your diy waterwell. I hope for your sake that this well yields enough water for you thanks for the video Courtney and Riley . Sincerely Hollandduck

I always get a giggle with the googlie eyes lol ❤😊

One of the best things about this style of well is that it just gets better over time as the water has now a place to travel and will increase..... just how much and how fast is only a guess. I like the fact that if no contamination is in the water from where ever its coming from, then its good drinking water... mine went from about ten gallons a day to over five hundred gallons a day and would do a average of five gallons a minute at times. I was living at that time in a town called Beaver washington.... just outside of Forks washington.

I have been watching and I have been in the position where I have done things that were pushing the boundaries of safe so we could continue farming. My husband has a tendency to take more chances than I would so I understand how Riley's actions make you a little nervous. We used 4 foot cement tile laid vertically to make a well to water animals. Worked great for us. Looks a lot like your black pipe idea. Hope you have as good of luck with your water idea. Keep us informed

Congratulations on finding what looks like a usable amount of water. Great news.

Yay!!! Congrats ! And this opens up the creation of all kinds of videos for water sourcing/processing at the Riley and Courtney ranch!

I lived in a house with a similar shallow well in northern CA. In the summer it would almost dry up, but in the winter the water level would be nearly ground level and you essentially have unlimited water in the wet season. The house had a 5000 gallon storage tank and pressure pump. I didn’t drink the water due to concerns over contamination and water quality, but it covered all other water needs (showers, laundry, washing dishes, watering plants)

You might want to put some kind of cover over the area like clay, to keep contaminated water from seeping in from all your equipment. Equipment leaks and you never know if someday you'll have some kind of accident that will dump a few gallons of diesel or oil or gas or whatever. There is a city called Albion Michigan that has a natural spring in the park that people would collect gallons of water from on a daily basis. A local company was using pesticides, or some other kind of chemicals and the spring was contaminated for many years from seepage

Love the progress on the well. Just wish you would shore up when you go below grade. Would hate for it to collapse on you. It’s already done, just food for thought on future projects. Keep safe “reckless” ;)

Wow, that is fantastic news and this should help with the liquefaction in the spring and dewater the whole area and if your demands increase you may be able to expand with french drains to increase the surface area. You three are amazing.

@AmbitionStrikes My wife and I have been fighting the similar battle of finding water as well. We actually have a water company running water through our land but refuse to let us connect to it. Its been over a year of stressing. We had even hired an attorney but still no success. I watched this and became inspired and looked for the lowest spot on our property to dig a shallow well and actually found remnants of an old well! Now the struggle is getting and excavator through all the trees, lol. Thanks for the upload, its been very helpful

Congrats Guy's, on finding water in the hole. Hope the wizard way u put the pipe will work for u'all.

Congratulations you two, water is so precious on the homestead.

That's kind of interesting setup for a well. I would probably have made some concrete rings on top of each other in that hole, then lid on top of that, maybe some pieces of stair inside for safety, typical way, but I guess you thought this out further than I did. It's great you start getting your water troubles fixed, well done!

16:17 - Ahhww that little smile. It remembers me of my kids when they were in that lifetime. Some little tears were scrolling down from my eyes.

Hello Courtney , Ollie , & Riley... Great job ...Once you figure out the gals or parts of gals per minute you can pump it would be prudent to set up a couple IBC Totes inside ur shop to pump full for daily use & have ur well pump set up to keep them topped off so ur ahead of any usage u might have with no waiting ( lag ) time ..., plus you'd have an easily accessable filter station & ability to add whatever ultraviolet lights & or chemicals to keep ur water safe for drinking , dishes , & bathing ... Great Job Guys ... Just keep us all posted along the way how the water production advances throughout each season , especially the Rainy season & the next DRY Season ..... 👍👍👍👍🤗🤗👋👋👋

Great Team construction! Nice to see Courtney's brother helping. Good comments from people below about testing the water and using filters.

Have you thought about what would you do if that hole collapsed on you . With water present the sides may not be as stable as you think .

You should look at putting gutters on your building, then pipe them down to the bottom of that hole. Like drill a hole in your black pipe for the gutters pipe, then the water should flow through the rocks in the hole, helping to clean it, and mixing it with the natural water. This could help with supply levels.

I would supplement this with a rainwater recovery system as well. Our original system was 10each 330 gallon totes. We later changed it out for a 40,000 gallon tank, which is currently at 26,000 gallons from a month's long drought.

That is great news. Looks very murky but may work for irrigation water. Letting it settle in the tote will be interesting, too. "Liquid gold! Eureka!"

@17:10 I am a grumpy old man with no kids who lives alone, and even I think that baby is super cute!

Gee Riley that army truck squats when you fill it. That excavator is impressive. You made the right call to give up the little one for the bigger one. !!

I like the googly eyes on the excavator bucket. Courtney, could you put a big shaggy feather on the back of the bucket to give it hair.

You might consider a cistern for your next project. It would have the added benefit of storage space for any runoff you might want to collect in the future, in addition to what the well produces.

I'm happy that you have found water. I'm very happy that you have filled the hole. That was very dangerous.

Congrats on WATER. Thanks for the video, I always look forward to you next "adventure'

Swales !, ground cover for your shallow well catch basin. swales w ground cover will slow down run off greatly reduce erosion and increase water retained during ALL rain events good luck !!👍

I like the eye ball on the excavator.

You should do a test pan of that sand and rounded cobble material, and see if there's any placer gold.

Very happy for you getting water so close! Oliver is so sweet ❤ Love his little smile.

We had a well with a hand pump old fashioned and we had to prime the pump to get it to pump the water cup from the well. We drank that cool clear water right from the well. The only water source of clean water on my grandma and grandpa’s farm.

You might want to check the dirt at the bottom of the hole for Gold

ok you said that about 130 gallon for 24 hours That is 5.4 gallon per hours range about 5- 15 gallon per If you had a 1 foot or 2 feet round well you may get more gallon per hour . that is better then 3.75 gallon 90 /24 hour Now get test see what is in the. Then you know what type water filter you will need

Sweet……H2O!!!!!! Proud of y’all!

That’s awesome news guys. 12 or 24 volt fans on top of the engine bay of the excavator with side vents maybe?😎

Way Cool Results!

Amazing I didn't know about shallow wells until this video. Now you can see why a well is so costly.

Great you have some water ! The manufacturer of your water condensing machine could fix it with a variable speed evaporator motor , To keep the Evap. coil below dew point ; Hopefully they can do that for you .

The drain rock if typical limestone will be a Hard water generator. Super hard. If it is, blend new water it into your condensation based water generator. Use both. The one you have will provide primary disinfection which you really should have on shallow well water. Should have used a different type aggregate in the new pit. Love your vids keep ‘em coming.

I enjoy your videos so much that I always want more because they are over way too fast.

Also you should be using black water storage containers, because you're soon going to have algae build up inside those white ibc totes

I used a 90 lb. Jack hammer and then made an adapter to fit in the end of the 3inch heavy wall pipe I used in my well. I built a 10 foot scaffle and jack hammered 45 feet of pipe to the water level. I cut 4 12 inch slats into the pipe end before driving it into the ground. I welded a point on the cap of the pipe to make it easier to penetrate the ground. After I hit water at 35 feet I drove the pipe in 10 more feet. I rented a large suction pump and sucked over 5 yards of sand out of the well to make a void for the water. Once I got started jack hammering it only took 6 hours with breaks to hammer the pipe 45 feet . I use our well to irrigate our property and run the pump 4 hours a day and I've never ran it dry.

Way to go, you guys, Riley the reckless genius! You may want to consider filtering the water before you store it in the totes, so you don't end up with a huge layer of sediment in the tote and no way to remove it. Great job, so happy for you all.

I can only imagine the water after winter thaw producing runoff from higher up the slope, good luck

You guys are so creative and always fun to watch.

Back when they were building up the road bed & height I mentioned they should install some drain tile pipes as it looked like they have a natural Spring next to the driveway. They still could draw water from that source but I have no idea how far away that natural Spring is from the house? Since Water is almost as valuable as Gold in their area this idea could still work. They could install a large tank below the frost line and then bring it up to the house when it's needed.😊 I myself would prefer a spring fed water source.

Well size diameter doesn't matter unless you intend to use the diameter to store water (A slow flowing well say 1/2 gpm can use 6" casing rather than 4" to double the volume of storage) Typically, the casing size is determined by the pump diameter. The cleanest/less minealized water has good flow from a higher elevation to a lower elevation - say a snow capped mountain down to a river in the valley. Love your channel - glad you found water!

A shallow well in a rock basin like that would be considered groundwater under direct influence (GUDI). That means your getting the worst of ground water and surface water. It's potentially hard and full of contaminates. You'll definitely want to get it tested. I'd look into a small greensand filter setup instead of membrane filters as they waste a lot of water. Also like a lot of other mentioned, please do not enter holes without shoring. Also wouldn't be a bad idea to mount a tank up the hill, either buried or insulated and make a water tower for pressure instead of constant pressure pumps or a pressure tank system

My think over week water may clear up or keep pump into small toto let the silt flow to bottom then pump water out and filter to Big under ground water tank.

Oliver likes it! 👍 But he’s thinking, dad, don’t go down in an un-shored hole again! Reckless Riley needs a supervisor. 😬

I am so excited for you guys. You did everything right on building that "french drain". I'd suggest you put the pump on a timer to allow the water to build up before the pump kicks on. That way it's not hard cycling on and off frequently. Too bad the water generator didn't work out. Hopefully you can get most of your money back.