Recollections of son Joseph.
My dad, Dominic, has always been someone who wanted to save money. At every chance he did improvements and repairs himself rather than hire someone. Saving money on water usage was no exception.
When my brothers and I were young, my dad Dominic, set up a large pool in the backyard every year. The pool was 24 feet round and took up half our yard in Port Reading. But one concern each year was the amount of water it took to fill the pool. My Dad decided that the way around this was to drill his own well. He knew that the water level in this area was about 30 feet down because he would care for the wells at his nearby job at the Reading Railroad in Port Reading. Also, his brother Tony down the street had a well for many years. So off he went deciding how to drill a well. He didn’t want anyone to know he was doing this so he he decided that the best place to do it was in the basement below the outside entrance to the cellar. That was because the distance from the floor to roof was 2 floors which served his plan perfectly. He knew what was needed since he saw wells being drilled at work.
He first removed the stairs to the outside and purchased the materials he needed to drill a well. That included drill heads, lengths of threaded pipes, a pulley system, and heavy weights. He attached the pulley to the ceiling (20 feet above the cellar floor) and attached a heavy weight that would be the force to drive the well into the floor. And then we started to work every night and weekends, raising the weight up to the ceiling and letting it drop onto the head of the pipe (which had a treaded cover attached to avoid damaging the pipe itself). The drill head went in first and then the steel pipe. Every few drops of of the weight we would use a pipe wrench to turn the pipe in the cellar floor so it wouldn’t get stuck. Raise the weight up, let it fall down with a loud metallic crash, turn the pipe, and continue .. Up, down, turn.. over and over again. It was exhausting work and it didn’t like to do it. But my Dad insisted. Every so often he would fill the pipe with water to keep it lubricated. Then, up, down, turn. It was very slow. You were lucky if it moved a few inches every hour or so, but steadily it decended into the earth. Each length of pipe was about 6 feet, so when it was driven in we would add another pipe length and continue.. up, down, turn.
He kept track of how far it went and when it reached about 20-25 feet he began testing for water. He’d fill the pipe with water, let it sit, fill it again, until it began to drain on it’s own. That’s how he knew he hit a gap in the rocks. He hit a soft spot several times but it wasn’t deep enough to have sustainable water, so we continued, raise the weight up, let it fall down, turn the pipe (which, as you can imagine, became harder and harder to do). Finally, we were deep enough. He sent down water to form a basin at the bottom where the underground water could collect. Next, he sent down a second pipe inside the first with a pump head on it and attached a pump at the top and began to pump. At first the volume of water was not much. But, by continuing to pump the flow increased to a point that it was acceptable. He re-attached the cellar stairs with hinges so it could be raised to get to the pump. He added a storage tank to increase the pressure and he was in business.
Over the years he had the water tested several times, and it always came out as pure drinkable water. Unfortunately, the rate of water flow was too low to be used to fill the pool (because it took much too long!), but it was used for all the outside watering needs. For a while he also used it in the toilets but the water was very hard (lots of minerals) and was best not used for any interior uses. To this day, the pump remains operational and is use to water his garden, wash his car, and other exterior needs.
