Watch: Digging a 20-Foot Well by Hand and Making a Cheap Hand Pump

Water is essential to life, and getting it is crucial for anyone to survive on or off the grid. This video follows along as a guy digs his own 20-foot-deep well in Georgia and assembles, then uses, an all-PVC hand-operated pump.

He used a hand-operated shovel auger, to which he kept adding lengths of pipe as he dug deeper and deeper. At around 21 feet, he decided he was deep enough.

He then glued the PVC casing together and cut slits (or gills) into it. After putting it down his well hole, he filled in the space around the casing with pea gravel.

Then after building the pump, he put it down into the casing and secured it. Soon afterward, he was pumping water!

Definitely a lot of work, but well worth it to get water where you need it.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.