DIY bailer (drawings and photos)

It is convenient to have your own well on the site, but services for their drilling and maintenance cost a lot. Well at least there are ways to drill and, if necessary, clean the well yourself. One such device is the bailer. Usually it is made from a piece of pipe, and a valve is attached at the bottom. Moreover, making a bailer with your own hands is easy, as well as using it. The work is lengthy and physically tiring, but no other complications.

Bailer design

A bailer is a piece of pipe up to 4 meters long. A shoe with a valve is installed at the bottom of it. In large shells, flat valves are placed, cut from steel sheet with a rubber seal, leather strips, sometimes without a seal. Those with a smaller size and diameter use ball valves. These devices are also called mechanical bailers - the work occurs due to the force of gravity.

This is a homemade bailer with a flat valve - one of the options for its device

Through the window in the upper part of the body, rocks are removed, which are packed there during drilling or cleaning. When drilling viscous rocks - clay or loam, you have to make the window long and narrow - almost the entire length: it is very difficult to dispose of such a load through a small hole.

Flat valve designs for homemade bailers

The ball valve is easier to make. The diameter of the ball should be equal to about half the diameter of the pipe (slightly larger). A washer is installed in the lower part, the inner diameter of which is less than the diameter of the existing ball. At some height inside the bailer (three to four radii of the ball), a limiter is welded - it does not allow it to rise too high. If this is not done, most of the trapped soil may spill out (spill out). This is due to the time it takes for the weight to descend and close the hole in the bottom.

Ball valve thief design

At the bottom of the pipe in both versions, fangs are sometimes welded or cut out or the edge of the pipe is grinded off, making it sharp. So soil or silt breaks up better. But due to too high canines, too little soil gets inside. When using a ball valve, the length of the canines should be such that the ball does not protrude. The same picture - a small amount of soil collected at a time - can be observed in thiefs with a flat valve. In this case, the depth of the shoe is reduced.

Too small an internal hole in the washer installed on the bottom with a ball valve can lead to the same result. The way out is to squander it.

In the upper part of the thief, a loop or bracket is made, for which it will be possible to fasten a cable or rope. For this rope, the projectile is taken out of the well, and it is lowered back on it.

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How does it work

The bailer is used for drilling loose, sedimentary and loose products (pebble, sand, gravel, etc.). It is also used when cleaning wells from silt or sand plugs to increase debit. In any case, the principle is the same: the shell is dropped into the well. Under the influence of the force of the impact, the valve opens, a certain amount of soil gets inside. Usually it is not much. Therefore, it is lifted up a little and dropped again. This is repeated until the entire inside of the pipe is filled.

A full thief is taken out, turned upside down and the soil is poured. This is where the hole in the side comes in handy: it's easier to clean through it and you can reach the valve with your hand.

Abruptly dropping the bailer into the well, soil is collected into it. The valve prevents him from getting enough sleep back

This technology is called percussion rope (it is understandable why). Both drilling and cleaning require multiple repetitions of this operation. It may take several days of work only to clean the well - from two to three to seven to eight, and even more for punching.

The work is hard: if a piece of pipe one meter long is enough to clean the well, then for drilling with the percussion-rope method, the thief is 2-4 meters. Moreover, the harder the shell turns out, the better: the more effectively the soil is loosened and extracted, the well is drilled faster.

To make the job a little easier, they put a tripod, the rope is passed through the block system. This installation, even without a drive, makes the job much easier.

Bailer Tripod

Sometimes a homemade bailer is not heavy enough: the impact force is insignificant and the work is slow. In this case, weighting is required. There are several ways to add weight:

• Pour concrete to the top of the pipe.
• Attach the load in front of the bailer (as in the photo above). Just teach that the connection should be strong but flexible.
• When making a bailer with your own hands, use a thick-walled pipe. If you find it with a wall thickness of 1 cm, no other methods of weighting will be needed: the projectile will be heavy.

DIY bailer

When the presence of a welding machine and some work skills with iron, a do-it-yourself bailer is done in a few hours.

DIY ball valve bailer (no turning)

This version of the ball valve is assembled from spare parts that can be bought in stores. For the manufacture, a water pipe with a diameter of 89 mm was used. A concentric adapter 89 * 57 mm was also purchased, and a ball from the bearing with a diameter of 60 mm.

Everything you need to make a ball valve thief

The ball fits perfectly into the adapter and gets stuck there. But it does not fit snugly. In order to fit better, the inner surface of the adapter is sandblasted - an almost perfect fit.

This is how everything looks half-assembled. At the bottom right, a ball is photographed in the transition - so it will be inside

The transition is inserted into the pipe with a narrow part and welded. The ball is thrown inside, the stopper is welded. And the final touch is to make an attachment for a cable or twine. Everything, the bailer is ready with your own hands.

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How to make a bailer yourself at home

If you need to clean the well, but there is no sheet metal and welding for serious work at hand, there is a way out: a bailer with a valve from a plastic bottle.

Homemade bailer with a valve from a plastic bottle

This option will work well for cleaning the hole, but not for drilling. You need a bolt that is slightly longer than the diameter of the bailer pipe and a nut. Having retreated two or three centimeters from the edge of the pipe, one opposite the other, two holes are drilled. Their diameter is the same as the diameter of the bolt.

The valve is cut from plastic. It is an ellipse. The smaller diameter of the ellipse is equal to the diameter of the pipe. It must be cut very precisely so that when inserted inside, it fits snugly against the walls. The cut-out valve in the middle will be attached to the bolt; for this, four holes are made in the plastic through which the wire is threaded. How it all goes is shown in the photo below on the left.

Only such a mount, as in the photo above, is very unreliable. After a few hits, your projectile may come off and you have to figure out how to get the bailer out of the hole. The best mounting option is one-piece, without seams and twists. How to do this will become clear if you watch the video. There, by the way, there is an important thing - how to make hooks so that, if necessary, you can pull the bailer out of the well.

We read about the organization of autonomous water supply from a well or a well here.

Features of use on soils of different types

When drilling with a bailer in sandy soils, it is necessary to use casing pipes - without them, the well will fill up. When drilling in such soils, care must be taken that the shell does not sink more than half the length into the sand without a casing. This can lead to a collapse, the bailer will fill up, you will not be able to pull it out.

To make the sand easier to pass, water is poured into the well, it prevents collapses and facilitates work. If during work the sand is rammed, and not captured, use a chisel.

They work with quicksand sands only by constantly deepening the casing pipes. And only if the aquifer is below the quicksand layer, otherwise the well may be inoperative.

For the passage of quicksand, the bailer is used with a length of at least 2 meters. It should contain a flat, well-fitting valve with a leather gasket. You need to work at least together: when pulling the bailer out of the quicksand, the casing pipe must be turned, lowering it down. The faster the casing goes down at this moment, the faster this layer will be passed. At first, the siege falls easily, then it becomes more difficult. Sometimes there comes a moment when they completely stop moving. At the same time, almost the entire pipe is filled with sand. In this case, the pipes are lowered under pressure. To do this, a platform is installed on the pipe, on which the load is placed (sandbags). And it all turns together. This is usually quite effective.

When passing pebble and gravel layers, a chisel is used together with the bailer... First, a chisel is lowered into the trunk, crushing the rock, then it is taken out with a thief. The thief on such soils rises only 5-10 cm, the blows are small and frequent.

For a faster passage, a platform is made on the casing, the worker does not get up. It is located above the well, gradually raising and lowering the bailer. As the soil builds up, the casing is lowered under the weight of the worker.

In viscous clayey soils, you can work without casing. If the clay is too dense, first they also use a chisel, loosening the soil by about 50-70 cm. Then they take it out with a thief. A flat valve with a rubber or leather seal is also used.

If the clay is dry and dense, each time pulling out the bailer, several buckets of water are poured into the well. After the water appears from the aquifer soybeans, you do not need to top up it from above.

If the rocks are very soft, sometimes the valve is removed. And they drill only with the pipe itself, raising it 2-3 meters above the bottom and dropping it.