- 5 hours ago
When the power cuts out, your well may still hold plenty of water—the pump may simply be off. Elias Yoder explains how to make an inexpensive hand-operated well bailer from pipe, a rubber ball, rope and a few fittings, and how it can draw water for drinking, cooking and washing during an outage.
Learn why the well’s static water level matters more than its total depth, how casing size and the existing pump affect the tool, and why the amount you can haul depends on how far down the water sits. The guide also covers testing the bailer before an emergency, keeping the well clean, and essential electrical and equipment safety. A practical rural preparedness and off-grid water guide for homeowners seeking a backup water source, emergency well-water solutions and alternatives when an electric well pump fails.
Learn why the well’s static water level matters more than its total depth, how casing size and the existing pump affect the tool, and why the amount you can haul depends on how far down the water sits. The guide also covers testing the bailer before an emergency, keeping the well clean, and essential electrical and equipment safety. A practical rural preparedness and off-grid water guide for homeowners seeking a backup water source, emergency well-water solutions and alternatives when an electric well pump fails.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00The power goes out around here for three days every few winters, and by the second morning, there are people
00:06in my lane with buckets. They are welcome to it.
00:10Our house runs off a gravity line my grandfather laid in the 20s, and it does not care what the
00:16Avectri Company is doing.
00:18But what I tell every one of them is the same thing, and most do not believe it the first
00:24time.
00:25You have more water than I have.
00:28You are standing on top of it.
00:31You have a well in your yard with a column of water in it that has not moved an inch
00:37since Tuesday, and the only thing wrong is that the machine that normally lifts it has no power.
00:44Your well is not dry.
00:47Your pump is off.
00:49Those are two entirely different problems, and only one of them is yours this week.
00:55So this is how you get it out.
00:58A length of pipe, a cap, a rubber ball, and a rope, and the whole of it comes to about
01:04$30 at a hardware store if your well is a shallow one, and it will keep a family in drinking
01:11and cooking and washing water for as long as the outage lasts.
01:16Before any of that, I owe you a correction.
01:19In a few of these videos, I have told you this method will draw a bucket a minute all day
01:25long.
01:26I should not have said it that way, because whether it does depends entirely on one number that I never
01:33mentioned, and for a good many of you, that number makes a liar of me.
01:38On a shallow well, a bucket a minute is about right.
01:42On a deep one, you will be a quarter of an hour getting five gallons.
01:47I will give you the real figures further on, and you can work out which you have got.
01:53I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:58The book is the long version.
02:00If you want it, it is there.
02:03I will not mention it again.
02:06I was 13 the summer I learned this, and I learned it the stupid way.
02:11It was August, and it was dry, and the engine on the pump jack would not start.
02:17My grandfather spent an evening on it and got nowhere, and the part had to come from somewhere,
02:23and in the meantime, the water had to come from the spring.
02:27That meant two buckets at a time up the hill, and the hill is the hill.
02:33I did that for two days.
02:36On the second afternoon, I came up with the last pair and said something I have not forgotten,
02:42which was that the well had gone dry on us.
02:46He put me in the cart and drove me the 200 feet to the wellhouse and took the cover off
02:52and dropped a stone in.
02:54We both heard it hit.
02:56He made me rean over and listen to it again.
03:00Then he went into the shop and took a length of galvanized pipe down off a nail on the wall.
03:06Four feet of it, a leather flap riveted in the bottom end, a cap with an eye on the top,
03:13and dust on it thick enough to write in, because it had hung there since before I was born.
03:19He tied the rope on, walked back, dropped it down the casing, and drew up most of a bucket.
03:26Two days of that hill, and the thing had been hanging on a nail 20 feet from the well the
03:33whole time.
03:34He was not unkind about it.
03:37He only said the one thing, and I have thought about it in a hundred situations since that have nothing
03:43at all to do with water.
03:45The well was never the thing that broke.
03:50Now, the two numbers you need before you spend a dollar, and people get these the wrong way round, constantly.
03:58The first is not how deep your well is.
04:02Nobody needs that.
04:03What you need is how far down the water starts, which is called the static level,
04:09and on most wells, it is a great deal shallower than the drilling depth.
04:15A 300-foot well can have water standing at 40 feet.
04:19The bore goes down 300, the water comes up to 40,
04:24and the 260 feet in between is the part that matters to a pump and does not matter at all
04:31to you.
04:32Two ways to get that number.
04:35Your well has a completion report from the day it was drilled,
04:39and in most states a copy sits with the state,
04:42usually under the Geological Survey or the Environmental Department,
04:47and it will give you the static level on the day of drilling.
04:51That is a starting figure, and it moves with the seasons.
04:55Or measure it yourself in 10 minutes, which I would rather you did.
04:59Take a short length of narrow pipe, cap one end, tie it on a line, and mark the line every
05:07foot.
05:08Lower it down the casing.
05:10When the closed end hits water, it makes a hollow plop.
05:14You can hear quite clearly at the top.
05:17Let it down another foot or two, pull it up, and see where the line is wet to.
05:22That is your static level.
05:24Write it on the well cover in marker, so that the next person does not have to work it out
05:30in the dark.
05:31The second number is the inside of your casing, and this is the one that stops people who did not
05:37check.
05:38Your well is not an empty hole.
05:41There is a pump down there, and a drop pipe coming up off it,
05:45and an electrical cable strapped alongside that pipe all the way down.
05:50All of that is already using the room, so you do not get to put a baler down the middle
05:57of a clean circle.
05:58You get the crescent that is left over.
06:01A 6-inch casing has room to spare, and you can run a 2-inch or even a 3-inch
06:07baler down it without much thought.
06:09A 4-inch casing with a submersible pump in it is tight, and the clear gap is often less than
06:172 inches once you allow for the cable.
06:20In a 4-inch casing, I would build it out of inch and a half pipe and be glad of
06:25it.
06:25So before anything else, take your cover off and look, and measure the inside of the casing, and see what
06:33is in there and where the cable runs.
06:36Build the tool to the well you have actually got.
06:40Here is the $30 version, for a 2-inch baler, which suits a 6-inch casing.
06:465 feet of 2-inch PVC pipe, a 2-inch to 1-1⁄2-inch reducing coupling for the bottom, a
06:56solid rubber ball a little larger than an inch and a half so that it seats in the shoulder of
07:02that reducer and seals, a flat cap for the top, an eye bolt, glue, and 100 feet of 1⁄4-inch
07:12rope.
07:12That is the lot, and it comes to about $30, and the rope is the part that climbs if your
07:19water is deep, so a 200-foot well costs you more in line than in tool.
07:26Glue the reducer on the bottom.
07:28Drop the ball in.
07:31Drill a hole through the pipe 2 or 3 inches above where the ball sits, and push a stainless bolt
07:37or a length of rod through it as a stop,
07:40so the ball can lift off its seat and let water in, but cannot float away up the tube.
07:47Drill a 1⁄4-inch hole in the top cap before you glue it on, because the air in that pipe
07:54has to get out or the thing will not fill,
07:57and a baler that will not fill is nearly always a baler with no vent.
08:03Fit the eye bolt to the cap.
08:05Tie the rope to the eye.
08:07It works the way your grandmother's funnel works.
08:11Going down, the water pushes the ball up off the seat, and the tube fills.
08:17Coming up, the weight of the water drops the ball back onto the seat and seals it, and what is
08:24in the tube stays in the tube.
08:27Tip it over a bucket at the top, and it runs out.
08:30A brass foot valve in place of the ball is better and lasts longer and costs another $20.
08:39If you are building this to leave in the wellhouse for 20 years, buy the foot valve.
08:45If you are building it on a Thursday because the power is out, the ball works.
08:50Now the figures I owe you.
08:53A 5-foot length of 2-inch pipe holds about 3 quarts.
08:583-inch holds getting on for 2 gallons.
09:021-inch and a half holds about half a gallon.
09:04So, with water at 25 feet, you can run a trip in half a minute once you have the rhythm,
09:12and 5 gallons takes you 3 or 4 minutes.
09:16That is where a bucket a minute came from, and on that well it is fair.
09:20With water at 100 feet, a trip is nearer 2 minutes, and 5 gallons is 12 or 13 minutes of
09:29work.
09:30With water at 200 feet, you are 3 or 4 minutes a trip, and a 5-gallon bucket is most
09:37of half an hour, and the wet rope starts to be the heavy part, rather than the water.
09:43Which sounds discouraging until you put it against what a household actually needs.
09:49A person wants about a gallon a day to drink, call it 3 gallons a day for a family of
09:565 with cooking in it, and 10 or 12 if you want to wash properly as well.
10:01At 100 feet, that is half an hour of hauling to keep 5 people going, once a day, and you
10:08would spend longer than that queuing for bottled water.
10:12What it will not do is flush a lavatory at a gallon and a half a go, and it will
10:19not water stock at any scale.
10:22For flushing, the bathtub trick in the emergency water video is the answer, and I will not repeat it here.
10:30Two things about the hauling itself, because doing it badly for an hour will put you off the whole idea.
10:38Lay something smooth across the mouth of the casing, and run the rope over that rather than over the bare
10:45rim.
10:45A length of pipe, a broom handle, anything round.
10:50A steel casing edge is sharper than it looks, and it will chew a rope through over a long day,
10:57and a rope that parts with the baler on the end of it is the one failure you cannot afford.
11:03Better again if you have a pulley and something to hang it from, because then you are pulling down instead
11:10of up,
11:11and you can put your weight into it rather than your shoulders.
11:15And work hand over hand in a rhythm rather than in hauls.
11:20Wear gloves, because wet rope takes the skin off a palm faster than you would believe.
11:27Do not coil as you go.
11:30Just let it fall in a loose heap on your clean board and feed it back down off the top
11:35of the heap on the way in.
11:38A man who tries to coil neatly on every trip will give up by the fourth bucket.
11:44The other piece of advice I would give you is to build the thing in October and try it once.
11:51Draw a bucket with it in daylight with the power on.
11:55Find out that your vent hole is too small, or your ball does not seat, or your rope is forty
12:01feet short.
12:02And fix all of that standing up in the sun.
12:06Then hang it on a nail in the well house where my grandfathers hung.
12:11A tool you have never tested is not a plan.
12:15It is a hope.
12:16And the night the power goes is a poor time to be finding out which one you own.
12:23Now the safety.
12:24And there is more of it than you would expect,
12:27because a well is one of the few places on a property where a careless half hour can cost thousands.
12:34First, go and turn the breaker off for that pump before the cover comes off.
12:40There is live wiring down a wet hole, and you are about to put your hands and a length of
12:46rope into it.
12:48And leave it off, because a pump that gets power back while your tool is down there will not end
12:55well for either of them.
12:57Second, and this is the one that costs people real money.
13:01Look hard at what the cover is actually holding before you loosen anything.
13:07On most modern wells, the pump hangs off a fitting in the side of the casing, and the cap on
13:14top carries nothing, so it lifts off and you are fine.
13:18On others, and on a good many older ones, the drop pipe and the whole weight of the pump hang
13:25from the top plate.
13:27Unbolt that and you drop your pump down your own well, and getting it back is a contractor with a
13:34rig.
13:35So lift the cover, look, and if there is pipe hanging from the thing in your hands, stop and put
13:42it back.
13:44Third, tether everything, and I mean everything.
13:49Tie that rope on properly, a bowline with a stopper knot behind it, and tug it hard before it goes
13:56down.
13:57A baler that comes off the line can jam in the casing beside the drop pipe, and then you have
14:04a well you cannot pump and cannot bale, and a bill to go with it.
14:09And nothing uncontrolled passes over an open casing, not a wrench, not your eyeglasses, not your telephone.
14:19People lose all three.
14:22Fourth, do not reach down it and do not ever get into it.
14:28A well casing is a confined space, and the air at the bottom of one is not always air.
14:35That is not a thing to find out about.
14:39Fifth, the clean side of it, and this is the risk most people never think about at all.
14:45That cap is sealed to keep your drinking water clean, and taking it off is far and away the likeliest
14:53way anybody ever contaminates their own well.
14:56So wipe the baler and the whole length of the rope down with a weak bleach solution before it goes
15:02in.
15:03Coil the rope on a clean sheet or a clean board, never on the dirt, because every inch of that
15:10rope is going into your water supply.
15:13Keep the hole covered while you are not actively drawing.
15:17Put the cap back properly the moment you are finished.
15:22And then, treat what you have drawn as suspect, because you have had an open hole in your water supply.
15:29Boil it for cooking and drinking, or disinfect it.
15:33The bleach measures are in the emergency water video, and they are exact, so go and use those rather than
15:40guessing from memory.
15:42One more.
15:43If your well sits in sand or fine silt, a baler stirs the bottom and you will draw cloudy water.
15:51Let it settle in the bucket and pour the clear off the top, and strain it through clean cloth before
15:57you boil it.
15:58And if your ground has been flooded, or you have any reason at all to think that well is contaminated,
16:05this method is not for you, because all you are doing is fetching the problem up by hand.
16:12Now the thing I would rather you did instead of any of this, if you have the money and you
16:18live somewhere the power goes out often.
16:21Put in a deep well hand pump alongside the submersible.
16:25A proper one has its cylinder down at water level, and the rod comes up to a lever at the
16:31top, and it will go into the same 4 or 6 inch casing with the electric pump left where it
16:37is, so you lose nothing.
16:39They are not cheap.
16:41They are also the difference between an inconvenience and a crisis, and they last decades.
16:49What will not do it is the pitcher pump you see on the shelf for $40.
16:54That is a suction pump, and it is sitting at the top pulling, and the hard limit on pulling water
17:01upward is about 25 feet before the water simply will not come.
17:06If your static level is below that, no amount of pumping does anything at all, and a lot of people
17:14have bought one of those for an emergency and found out in the emergency.
17:19For most drilled wells, it is the wrong tool, and the box will not tell you.
17:26And as to why nobody mentions any of this, there is no scheme in it.
17:31A baler is four parts off a shelf, and nobody can build a business selling you one.
17:37A generator is $3,000 and has an advertising budget.
17:42So the generator gets talked about every autumn, and the $30 pipe does not.
17:48And inside of two generations, a thing that every farm kept hanging on a nail in the well house became
17:54a thing nobody has heard of.
17:57Nobody hid it. It simply stopped being worth anybody's money to say it out loud.
18:03Which is how it came to be hanging on that nail with dust on it while I carried water up
18:09a hill for two days.
18:11The well was never the thing that broke.
18:14Tell me something in the comments.
18:16Do you know how far down the water starts in your well, and if you do, how did you find
18:22out?
18:23I expect most people have no idea, and there is no shame in it, because nobody ever tells you it
18:30is a number worth having.
18:32And if you have an old well bucket or a baler in a shed somewhere, say so, because I would
18:38like to know how many of them are still out there.
18:41Next time I want to talk about what to look at before you buy a cheap piece of ground, because
18:46water is the first question on any piece of land, and a well is the most expensive surprise there is,
18:53and I have owed you that one since the Nine Ways video.
18:57I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
19:02There is a great deal of difference between a thing being gone and a thing being out of reach, and
19:08most of what looks like the first turns out to be the second if you go and look properly.
19:14The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.