How we overcome agricultural water issue in our land||Our drilled hole

Water is one of the main barriers in the Agricultural field in the dry zone. Most of farmers have to depend on monsoon rains and intermediate monsoons. Especially from mid-November to March they experience North-East monsoon period but sometimes irregularities of rainfall pattern completely affect their crops.

We have agricultural land which is inherited from our grandparents, at Kahatagasdgiliya area. We tried several times to grow short-duration crops such as chilies, pumpkins, watermelon, and ginger but due to seasonal occurrence, it was not successful. The main barrier we faced was the lack of agricultural water for cultivation.

Our Land

We have a deep agricultural well in this land. There is a little quantity of water in its base during the dry season. With our raw water pump, it is difficult to extract water at least for ten minutes.

Deep Well without water

Finally, we decided to construct a new borehole (deep well) in this land. Our budget was less than two hundred thousand for borehole construction. There were several deep well drillers in our area and we started to search for drillers with good experience and reputation. One of the Contractors we met asked for Rs. 85,000 for the first hundred feet and thereafter thousand rupees for a depth of per foot. We went to see drilled deep wells by them and found out that the water extraction of those deep wells was not perfect.

Then we found a Drilling crew which was handled by a Geologist. Got a quotation from them and it included the estimate for soil investigation. This was the investigation for well installation location. There was a Maila tree and a snake house in our land and we hoped that this would be the correct location for a deep well. There is faith that it will be a possibility of aquifers underneath the snake home and Maila trees.

Drilling experts started to locate a suitable location using the sophisticated instrument and finally decided the same place we assumed. Finally, they started their drilling using a heavy drilling rig. Their crew consists of six workers including two drillers. Carried out day and night work & they finished work in three days.

Drilling crew in operation

In-depth of 42.0 m they found a yield of 60 liters per minute and fracture was found at 42.0m depth. The main problem we had was Electrical conductivity of water in drilled well was 4150 ms/cm which was not within safe drinking water standards. Therefore we are compelled to use this drilled well only for agricultural purposes.

Drilled Bore Hole

Our drilling depth was nearly 145 feet and the contractor submitted us the drill log. The drill log is the datasheet that includes all technical data of the drilled well. Now we have to select a suitable submersible pump to extract water from the borehole. Before that, we fabricated a GI angle iron-framed stand to keep the PE tank near the borehole.

PE tank placed on GI Angle Iron frame

Our main plan was to distribute water to the land from the PE tank, with a height of more than 20 feet by gravity flow. Therefore we purchased a 1000 lit. capacity PE tank for this purpose for the expense of Rs. 10,000.00. By analyzing the Drill log we calculated the water flow and static head of the desired pump. It’s called Q and H of the Submersible pump. Our pump requirement was a minimum flow of 30 liters per minute and 70m of water head. We had an electricity connection to this land and we re-connected it by informing CEB.

Without any delays, we purchased a very good pump with a renowned brand name for less than Rs.50, 000.00 with one
year comprehensive warranty. Then we erected the GI angle iron stand and placed the PE tank on top of the stand, finished plumbing work, and tested the pump. Water extraction was marvelous and the 1000 l capacity PE tank filled within 30 minutes. We laid a distribution system with 2” diameter type 400 PVC pipes to cover the total area and now eagerly waiting to start our maiden agricultural work soon.