It was one busy weekend. After digging and digging, it was finally time to set the casing to keep the well pit from falling in amongst itself. My original plan was to use a 3 foot culvert set up on end for this. After pricing culverts out, it was a little more cost prohibitive than what I was willing to spend. After some thought, my cousin suggest using an old 500 gallon propane tank that had been given to him. The tank was built in the fifties according to the tag on it. It had newer fittings from whenever it had last been used, but it was empty. The first thing I had to do was remove the fittings from the tank. Once that was done, you could still smell the propane/raw cabbage smell inside. Before cutting it apart, I filled the tank with water. Its surprising how long it can take to fill 500 gallons. The water displaces the gas fumes so there is no chance of explosion. Once filled, I used a chop saw and cut off one of the rounded ends of the tank. Once that was off and the water had spilled out, you are now safe enough to use a torch and so I cut off the other end (torch works faster than the chop saw in my opinion). The end result of this work was a little over 3 foot culvert made of 1/4 inch steel about 8 feet in length; it will never rot in the ground in my lifetime.
After getting the propane tank converted into a culvert, I then hauled it to the well on a trailer and man handled it off. I had dug the well hole by hand, but its the time of year now where it has been snowing already on and off and the days are getting cold. The clock is winning out, meaning that there is no way I can dig the trench by hand before the ground is frozen solid. To expedite matters I broke down and opted to pay a little cash and called in a friend with a small utility excavator who helped me set the culvert in the well pit over the shallow well pump. He also trenched the water line to the trailer, digging down six feet to get below the frost line. Once he was loaded and heading home to watch football for the rest of the day, my real work began.
I had been given a length of new 1 inch water line that was left over from a previous construction project. I also had a length of UF-B four wire electric wire. I laid these two out along the floor of the trench and taped them together every few feet. I stuck one end into the side of the culvert where I torched a hole where it will connect to the pressure tank and shallow well pump. The other end I fed up into the the crawl space under the trailer after removing some of the skirting to see what I was doing.
Up at the trailer end where the pipe runs out of the ground I put on three wraps of styrofoam pipe wrap, taping it up along the way. This is where I left off, the plans are to lay some 2 inch high dense styrofoam on the outside of the pipe to further protect it from freezing. I also still need to decide where I am going exactly with it in the house.
