Wiring the Well: The Trenching Extravaganza on Kay Acres

My 2 acres already has a septic system, electricity, and a well. During the process of buying the property, I had everything inspected. The well pump had been out of order for a few years. I didn’t want to go forward with the purchase if the well wasn’t accessible. Luckily, the well inspectors were optimistic that the well just needed a new pump, and it should be good to go.

A few thousand dollars later (well pumps are not cheap but it’s still way cheaper than drilling a whole new well), we had a functioning well. Huzzah! Except it wasn’t permanently wired. We decided to do that ourselves. Why not?

Balancing cost and effort is a consistent theme for my tiny house adventures. Could I wire a well for under $250? We already had the wire, which is the most expensive part. Now we needed conduit, a disconnector box, and all the tools for the process. That’s where friends come into play.

Doug and Debby built their own house and have a barn (also self-built) that’s essentially a workshop. The barn is to tools as Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory is to candy. The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!

This means that they trenched their own pipes and wired up their own systems. When you have people who have been to the rodeo before, it’s a lot easier to take on seemingly impossible projects.

The Plan

The plan was pretty straight forward:

1. Dig a trench for the conduit
2. Lay down and glue the conduit together
3. Pull the wire through the conduit
4. Attach the wire to the breaker and the pump
5. Turn on water!

How It Went

We got up bright and early to meet up for breakfast and packing at 8AM. This took a good two hours. For previous projects, we’ve gotten to my property and realized we had forgotten something. While this is classic, we preferred to overly prepare so as not to have any other delays. I’m the official list double checker for the group. 🙂

We arrived at the property and dug a few smaller holes to find what pipes were already underground. We were going to be digging near the septic system, so we didn’t want to mess up the wiring or pipes for that. I then used my awesome riding lawn mower (a kind gift from Valerie and Adam) to mow the areas where we would be digging. The weeds have gotten really bad. There are some that were taller than me! But the mower did great, and we had prepped the land. This took another couple of hours, and it was lunchtime.

Debby was kind enough to pick us up some sandwiches. It started to drizzle a bit, which scared me at first, but it sounded like it wouldn’t get heavier than that. It was a blessing in disguise. Usually Texas is about 95 degrees and sunny this time of year. Overcast and a little rain was much more comfortable for this type of project. Once sandwiches, chips, and cookies were had, we were ready to trench!

Luckily, Doug and Debby have a tractor that isn’t necessarily meant to trench, but it can. And that tractor was MVP. Because you know what? Digging sucks. There were certain areas that we had to be careful around like nearest to the pump. We didn’t want to break any pipes or wires that were already underground. So Phil, Debby, and I got to dig the old fashioned way: with shovels. And oh my God. On one hand, Texas is known for it’s limestone, so digging can be a challenge with rocks in your way. My property doesn’t have limestone, but it does have clay. Thick, sticky clay. Did I mention that digging sucks?

I kept thinking about the book Holes. I had to dig 18″ (which is code). I can’t imagine digging a 6′ x 6′ hole like Stanley had to. That’s straight up child abuse. It took me as long to dig that small hole as it did for Doug to trench a good 50 feet. Tractors for the win!

Trenching took forever. While the tractor made this an exponentially faster process, it still took patience. Doug was a master at it. We completed trenching at around 4PM.

By this point, I was exhausted. But Debby was kind enough to point out, the next step was the fun part. She was right. A few weeks ago, I learned about PVC pipes and plumbing. During this project, I got to learn about conduit and wiring. We laid out the conduit near the trench. There were three areas where the conduit needed to bend. Doug brought his torch so we could heat up the conduit so it was bendable. This method was really cool! I didn’t know you could do that, and it was way more fun than cutting and gluing elbow connectors.

Gluing the conduit together went super fast. It was then time to pull the wire through the conduit. Doug brought fish tapes and wire pulling lubricant. The wire was super fat and heavy (we used 1″ conduit so it could fit). Doug was in charge of pulling, I was in charge of feeding and lubricant, and Debby was in charge of lifting the wire. It took about 10 to 15 minutes, but we did it! And luckily, the wire was the perfect length. We were only a little worried it was too short. 😛

Doug was an electrician in a past life, so he handled connecting the wires to the pump and the breaker. Debby and I started refilling the trench. It was amazing to see how hours and hours of prep work led to maybe less than an hour of electric work. We also brought caution tape with us to place about 6″ above the conduit. You know, in case I want to dig at a later date and not bust up all our hard work. Debby used the tractor to push the dirt back in, and I laid down the caution tape. Spoiler alert: filling in holes is way more fun than digging them!

Phil took over tractor duties, and I think he had a lot of fun learning how to maneuver the bucket to fill the dirt back in and then flatten it out. They did a great job. It looked like we were never there!

It was now time to test the well. We flipped on the breaker, and turned on the water. The pump takes a few minutes to get to pressure, so we started cleaning up our work site. Once it was ready, we turned it on. SUCCESS!!! Water was running just as expected! It’s amazing when things work on the first try. We wrapped up at about 8:30PM. It was a 12 and a half hour work day, and I spent less than $200 in supplies. Not too shabby!

Now that my property has a working water source, I can start some burn piles for all of the limbs and trees we’re clearing on the property.

This was one of those projects that is hard, laborious, but oh so rewarding. We had a late delicious dinner with some much deserved beer and margaritas. Thanks to Doug, Debby, and Phil for their amazing work, optimism, and making really hard projects really fun. <3

If you’re interested in watching the fun, check out this video: