6 Best Well Development Tools For New Wells Old Drillers Swear By
Explore the 6 essential well development tools seasoned drillers trust. These time-tested methods ensure maximum yield and optimal flow from any new well.
You’ve just spent a small fortune drilling a new well, and the rig is finally pulling out of your driveway. The relief is huge, but the water sputtering from the temporary pump is cloudy, gritty, and looks more like weak coffee than clean water. This is where the real work begins—the work that turns a freshly drilled hole into a reliable source of clean water for your home and farm.
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Why Proper Well Development Is Non-Negotiable
Drilling a well is only half the battle. The other half, well development, is what ensures you have clean water, a good flow rate, and a well that will last for decades instead of just a few years. It’s the process of cleaning out the drilling residue, settling the natural formation around the well screen, and maximizing the efficiency of water flow from the aquifer into your well.
Think of it like breaking in a new engine. You don’t just turn the key and drive it at top speed. You have to run it through its paces, flush out the manufacturing debris, and let all the parts settle into place.
Skipping or rushing development is a classic rookie mistake. A poorly developed well will constantly pull in sand and silt, which chews up pump impellers and clogs your plumbing fixtures. You’ll also get a lower yield, meaning the well can’t deliver water as fast as it should. Proper development is an investment in the well’s entire lifespan.
Clear-View PVC Bailers for Initial Cleanout
The first tool out of the truck is almost always the simplest. A bailer is basically a long tube with a check valve at the bottom. You lower it into the well, it fills with water and sediment, and you pull it back up to dump it out. It’s slow, messy work, but it’s absolutely essential.
Old-timers swear by the clear PVC bailers for a reason. You can see exactly what you’re pulling out of the well. In the beginning, it will be thick with drilling mud, clay, and coarse sand. As you work, you’ll see the water start to clear up, and the sediment will become finer.
This visual feedback is priceless. It tells you when you’ve removed the bulk of the heavy debris and are ready to move on to more aggressive methods. Trying to jump straight to a powerful pump would just clog and destroy it with this initial slurry. The bailer is your first, most important diagnostic tool.
Wyo-Ben Surge Blocks for Formation Settling
Once the heaviest gunk is bailed out, it’s time to work the formation itself. A surge block is a tool that fits snugly inside the well casing. By rapidly moving it up and down, you create a powerful plunging action—pushing water out through the screen and then pulling it back in.
This back-and-forth motion does two critical things. First, it breaks down any residual drilling mud that’s caked onto the outside of the well screen, allowing water to flow more freely. Second, and more importantly, it settles the sand and gravel pack around the screen.
The surging action causes the fine particles to shift and lock into place with the larger ones, creating a natural filter pack. This stabilizes the aquifer material right where it meets your well. A well-developed filter pack is what stops sand from entering your well for years to come. This isn’t just cleaning; it’s building the well’s internal structure.
Air-Lifting with a Sullair 185 Compressor
After surging, there’s still a lot of suspended material to get out. Air-lifting is a highly effective way to do it. You run two pipes down the well: a small one to inject high-volume compressed air near the bottom and a larger one for the discharge. The air creates a powerful, bubbling lift that forces water, sand, and silt up and out of the well.
A reliable, high-volume compressor is key, and you’ll see a Sullair 185 on just about every driller’s truck for a reason. They are tough, dependable, and deliver the consistent cubic feet per minute (CFM) needed for effective air-lifting. This isn’t a job for a small workshop compressor.
Air-lifting is more aggressive than bailing and can remove a huge volume of fines in a short amount of time. It’s a fantastic intermediate step that cleans the well bore thoroughly before you introduce a pump. You’ll run it until the discharge water starts to clear, signaling that you’ve removed the majority of the loose material.
High-Pressure Jetting with a Johnson Screens Tool
Sometimes, surging and air-lifting aren’t enough, especially in formations with a lot of fine clay or stubborn drilling mud. This is where high-pressure jetting comes in. A specialized jetting tool, often from a legacy brand like Johnson Screens, is lowered into the well. The tool has nozzles that blast horizontal jets of high-pressure water against the well screen.
This action is like a pressure washer for your well screen, but from the inside out. It physically blasts away any particles that are clogging the screen’s openings, ensuring every single slot is open and able to accept water. Some tools even rotate as they’re raised and lowered to guarantee 360-degree coverage.
Jetting is a more technical and time-consuming process, but for wells in tricky formations, it can be the difference between a mediocre well and a great one. It directly addresses the most critical part of the well’s anatomy—the screen itself—and ensures it’s performing at 100% capacity.
Grundfos SP Pumps for Aggressive Over-Pumping
Now it’s time for the stress test. Over-pumping involves installing a temporary pump and running it at a flow rate significantly higher than the well will be expected to produce for daily use. This final, aggressive pull draws in any remaining fine particles that the surging and air-lifting left behind. The goal is to pump the well hard until the water runs completely clear and sand-free.
You can’t use just any pump for this. The water is still gritty, and it will destroy a standard submersible pump in hours. This is why pros rely on workhorses like the Grundfos SP series. These pumps are engineered with durable materials and tight tolerances to handle abrasive, sandy water without self-destructing.
This step proves the well’s capacity and stability. If you can pump it hard for several hours without the water level dropping excessively and it clears up nicely, you know you have a stable, productive well. It’s the final exam before the permanent pump goes in.
Well-Vu Casing Brushes for Final Screen Cleaning
For the ultimate finishing touch, especially in wells where mineral encrustation or biofilm might be a future concern, a good brushing is in order. Casing brushes are exactly what they sound like: stiff, wire brushes sized to the well’s diameter. They are lowered down and worked up and down across the screen interval.
This mechanical scrubbing action scours the inside surfaces of the screen slots. It removes any lingering scale, mud cake, or early-stage bacterial slime that other methods might have missed. It’s like using a bottle brush to make sure the inside is as clean as the outside.
While not every driller does this on every well, the old-timers who take immense pride in their work often see it as a final quality-control step. It ensures the screen is as clean as physically possible, maximizing its open area and setting the well up for a long, efficient life.
Final Steps: Water Testing and Disinfection
Once the well is mechanically clean and pumping clear, the job still isn’t finished. The entire well, from the bottom of the screen to the top of the casing, needs to be disinfected to kill any bacteria introduced during the drilling and development process. This is typically done with a chlorine solution, a process known as "shock chlorination."
After disinfection and flushing the system, the final, non-negotiable step is to take a water sample and send it to a certified lab for testing. You need to know exactly what’s in your water. The test should, at a minimum, check for coliform bacteria, nitrates, pH, and hardness.
Don’t just assume the water is safe because it’s clear. A pristine-looking well can still have invisible contaminants. This lab report is your baseline for the well’s health and your family’s safety. Only after you get a clean report back is the well truly ready for service.
Developing a well isn’t about a single magic tool, but a deliberate sequence of them, each with a specific job. From the gentle bailing of mud to the aggressive scrubbing of a brush, this process is what transforms a construction project into a life-sustaining resource. Taking the time to do it right with the proper tools is the best insurance you can buy for your farm’s water security.
