Our account of digging a well in the Philippines.

The first step of just about every

residential construction project in the Philippines is digging a well. Even in urban
places, where municipal water is available, most households have a dug well, the water
from which is used for non-critical uses such as laundry and car washing and probably
for the live-in help to use. Municipal water is considered to be expensive and not to be
used for frivolous purposes.
In order to make concrete, the basic building material of the Philippines, water is a
necessity. Thats why a well is the first order of business when building a house. Most
of these wells are what wed call dug wells but Filipinos usually call deep wells. Drilled
wells are rare here but the Iloilo Municipal Water District does have some drilled wells in
Oton. American colonial authorities and geologists gave up on wells to supply water to
Iloilo City and instead built the reservoir on the Tigum River. Its still in use today.
We had bought a lot in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines. Our plan is to eventually build
a house there. The first step was to build a perimeter wall around the lot. This is usual
in the Philippines and most developing countries. We hired an Iloilo architect to design
and build the wall because we had never managed such a project in the Philippines on
our own. We were a bit intimidated at the thought of hiring and supervising a crew,
buying materials and so forth.

Philippine wells almost always use concrete well tiles. Since we wanted our well to be
good and to have a big capacity we specified that big tiles be used. We shopped
around and found good well tiles at Damasco in Pavia, Iloilo. More about that at /our-

house-project-cement-blocks/
We ended up using tiles that were 36 in diameter on the inside at 18 high. These tiles
are very heavy, perhaps 500 pounds each. They are much larger than the tiles most
property owners use. Our theory was that the large tiles would give us a bigger reserve
for peak water usage such as garden watering. Our architect-contractor brought in
some workers to dig the well. Locals had told us that wells should be 25 feet deep to
ensure a reliable supply of water.

HAULING UP DIRT FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL WHERE ANOTHER

WORKER IS DIGGING.
The actual digging of the well was less drama that I had imagined. Basically, the first
tile is set in place and then workers dig under the bottom tile causing it to settle into the
well hole. When the tile has sunk to ground level another tile is rolled into place on lifted
on top and the digging continues. Since we had a big crew in site for the building of the
wall, there was plenty of manpower available to wrestle with the tiles.
Carol and I left for a few days and when we came back we were dismayed to find that
the well had been dug so that ten tiles were in place below the surface with two tiles
above ground. This meant that we had a fifteen foot deep well, not the twenty-five foot
depth we had been told was necessary. The well-digging crew had disappeared. The
well tile joints had been sealed with concrete mortar and the exterior of the well back
filled. I was not happy but the architect assured me that the well would be made deeper
later. This turned out to be wrong. The sealing of the joints, and especially the
backfilling meant that the tiles were fixed in place and digging under the bottom tile to
deepen the well would not work. Since this was in January, before the hot, dry weather
set in, we had plenty of water for the time being about six feet of water in the fifteen
foot well. The question was would we have enough water for our wall building project
as the water level dropped during the hot and dry months of February through May.
Fast forward through almost three months of hot, dry weather to April. The architect
and his crew have been given walking papers and a new crew is on site and making
good progress on the wall. There is only two or three feet of water in the well and we
decide we have to take action. The father of one of our crew members, Juanito Trogani,
is purportedly the ace well digger in the Tigbauan, Iloilo area. This proved to be true.
Trogani came to the site to evaluate the well. He said all the tiles have to be removed
and the well redug. He agreed to do the work for P800 pesos per tile. We had more
tiles delivered and Trogani appeared with his crew and a few simple tools carried in rice
sacks. We document the work below.

ALL THE TOOLS (ROPE, A COUPLE OF LENGTHS OF PIPE) ARRIVED IN

RICE SACKS OVER THE DIGGERS SHOULDERS. WE SUPPLIED THE
BAMBOO FOR THE TRIPOD.
Bear in mind how much more difficult a job rebuilding the well was than was digging it in
the first place. All of the 500 pound concrete tiles had to be hoisted out of the well using
almost medieval technology. I was really appalled at the risks being taken. Young men
were lowered into the well to tie a rope around the wet, slippery tiles which were then
slowly hauled out of the well, mostly by brute force. I shuddered to think what would
happen if a tile came loose while one of the men was in the well.

HAULING THE 500# TILES OUT OF THE WELL

THIS WAS THE BRAKE WHICH REGULATED TENSION ON THE LINE

THE TILES ARE OUT AND WAITING TO GO BACK IN ONCE THE DIGGING
IS DONE.
All the old tiles had been wrestled out of the well by the second day and the process of
digging the well deeper started. The well was dug to about 16.5 or 17 feet deep and
then two tiles were lowered in. Digging under the tiles continued. The crew had to
constantly bail water out of the well. As work progressed the young diggers had to dive
to the bottom of the well to continue the digging.

DIGGERS IN THE BOTTOM OF THE WELL USING THE TOOL SHOWN

BELOW.

THIS IS THE TOOL USED TO DIG IN THE CONFINED SPACE AT THE

BOTTOM OF THE WELL
So far the digging had been through a very dense clay (probably a vertisol) but at 19
feet we came to a layer of pure gray sand. It appeared to be almost identical to the
volcanic material deposited across Washington State when Mt. St. Helens erupted in

1980. We lived in Washington at the time and remember the snow plow trucks plowing
this material off the highways. Certainly this layer must have been deposited from an
ancient volcanic eruption. It was subsequently overlaid with twenty feet of clay,
probably deposited when the area was a seabed. The sand layer was considered to be
very auspicious and digging was ended and sealing of the joints and backfilling
undertaken.

GOOD NEWS LAYER OF VOLCANIC SAND AT 20

THE TILES GO BACK IN

Total cost was P13,600 or about $285. Of course this did not include the well tiles
which were P870 ($19) each nor does it account for the fact that I had previously paid
for the original well digging. Still the redigging was a success. We ended up with
almost nine feet of water in the well instead of two or three feet. We went on to add a
concrete platform and Dragon hand pump.

DRAGON BRAND WATER PUMP

Postscript. The well pad shown above had to be demolished after five years.
Reason? It did not have an adequate foundation and so heaved and cracked.
The clay soils found in many Philippine rice lands expand when wet and shrink
when dry. This effect is strong enough to crack concrete.

For the first several months, the water is was slightly milky. This is pretty much
unavoidable in a well dug in clay, which is the finest of soils. The particles are so small
that they remain suspended in the water rather than settling out. The heat, the slightly
stagnant and swampy nature of the surrounding rice fields promotes algae growth. Our
solution is to treat the well with chlorine powder or one can just use liquid laundry
bleach. This is a standard well treatment practically everywhere. Small packets of
chlorine powder are sold in grocery stores and given away by government to help
residents keep their wells safe.
Now, two years after the digging of the well, we are blessed with a plentiful supply of
good quality water. We still occasionally treat the well with chlorine, especially during
the dry months when the level of the well falls, but otherwise we use it as is for bathing
and cooking. We buy bottled water for drinking.