The Slow Road Read Online Free

before dumping them beside the hole, in a different pile as instructed by Greg. Jasper also adjusted the water flowing into the hole to keep it full, but not running over.
    They were on the fifth drill stem, about twenty-two feet down when the discharge from the drill hole changed. Before the cuttings had been pretty much basic dirt. Now there was a significant amount of sand mixed in. Greg had Jasper start a new pile.
    During the sixth drill stem the sand became coarse and more predominant. Greg asked Jasper to start yet another pile of the drill cuttings. “See how the water drains out of that, instead of pooling on top like the early stuff?” Jasper nodded. There was a significant difference in the soils.
    “We could probably stop here,” Greg said when he had the sixth drill stem all the way into the ground, “but I’d like to go at least another five feet. Perhaps ten.”
    “Whatever you think best,” Jasper said.
    They went the full ten feet. Jasper saw the cuttings turn back to fine sand. The water wouldn’t drain out of it. “That’s it,” Greg said. “Kill the pump.”
    The two began to lift and remove the drill stem a piece at a time. “What’s going to keep the hole open?” Jasper asked, beginning to get worried.
    “The water. Or, more accurately,” Greg said, “The sediment and water. It’s why I re-circulate the water rather than use all fresh. Beside it taking way too much water to do using fresh and making a royal mess, fresh water simply doesn’t hold the hole open very well. That’s why regular drillers use a ‘mud’ when they drill. For these shallow wells just the sediment from the surface is enough to keep the hole open. If need be I have some Quickgel in the truck. I’d add a cup or two of it if we were going through all coarse sand. Now we don’t want to wait too long though, before we put in the screen and pipe.”
    Jasper nodded and picked up the prepared well screen and lowered it into the drill hole when directed by Greg. “Hold that sucker tight,” Greg warned. He spread solvent cement on the smooth end of one of the twenty-foot pieces of pipe, and the bell end of the screen assembly. Then with a motion that Jasper found amazing, Greg hoisted the pipe to a vertical position and slipped the end of it into the bell of the pipe Jasper was holding. He gave it a slight twist as he seated the pipe in the bell.
    He began to lower the pipe down slowly and then gave it to Jasper to hold again, down low. He added the second piece of pipe, which stuck well above the ground when the strainer hit the bottom of the drill hole.
    While Jasper steadied it, Greg used a hacksaw to cut the pipe off several inches above the ground. Jasper put the piece of pipe back in Greg’s truck as Greg cleaned the upper end of the well pipe and solvent welded a threaded male adapter to it. Greg took the elbow, detached it from the hose and screwed it onto the well, using Rector Seal #5 pipe dope.
    “The other long hose,” Greg said. “Connect it to the valve on the tank and bring it over to the pump.”
    Jasper hooked the second long two-inch flexible suction hose to the intake of the pump. “Isn’t this the wrong way?” Jasper asked. “We’ll be pumping out of the tank into the well, won’t we?”
    “Yes,” Greg replied with a big grin. “But believe me, this ain’t no well yet. Just a pipe in the ground with a screen. We’re going to make it into a well. Now, fire up the pump at an idle.”
    Jasper did so and saw the water slowly boil up out of the ground much as it had when they were using the drill stem. “Start backfilling, using the coarsest sand,” Greg said as he watched the flow. Jasper wasn’t too sure how much of the sand was going back into the hole, but Greg kept him after it until all the sand that had come out of the hole was back in it.
    Greg stopped the pump and changed the elbow on the top of the well for a threaded cap. He had Jasper put the next best sand in the drill