One hell of a well

[dcooper1]

A friend of mine lives in a house that was built in the late 17 to early 1800's.? It used to be a hotel, was active during the civil war, across the street from a major train station during the civil war, and was within 300 yards of a battle during the war.?
After reading some of the posts here, he decided he wanted to see if there was anything in the well.?
I went over there today with some tools to do a re-con on it to see what it would take to get to the bottom.? The top of the well has been covered with concrete, had a small opening - presumably for a pump, and a larger "manhole".? The smaller of the two was already open, I took my 1 million candlepower spotlight and looked in.? The inside is about 6' across and totally lined with stones.? I could see the water was about 15' from the top.? We then took a piece of rope and tied a short piece of pipe to it to drop to the bottom.? We lowered it in, and in, and in, and in, and finally it hit the bottom.? As we pulled it back out I marked the rope where the water level started.? We pulled it out and laid it in the yard, measured it...........the water itself was 30' deep.? ?? That makes it about 45-50 feet from top to bottom!!!!!!
So, now what do you do....

 

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[Kentucky Kache]

Wow, that's deep. Buy a big pump or a frog suit.

 

[JakePhelps]

Sounds cool!! I bet theres some old stuff down there

 

[SomeGuy]

http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,3827.0.html

HarborFreight Under Water Camera System.
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=91309

Could be a good starter camera for testing.

 

[spotz]

It's probably only covered all across the bottom with old Confederate Gold Coins. Check the forum for anyone in your area who does under water detecting. The whole property sounds like a detectorist's dream come true.
Spotz

 

[tallpaul]

get yourself one of them strong large magnets for now, whilst thinking about a diver,, you'll pull something out with a magnet,, gotta be a proper magnet thoe, hope you pull some goodies out,.

 

[dcooper1]

Thats a good idea with the underwater camera, I almost bought one a few years ago, it was made for "fishing", it was used and was only about 300 bucks. Maybe I'll look into those again. Sounds like a pretty cool adventure.

 

[Bjorn_MD]

My friend and I had a similar venture as yours. Ours was about 3' wide, stone lined and 25' deep.

We started by throwing a marked quarter into the well. Just to get an idea how thorough our recovery methods would turn out to be.

The story was that the kids of the owner used to drop pennies and quarters down it all the time. Very exciting to say the least, it seems to justify all the hard work.

So we proceeded to pump out the well and lowered a ladder way down into the well. I climbed to the bottom and used a bucket on a rope to get the last of the water out.

The bottom was lined with about 6" of dirt and silt and debris, from sticks, to small rocks. (The top of the well had a concrete lid with a small 3" hole in the center, perfect for dropping through)

We had found a baby doll from the 60's floating on top of the water.

Little by little we bucketed the debris from the bottom out until it was clear. The neatly stacked stone walls made for perfect shelves all the way down the well. We found that there were lots and lots of 'disposed of' razor blades lining the walls on the stone ledges. Most of them rusted away to nothing, crumbling at the touch. Occasionally I was able spot a coin on one of the stone shelves. I was unable to use my detector to find anything, and I didn't have a pinpointer at the time. Of course neither would have done well.

After collecting all the debris from the bottom, I sifted through the contents and carefully detected through it all.

We ended up retrieving the marked quarter, and about 30 Wheat pennies, but nothing more significant then that. The well-kept baby doll turned out to be our greatest find of the day.


I later returned to the site after getting an xlt. While detecting around the concrete lid of the well, I found an 1893 Indian Head penny, which had been there the whole time. I guess the lesson I learned was that you have to make sure it is worth the effort... As it turned out , we overlooked lost coins just under the grass, in searched of purposely lost coins in deep well.

The experience though was unforgettable!

Good luck with your venture.

 

[shorty]

I've had great luck with magnets on a rope. A couple weeks ago I upgraded to a 250 lb lift magnet from Harbor Freight on sale for $19. It comes with a eyebolt for a rope. I've found some great stuff dragging it from my kayak.

 

[boomer]

Dcooper, one thing you must do, with the depth of the well. donot park a car or truck close to the well. The weight could put undo pressure on the rock walls of the well and cause a cave in. The underwater camera works great, the one we use had 50' of cable. We upgraded this with another 50'. Got the extra cable at radio shack. Make sure it has a good light on the end. A magnet is good for this type of project, also great around boat docks and ferry crossing and river fords. Get one from ebay. Good luck and stay safe.

 

[dcooper1]

Hey guys, thanks for all of the info.
I think we will end up exploring this thing further, another one of those that will take some planning.
I do have a question about he magnet and the camera. Wouldn't the magnet be extremely limited in the items it actually picks up?? and....after you find the items with the camera, how in the world would you get them out of a 50' well?? sound like I may need to build a miniature version on one of those robot/cameras that you see on the discovery channel.

 

[Rusty Sheriffs Badge]

Use a suction dredge. You will obviously need an extra long hose and tie a heavy weight to it. Send it all the way to the bottom and when you start sucking up dirt, you've hit the spot. Suck the materials out to be washed out over a screen. Only problem is, it may be hard to get it to cover the entire floor. I don't know of a good method that would move it around for you at the bottom. Also, that will be a ton of water to displace. You will flood the yard.

 

[cillosis]

You wouldnt flood the yard if you had something catching the water like a kiddie pool with a pump that pumps the water back into the well.

 

[SomeGuy]

You wouldnt flood the yard if you had something catching the water like a kiddie pool with a pump that pumps the water back into the well.?

It would be over 6345 gal (>848 cu .ft.)...... a pretty big kiddy pool!

 

[jeric2]

You rent the wet suit and scuba gear and I'll be there.

 

[dcooper1]

Would you really "dive-in" 50' X 6' pitch black and i'm guessing the waters probably pretty cold

 

[JakePhelps]

no telling what else could be down there, like sharp metal or stuff.....also bottles and glassware. But if you went down slowly it may work

 

[dcooper1]

Yeah, it would be my luck that one of the rocks would come loose and whack me on the head

 

[MiddenMonster]

Hey guys, thanks for all of the info.
I think we will end up exploring this thing further, another one of those that will take some planning.
I do have a question about he magnet and the camera. Wouldn't the magnet be extremely limited in the items it actually picks up?? and....after you find the items with the camera, how in the world would you get them out of a 50' well?? sound like I may need to build a miniature version on one of those robot/cameras that you see on the discovery channel.

I've been planning a similar project for the last year, waiting for colder weather so the ticks and pests wouldn't be as bad. I also bought the Harbor Freight magnet (200lb.+ lift) and will use that to catch some of the iron-based trash that has accumulated over the years. I'm hoping the well I'm digging is a maximum of 10'-15', but your story makes me wonder. The water table here is close to the surface so I'm still hoping for a shallow well. My main concern is safety. We're going to use a trash pump with at least a 15' lift capacity to pump the water out. Once it's out however, time, degradation and exposure to the air could make the well unsafe to be in. For a 50' well you will need to build an A-frame over the top that is big enough to accomodate a rappel rope (for you) and a pulley system for hauling buckets of dirt and debris up. The kicker is that with a well that deep it will be tough getting back up. I wouldn't count on climbing. If you can get a quad-runner or vehicle with a winch on it you can attach a second pulley to the A-frame and use that to lift people out of the well without working too hard. Climbing up the sides could cause it to cave in on you. I'm heading to my well site in the next few weeks to do some initial surveying and planning, and hope to start excavation on it sometime just before or after the end of the year. I might even try pumping it dry this visit so I can see how deep it is and so I know how fast it refills. Right now the water is almost up to the concrete platform. I'm pretty sure that there are about 20 bodies and several containers of KGC gold down there, in addition to a few old treasury printing plates from the George Washington administration.

 

[dcooper1]

Went out the other day and got the biggest magnet that tractor supply had, said it would lift 100 lbs.
Lowered the thing into the well, at one point it felt like it stuck on something pretty big, I thought I was going to break the rope trying to pull it loose, it finally broke loose, when it came up it was covered with pieces of rusted iron. Tried some more to manuever it around on the bottom but dont think we had a ton of success covering it. A little magnet on the end of a rope lowered through a small hole into 35 feet of water doesnt move too well.

I think the underwater camera will be plan "B".