A water well plus add ons using primitive technology

It probably won't pass muster with a HOA...but in the boondocks...who'll care?

 

My great uncle had a hand dug well in the city limits when I was a kid. He had it dressed up as a planter but used the water daily for his gardens and roses. The city found out about it somehow and their heads almost exploded. It was sadly filled with concrete.

 

I love these guys. I don't always agree with their logic, but I respect how they work as a team to get shit done!

 

Ya those two guys are ones you'd want to hire ASAP.

 

The rest of the story! The blocks used to construct the house in the background, the well, and the water filter were fired clay bricks, again the potter strikes, the tools used to make the holes and the bucket, blow pipe and tongs, were made as we watched, the techniques used to make the bucket would also give you dug out canoes, large containers, etc, the assistant made the trowel for the master with a piece of wood and a rock, split it and shaped it, the brush was made by the assistant by taking a piece of wood and beating it between two rocks until it was fuzzy, the shovel was made out of a pole and a rock, they cut the cordage with a rock, and the clay from digging the well was kept in a pile and used to seal the well to prevent surface water contamination. The axe may have been stone or steel, couldn't really tell, but it had no eye and was lashed on with cordage. The water filter was used to remove the silt, with a restriction in the outlet, it could be converted to a slow sand filter and actually purify the water as well. The clay was waterproofed with tree resins and the charcoal made as we watched. The use of the well sweep to lift the water was a nice touch. Really need to know more about the source of the video as we saw the techniques used, stone age and used by people who were very used to them, but we don't know if the objects were ones they usually built or were built for the photographer and under his direction. One of the hardest things to do in development work is to not contaminate the work shown. The natives tend to want to please you. Old joke about missionaries in the arctic. They were upset that the natives were not "married" and arranged for the couples to get married and had a huge wedding in the newly built church. The pastor's wife noticed this middle aged women crying in the back of the church as this middle aged man married a pretty young woman in the front of the church. She asked if she was crying in joy and if she were a member of the family, the older woman said no, before you came he was my husband. You don't always get what you expect in life.

 

On further reflection, some of the problems I see are, the well, raw water and filtered water tanks are not covered or screened. It would soon contain insects, possibly snakes or frogs, bird droppings, etc. The well casing and coping were either concrete and thus not primitive, or if clay would soon be destroyed by the rain and water spillage, the well sweep is usually used when you wish to move large amounts of water and the recharge rate of the well was shown to be relatively slow. A rapidly flowing stream was close by, source of sand and gravel, and thus filtering would be more likely than a well. The well bucket, carefully hollowed out using fire, looked like it had been cut out of a section of a tree using a saw, nice square ends. I loved the techniques shown and the tools used, I just am not certain if the objects shown were ever used in the past by the individuals who constructed them.