There are several different types of water well and as a result some of the water well drilling equipment necessary to create them will vary too. However, one item of apparatus that you will always need is a means of getting the water out of the well, and this can vary from a bucket on a rope to a modern solar powered water pump.

Some types of well are dug out by hand with shovels as they were for thousands of years and others are drilled out with powerful, large rotary drills as are used in the oil industry. Here follows the main types of water well:

A water well that is known as a ‘dug well’ is exactly that: a well that has been excavated by hand with a pick and shovel. It is the same type of water well that existed in Biblical times and before and the equipment used to create it has not altered either. The only change is the quality of the equipment – it has increased inestimably over the last 2,000 years.

These wells look like the wishing wells famous from farm houses and fairy stories with a bucket wound up and down on a rope by the help of a spindle. They usually have a small roof to discourage things from falling into the water also. These wells most often exist in hotter, poorer countries, and they are frequently brought into the 21st Century by the addition of a solar powered water pump.

These water wells are often dressed in stone to stop dust and soil from falling into the water. It also cuts down on long term repairs, because you do not have to keep digging out the well to clear it of soil that has fallen into it.

A much narrower diameter well can be created by drilling. The water well drilling jar design equipment required is not complicated, but you will have to have a heavy-duty power source such as a generator, because you may need to drill through rock.

This technique of drilling is similar to that used in the oil industry. A drill bit is attached to a pipe which is first hammered into the ground to give it a bite and then rotated like a drill.

You have to keep drilling by adding extra pipes until you strike water. Then the drill is extracted from the well and a water channel is inserted in its place. A solar pump can be added to this pipe to provide water.

A similar technique of drilling a well employs water well drilling equipment that is similar to that used for pile-driving. A point is hammered into the ground by a very heavy weight. Every time the weight strikes, the bit rotates a little. It is slow and old-fashioned, but it has worked for hundreds of years and still does.

The drill bit has to be pulled out often to extract the debris. When water has been struck, the water well drilling equipment is pulled out and a pipe is fed down the hole. Once again a pump may be installed to bring up the water. A solar powered pump is the way that most people tend to go.