How Wells & Aquifers Actually Work
Correcting the misconceptions that abound around water below the ground
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It is undoubtedly unintuitive that water flows in the soil and rock below our feet. This video covers the basics of groundwater engineering, including how wells are built, how injection wells work, and how aquifers interact with surface water features.
Errata: Deep well jet pumps exist that can lift water greater than 100' using an ejector and two pipes.
Practical Engineering is a KZhead channel about infrastructure and the human-made world around us. It is hosted, written, and produced by Grady Hillhouse. We have new videos posted regularly, so please subscribe for updates. If you enjoyed the video, hit that ‘like’ button, give us a comment, or watch another of our videos!
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Producer/Writer/Host: Grady Hillhouse
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He is named Grady Hillhouse because he likes grades, hills, and houses. The ultimate civil engineer
Okay this got a chuckle. Have my like internet stranger.
Good joke, I've never strung it together
Presumably you are a radio host concentrating mainly on washing clothes who leans a little one one direction or another? 🤪
I wonder if he has a middle name... What would that be? Grady Infrastructure Hillhouse?
@@srjskam it would be funny if he had a Chinese surname like ChEng which is a title for Chief Engineer 😅
This man has consistently made me more interested in dirt and concrete
he's not the #1 youtube channel on dirt for no reason!
I wouldn't say I'm now a big dirt & concrete aficionado, but this channel teaches stuff me stuff that I think all people should know about how a part of the modern world works. And he does it in an interesting way.
I think its a big deal for the average person to be more educated on how the world works around them. There is so much extra we have to do because people think information like this is "useless information" because they cant use it to make money or it wont influence them in their daily lives. But it provides so much context to the world around you, why counstruction takes so long, why they do construction where they do, and this channel has videos that show potential dangers that wouldnt be obvious if you didnt watch a video that had "useless information" in it
He could make a video on paint drying seem interesting
Hyper-focused men be like: dirt
As a hydrologist and geotechnical engineer, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your videos. Even after my education and experience (in the field and office), your videos always seem to give me a better understanding of... well, just about any topic. Thank you!
What is geotechnical engineering? (I suppose I could google it, but what you do is probably more better at explaining than google)
hey
@@luaist I’m just a mere student but I think it is the study of soils under pressure and forces and how soils (+ water because of groundwater) behave under those conditions
There you will study shallow and deep foundations, settlements, lateral earth pressures, etc
As your local crackhead, do you have $20?
Wow. "#1 channel on the internet about dirt". The hubris of man truly knows no bounds.
I loved that it's both self-depricating and accurate!
In the Netherlands coastal regions they found that the dunes would hold a lot of clean water. They started pumping this water up around the 1870s, but ran into problems by the 1940s: salt from the sea would infiltrate the aquifer and make the water undrinkable. Now they pump fresh water into the dunes from rivers and pump it out on the other side. This allows for water storage and at the same time the sand in the aquifer cleans the water. This works so well that they don't have to add any chlorine and still have safe drinking water.
I live in the Netherlands and I am constantly amazed by how we have a grip on water even at pretty bizarre scales. EDIT: In fact, my entire childhood and teen years were spent at the lowest point in the Netherlands, at almost 7 meters below sea level. It's pretty weird to look up at the monument and realize that everything below it would be under water permanently.
It's definitely an underappreciated blessing to be able to fill a bottle from your tap and have clean, pure water.
Makes for nice recreational spaces and nature parks as well (example: amsterdamse waterleiding duinen)
The people from Netherlands are insane aquatic engineers
Another fun fact, here in the Netherlands we also use our aquifers to save energy on heating and cooling large buildings. Its called "Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage" (ATES)
Something else to know: "Fossil" aquifers. There are many aquifers that are so deep and geologically isolated that they practically don't recharge at all. Once the water is removed it can take millennia to return. These aquifers are essentially a non-renewable resource (like oil) and unfortunately many places have become reliant on them, setting themselves up for catastrophic water shortages when the aquifers run dry.
that's why we need to take what we understand to help increase aquifer capacity where we can with indigenous materials so when they gradually break down they'll feed instead of poison their surroundings.
How could somebody figure out if their water comes from such an aquifer?
@@russellzauner How do you expect to increase capacity of an aquifer deep in the ground?
@@Stevie-J I hear bent coat hanger wire works well.
@@Stevie-J Ridiculous! Do you know how much a drill mage costs these days? Literally criminal, depending on the context.
You consistently have the coolest visual aids, but this was one that really helped me understand this better. I was also thinking while watching this that this is such an efficient way to spread this information. A teacher may have to build and run this diagram every year, but you're educating millions for the amount of water used for a shower and some acrylic. Well done.
Grady is a googly eyes expert.
@Samurai Nuts love that cat as well!
Don't forget his voice. One of the most pleasant host voices in uoutube.
@@repentandbelieveinJesusChrist9(i know its probably a bot or something but) This is one of the reasons people dislike religion
Your “garage models” are fantastic they make understanding the topic so much easier. You’re a great fabricator as well as an engineer.
The use of dye tablets to show the flow of water was a great idea! This worked much better than I thought it would, it's striking how much they "draw" the path taken instead of just dissolving in the surrounding area.
It's also really cool how it's basically a physical vector field.
@@hedgehog3180 Well, all location dependent quantities can be described as fields (vector or scalar).
Are those the same type of dye tablets used in toilets? Great idea indead.
Thank you for talking about this. I’m a geotech in Florida, but did some environmental work right after graduation in Arizona. I remember having to shut down numerous dry wells (shallow injection wells for storm water management) due to contamination issues. People thought those were the magical holes that made hazardous chemicals disappear. In reality, those were the “expressway” to the aquifer we used for drinking water. To my knowledge, the Phoenix area is still dealing with plumes of groundwater contaminants that were dumped into the aquifer via dry wells or other injection wells 30 to 40 years ago.
Is there any practical way to clean that kind of mess up, or is it largely a 'monitor and see' approach? A friend's aunt spent (far too much) a good chunk trucking water into their hobby farm because of a condemned well, but eventually they had to bite the bullet and put in a new one....
@@TheOriginalBlue62 that’s going to vary on a case by case basis. Some of the issues in the Phoenix area were “monitor and see” while others used a more active approach. I remember one contamination site set up some wells in the center of the groundwater pollution plume to withdraw the polluted water. It was then put through a treatment process to remove the pollutants and put back into the ground via a ring of injection wells set up around the plume. In that way, the treated water would help “push” the polluted water toward the withdrawal wells in the center. Unfortunately, I don’t remember any other details about that project. It was over twelve years ago, and I had only read about it. I was not involved in it as an engineering professional.
@@dbackscott That makes a ton of sense though, literally flushing the ground out. Thanks for the insight!
@@TheOriginalBlue62 I work in groundwater remediation. There are several approaches, all of which are site specific. The first question is whether or not the aquifer is beneficial use. If there are several drinking water wells and residences nearby vs middle of nowhere, that will affect how aggressive (read: expensive) a solution will be chosen. The second question is whether or not it's moving, which way, and towards what. If a plume of contaminant is staying put, we can wait and see. If it's moving towards a waterway (river, ocean, bay, etc) where it will eventually discharge, that's a bigger deal. Finally, we'd have to ask what's down there. Each contaminant has a regulatory screening level. The laws above ground will dictate whether the concentrations are acceptable, or if they exceed regulations (which change depending on how the land is used/planned to be used. Industrial sites require less stringent cleanup than residential housing). So once those are answered, you have a few options. For stable (not moving too much) plumes in non beneficial use aquifers, the answer is almost always long term monitoring. We drill a bunch of monitoring wells and take samples to determine concentrations. Wells are expensive, so you try to drill as few as possible but ultimately you need to be able to produce samples that delineate the edges of the plume. Then you can confidently show regulators where the plume is and that it's staying put...and hopefully that concentrations are reducing naturally (natural attenuation) over time. Then you have your active solutions, for cases when you want to stop a plume moving, or remediate quickly. First you have pump and treat, which was described above. Sick it out, clean it, reinject. Then you have in situ remidiation. This involves any number of combinations of injecting something into the ground to change the chemistry and break down the contaminant of concern. Look up enhanced in situ bioremediation if you're interested. Very good tech which using bacteria to help create anaerobic and reducing conditions which can break down solvent plumes. Finally there is some tech to stop a plume from reaching X location. These barriers come in many forms. Generally speaking, you create a line of injection wells and inject activated carbon, sparge with air, etc to create an environment that prevents migration of the plume. This is a very active and expensive solution but can buy time and avoid disaster. So I guess in summary you can 1. Monitor 2. Treat above ground 3. Treat in situ 4. Generate a barrier Tons of cool technologies to research if you're interested. Behind the solutions above is a not insignificant amount of modeling. When each well is drilled, lithology of the borehole is recorded to give geologists an idea of what layers and types of lithology are present. Water level measurement from a well network give us an idea of which direction net flow will go, and how quickly. A well network is very expensive to create, and so we attempt to create as much data resolution as possible with as few wells as possible. A very interesting challenge when, like Grady mentioned, we are blind to what's going on below. I should go to bed now
@@hilltaylor18 Very good info here, I worked at a landfill in the groundwater monitoring and remediation division and a lot of these proceses are implemented. Groundwater remediation and treatment is a big deal in waste management. Many of the pre-regulation un-lined landfill modules present significant groundwater contamination issues. Complex geological makeup of the site make this a difficult and expensive process. Groundwater modeling with historical data sampling can help optimize treament but short of taking core samples in a grid of the site a lot of the stratigraphy has to be interpolated to understand how the groundewater flows, contamination plume behaves, and generally soil geology is complex and non-linear so this makes it difficult to predict. At the landfill i worked at, all of the known contamination was within shallow aquifers but you never know if and where they are hydraulically connected to deeper aquifers which can cause a much greater issue. Groundwater treament at landfills is very expensive and does not have an imediate marketable product that results from it such as potable drinking water that can be sold or used to supplement drinking water sources without significant investment. Its generally strictly for protecting future drinking water sources and the enviroment for future generations. VOCs and generally most COCs can be treated prety effectively by pumping and treating with air stripping to evaporate VOCs. A far more difficult contaminate to treat is PFAS compounds which do not readily evaporate and must be either treated with adsorption by ion exchange resins, adsorption by granular activated carbon (GAC), and filtration by reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration (NF) membranes. Once its absorbed it still has to be desposed of either through incineration or burying it in hydraulically isolated areas underground.
As someone who is having long-term residential well issues, this video has been amazing at explaining just how these systems work in a way I hadn't previously understood properly.
As someone who drills water wells and installs complete systems, this was pretty fun to watch.
"Correcting the misconceptions that abound around water below the ground" I appreciate how this sentenced is crafted.
Certainly a linguistic masterpiece
Greetings from a Hydrogeologist in Australia! Loved your model, if only all aquifers were that simple 😉
Probably dumbed down for idiots like me
@@joshuacheung6518 honestly as someone taking hydrology 300 right now & hydrogeology next semester, he did a great job and we learned a lot of these concepts this year. Gaining/losing conditions for when groundwater enters or leaves a stream, etc,. We used dye in our surface table stream to see the velocity. The one part that he touches on that is moreso geo/hydrogeochemistry is groundwater contaminants. Can get pretty complex, just look up non aqueous phase liquids (NAPL groundwater). Great video!
My dad was a hydrogeologist in Canada - His tank was three stories tall and 10 meters across. :)
If only! I work as a hydrogeologist in the northern portions of the American Midwest and the glacial deposits left behind here 15,000 years ago created some incredibly complex aquifer systems separated by confining units.
they are
I enjoyed your video on groundwater - these are concepts that are often difficult to grasp, and you have done a remarkable job of explaining them. I know from experience, because I was a professor of Hydrogeology (yes, there is such a thing) before I retired, teaching at the 3rd y level and up. What I love most about hydrogeology is that it draws from all sciences: chemistry (aqueous, organic, and even isotope), physics (Darcy's law in particular); statistics (when dealing with heterogeneous aquifers); Mathematics (as the universal language); numerical methods and computer programming. It can be a fairly simple applied science, as you have so well illustrated; but it can also be quite a bit more complicated for example in describing muti-fluid flow in heterogeneous aquifers (think for example of gasoline spills in layered aquifers). One small addition I would like to make to your great presentation is that, in most practical applications, water movement is actually driven by a gradient of Hydraulic Potential in the direction of flow, which is made up of a pressure component and a gravitational component; not just pressure. If the aquifer is uniform and has no preferred direction of flow (or is "homogeneous and isotropic") the only time that flow is driven by a pressure gradient is in special conditions such as when flow is horizontal (no gravitational component), otherwise it is driven by the Hydraulic gradient (made up of both components). So, to properly and quantitatively describe flow in your (very nice) aquifer model you would need to use the Hydraulic Potential (often expressed in units of length of water or "Head"), particularly as you get nearer a pumping well. Sorry for the rambling (gosh I love this stuff)!
One of the most fascinating things I encountered as a kid was a stream near the top of some sandstone cliffs that literally disappeared into the ground - if it'd kept flowing above ground, it would have made a waterfall over the cliffs about 150m further on. It wasn't till months later I found 'another' stream bubbling up from the ground that flowed in the same direction as the clifftop one, but at least 300m from the base of the cliffs, descending towards the sea a kilometre or so away. It was a pretty fascinating look at what seemed to me to be definitely part of the same waterway. The cliff also had small caves and voids in it for sure, although I never found a channel that matched the apparent full path of the stream - obviously, it may not have existed in one piece in the way I imagined when I was nine or ten.
That sounds incredible to find as a kid
The water does that at Mallam Cove.
attentive kid😊
"Even now, the rules that govern groundwater in many places are still WELL behind our collective knowledge of hydrogeology." ..... nice! One of the many nerdy reasons why I love this channel. :D
I'm pretty sure that was an unintended pun. "Well" is a pretty common word afterall.
@pyropulse fire
@@WanderTheNomad well, well, welll
Well... It's a deep subject.
I treat well water for a living and honestly I figured out much of this intuitively during my time treating water and seeing how newly drilled wells affect existing wells and how depth of a well gives different water and countless other phenomena we run into. But this is the first time I've seen it explained so well and I definitely didn't know everything you said, and most of it was only assumptions based on experiences until you confirmed some things. I love geology and live and work in a place with VERY complex geology and it's awesome to have a job I enjoy that feeds off of that interest. Thanks for this video! I've sent it to the other guys I work with.
Do you work in West Texas or New Mexico? I'm fascinated by the. hydrology of the Limipia River of Davis County TX.
@@adrianjohnson7920 nope, very far from there. Deep in the Appalachian mountains
You lokey just explained the origins of all fields of science & engineering. Lol
where I am at now idiots cut well casings off at ground level then wonder how water gets contaminated... runoff and snow melt etc drain down inside the well casing
You are a very valuable employee, willing to spend free time outside of work to improve your trade and teach your co-workers to help improve your services. I aspire to be like you 👍
Excellent video, one note from someone highly versed in wells and aquifers: contamination won’t generally occur as readily as your model would suggest in non-consolidated wells (if at all) as the general functionality of wells relies on the casing being a lower pressure space than the surrounding aquifer so water flows in and up to a static level (of course barring artesian wells). It’s like trying to shove a contaminant into an open spigot. The contaminate would have to be denser than water, highly soluble yet able to resist denaturing and at such a concentration as to not be diluted to a point of “who cares”. The well would also have be relatively inactive (avg water use per person is 100gal/day) in order for the contaminant to truly propagate into the aquifer. It would have to be a perfect storm of conditions or gross negligence to result in any significant contamination to an aquifer. However, that said, your contamination model would be more relevant for consolidated wells that feed from above and some bucket wells. Other than, spot on, fantastic modeling and a very educational video!
Leading to the whole topic of "shocking" a domestic well to keep it sanitary. In rural NM some people shock their wells once a week or once a month.
@@adrianjohnson7920 completely unnecessary in the vast majority of cases. In fact, the methods used by most people to “shock” their well are actually entire ineffective. The chemicals a homeowner without industry licensing can get are simply not worth even wasting your time on. Pouring bleach in your well, for instance, does exactly nothing unless you’re going to empty a 55 gallon drum (please don’t do this) and it’s still not going to penetrate the aquifer. For that we use a weighted, slow release antimicrobial like Sterilene-which even then has to be surged via air compressor into the aquifer. People who have their well professionally cleaned every few years are generally being taken advantage of by their servicer. A properly constructed well generally has no visible sediment or bacterial content that would require cleaning-there are some exceedingly rare exceptions to that rule. A lot of companies just claim that a well must be cleaned regularly so they can make money when in fact, unless there is a known structural or native bacterial issue, there is absolutely no reason to touch a properly constructed well. Some exceptions to this rule are super shallow wells that are fed by surface water (generally
@@Torque7976 Thanks for explaining this.
Can’t wait to hear what you have to say about fracking. Another great video, and I love the small scale models as always. I’m sure a ton of extra work went into making those models, adding the dye, taking the dye out, putting in clean water, etc. That effort isn’t missed or wasted!
It’s remarkable how good your videos are. Thanks for making them.
Yes, they're very *well* made
So much so, that you even remarked, upon it.
As a someone who has lived in rural areas his whole life and has had multiple wells drilled, I can tell you that most small drilling companies don't bother with the gravel or clay. They mostly drill a whole, shove a pipe in the ground and leave. Which is unfortunate because most rural areas sources of ground pollution close by such as septic systems and farms.
Move to flint Michigan. Try that water .
@@mcs699 he just wants to complain. He needs to move to flint Michigan and get a few gulps
Say what you want but he's not wrong. I sample private water wells in a rural area of Pennsylvania all the time as a part of my job, and the majority of the wells I come across are improperly constructed. Hell, buried wellheads aren't uncommon. These inadequacies can allow the surface water to influence the groundwater relatively quickly via the well's annular space or even the well column itself, leading to various water quality issues. Over 15% of privater water wells in PA contain E. coli bacteria and more than double that contain coliform bacteria. I'm not downplaying the awful situation that the people in Flint have to deal with, or even comparing it to that, but you shouldn't just ignore a real problem that actually exists because it's not some crazy sensational headline.
@@mcs699 Even if it's not a problem now (and it probably is), those wells are going to be used for a long time and become a problem.
A whole what?
Petroleum engineer here. Excellent video, and I loved the demonstration. It's reassuring to see Darcy's law at work with streamlines forming along the pressure gradient. It irks me that civil engineers call permeability, hydraulic conductivity though, but to each their own I guess. 👍
Well if there was any doubt about who had the more professional engineering channel, it was settled by me laughing at 8:10.
I didn't get it pls explain🥲
Yes an Aquitard is very permeable and ready for ejection, but you are both pretty definitely among the top channels on KZhead
Wow real engineering seems to have beef with everyone, half as interesting and now practical engineering
Real engineering is the man, and his content is rock solid. He's just honest enough to admit that aquitard is hilarious!
@@Stevie-J It's kinda lame...
When I saw the title I was all pumped up to see this one. It did not let me down... drilled deep into the subject and presented it very well. ✔
😂
I see, u got completly submerged into the topic!
Booooo! 😂
all that useful knowledge is permeating!
Deep video. Boring in a good way.
You are a good instructor. Thank you for staying on track and not straying off the subject.
Video idea: the salt caverns that make up the US strategic oil reserve. I've always wondered how they can store so much oil and I'm sure you could do impressive research I never could to learn more.
ok
Are those salt caverns really used for oil storage? Or rather for (natural) gas storage like the 2 gas storage salt caverns in Denmark?
@@Foersom_ Yep! They hold around 714 million barrels. Storing that above ground would be risky whereas the salt caverns keep it from escaping and polluting and naturally repair themselves. It is really interesting and I'm sure Grady could make a really cool video on it.
All BS
Hydrogeologist/Environmental Engineer here, just excited to see one of my favorite channels making a high quality video about something I love.
As someone who works as an environmental consultant and have supervised the install of 100s of monitoring and wells, it would be great to see you do a video on in-situ remediation of groundwater/soil. You have done a great job at explaining something quite alien to people.
I worked as an engineering intern creating groundwater models at a large local landfill and learned a lot about groundwater monitoring, treatment and remediation. We had a large array of shallow, medium and deep groundwater wells with a mix of confined and unconfined aquifers and even some artisen springs that we monitored and performed treatment on. Quite a facinating multi-million dollar sub field of waste managment in civil engineering. We also had some in-situ /treatment injection wells in the past that utilized Hydrogen Release Compounds (HRC) for bio-remediation of VOCs into Viynl choride. It seems as though the state water board is moving away from injection wells using bio-remediation compounds as the they stipulate dilution requirements for their use that make the actual process ineffective in both results and cost. Our primary treatment system was pumping VOC contaminated groundwater from shallow wells through air stripper towers and then re-injecting the clean water back into the water table through infiltration basins ungradient of the landfill site.
Yes please.
A fantastic, well made, and easy-to-understand video. Timing could not be better for many of us in the rural, western US facing extremes in drought and aquifer overdraft. Thank you.
Love this, we dug a new well 2 years ago, 8 inch casing, 3hp pump with vfd driver, 340 feet hole, water is at 80 feet from the top. Tastes great. The casings I see in California have perforations in the steel or pvc, if I remember correctly, there is 40 feet of perforations at the bottom. Thanks again Grady
As a fellow San Antonian, thanks for drilling into this subject and presenting amazing models. Aquifer health is critically important as water becomes a more and more important issue and being less visible than surface water it does not get the attention it deserves.
"Number 1 channel about dirt" Spot on, Grady.
Beautiful, absolutely beautiful! Even though I haven't worked in hydrogeology in a very long time, your explanation and demonstrations how aquifers work using excellent physical models. I remember calculating flow nets and such by hand in the bad old days. Would love to have physics students do similar experiments just for the hands-on experience.
Pu
Grady!!! Thank you!!! My groundwater hydrology class for my masters program at the University of Michigan was my favorite class ever---and I'm so impressed how you made such a clear and understandable video for teaching what the deal is with groundwater and well hydraulics. This video meant a lot to me; now I'm gonna send it to my friends to better explain what I study 😂. Super cool how you mentioned San Antonio too; I'm looking forward to that future video on fracking.
Yes please cover fracking! I'm a doctor so with my understanding of fracking I get how it works, but I'd love to see a video on the things I don't know, like the unintended consequences to the surrounding land, and any chemicals they may use in said process.
Fracing is extremely complex. I have worked as a construction consultant in oil and gas for years and have had multiple people explain. The technology with drilling and completing is scary accurate.
@@cmdr1911 based on your experience are there any common side effects in the surrounding area of fracking that you may have observed or witnessed?
@@karthikkr93 Not with fracing. I have seen contamination of surface water and soil doing some pretty extensive clean ups for spills and accidents that were mishandled and not reported by the contractor. The site is designed to hold brine and not release it. Emission and air quality would be another question and there is a huge push to reduce them and monitor. I would say a vast majority are safe. WV, SE Ohio and Western PA area heavily contaminated from coal and steel that would make it difficult to show causation beyound correlation of illness and wells
Yeah from what i heard main risk is surface spills of drill mud/fracking fluid. Also typically silica is used as a “proppant” (essentially use sand as a wedge in the cracks formed to keep them open even if pressure is reduced). This leads to the issues of *Sand Mining*, but on steroids due to the specific needed and the sheer amount. Also all the fluids components don’t have to be publicly disclosed if I remember correctly.
What’s interesting too is it can be used for “Enhanced Geothermal Systems” (EGS); essentially making non-porous rock porous so that the water can flow through. In theory if you drill deep enough, everywhere on earth has “Hot Dry Rock” which can be turned into an EGS, so *assuming more heat flows in than you withdrawal, and that the conditions are right* you have (practically in a human time scale -) infinite mostly green energy everywhere.
Grady is one of the reasons KZhead has my attention. What brilliant content, delivered without the condescension we get from other media, and providing both education and knowledge with sincere enthusiasm. What’s not to love?! Thanks Grady!
Grady is one of the reasons I keep Nebula :-)
Thanks Grady! 👍
I'm once again amazed by what goes on right before our eyes, unseen. Ground water is so often talked about but the mechanisms have always been a mystery to me. Grady explains it so well, even to a layman like me. This is why I love this channel.
Discovered this channel only a day or so ago and I'm thrilled. Great content and delivery.
I'm a petroleum engineer and would highly recommend the book well testing by John Lee. It explains all the math behind how fluid flows through porous medium
My dad was a Petroleum Engineer.
Interesting!
Great video. I don't know who needs to hear this but if you really want to grow your money and generate wealth, start small and with the little that you have, and invest it into stocks bitcoin and other crypto currencies I'm a living testimony from this.
Very helpful mate. This is what I needed to hear today.
@@glendorabeavers5922 Are you talking about sir Cooper leo jaxon. From Florida ??
I very rarely have an interest in the stuff Grady covers until I see him build a model of it in his garage and then I think "wow that's so interesting". Probably one of the best teachers I've ever come across.
As a water plant operator, this is a great video to help teach new operator. Love all of your content!
Thanks so much for this video. It's the first time I've seen shallow and deep groundwater as separate concepts.
I'm a TA for a hydraulics engineering course and I just showed your series of water-related videos to the prof I work for. He loves them and I might show them in class soon! When I teach, I find it easy to get lost in the math and forget the big picture of why these things matter, and your videos help me keep that in mind.
Grady, you'd probably fine this story interesting. I worked on a project one time to build a new middle school next to an existing elementary school. Through investigation, it was determined that the existing well that served the elementary school would not have the output to serve both schools and they needed to select a site to drill a well for the middle school. They settled on a location and when they went to drill the well, they realized they had made an artesian well. Needless to say the new well was more than acceptable to meet the demands of the new school.
Wow!! I lived for about six years with a well (I'm in the southeast USA) and never did understand how it worked. And I got to see and mess with an artesian well once also, and had always wondered what the difference was between a "real" well and the natural one. What a wonderfully concise and clear explanation - and demonstration!
I work on a groundwater team for Environmental Remediation. I work with water wells every single day. This video is amazing, I sent it to the whole team!
laws about ground water are "well" behind...? really? not 30 seconds in and you make a terrible pun? I love it. 10 out of 10.
Very good video, explained in simple terms. For my undergraduate degree, I modeled an Aquifer and simulated the groundwater flow through it. It's an interesting topic, which I also come across at my workplace often
It’s very cool that a couple of scenes of the model show subsidence, which can be an unintended consequence of overpumping over long periods of time. Great job!
Those dye tabs were well worth it, I genuinely feel like I learned something, and something I feel like everyone should know due to its practicality!
As a water treatment operator, this is probably one of the best explanation I have seen for wells/aquifers. Thank you sir.
My 15 week hydro-geology class summarized in 15 minutes. Great video!
This video could’ve been an hour long, and I’d still watch it “on a single breath”. Absolutely top notch edutainment. Love these videos. Thank You for the hard work and the awesome content.
This man has consistently made me more interested in dirt and concrete. This man has consistently made me more interested in dirt and concrete.
Your models are just AMAZING. If i ever make a kid’s science museum, or even at a makerspace i want to make them all! I have fond memories of the Dam simulation at “Technopolis” in Belgium as a kid. It was just constantly flowing water on a slope with all sorts of materials and bypass so you could build damns and test them. Your demonstration models are like that, but actually demonstrate more science, and are clear so they just look amazing.
This was an amazing video and an excellent initial primer for hydrogeology. I work as a hydrogeologist and spend a lot of my time explaining to others how groundwater flow and groundwater contamination occurs. In grad school we would have complex acrylic sand tank models with confining layers, fractured bedrock, units with different hydraulic conductivities, pumping and monitoring wells. They're a great tool to use to teach groundwater to students!
This was helpful in understanding how shallow (50 - 300 feet) water wells affect ground water and subsurface flows. The Village Drill is one unique, portable design for drilling fresh water wells in developing countries and worth a look for anyone interested.
Love the explanation. I research a sediment layer that functions as a confined aquifer, so this was really neat.
Great fun trying to explain aquifer dynamics to my family recently. Like why our old shallow well dried up around the same time as some neighbors on a slightly lower elevation dug their wells a few years ago.
Whenever I'm *thirsty* for information, I always come back to this channel, for it's a veritable *well* of knowledge.
badum
I tried to report this comment, but I couldn’t find the option for pun terrorism.
Grady probes his subject deeply, thoroughly, and lovingly. And he's not afraid to get down and dirty.
This was so unbelievably helpful for my understanding of aquifers for my dissertation, thanks man!! You explained it so well, having visual examples too, great honesty ❤️
"you are watching the #1 channel about dirt" - something to be proud of. The right place for a "dirt nerd".
In my town (northeastern USA) the water which feeds our town's aquifer flows through a former industrial site. So our water contains chromium 6 (a carcinogen) from an old electroplating plant, trichoroethane (an industrial solvent), and polyfluorohydrocarbons (industrial lubricants). The water is so naturally acidic that plumbers throughout the county made their livings by replacing our copper pipes which the water would corrode -- until the town started to add lye (sodium hydroxide) to the water. And the water naturally contains so much manganese that it was deemed a danger to infants. And it contains so much lime that you can't use it to wash cars or drinking glasses because it leaves water spots.
Sounds like fun. It's a shame how water is treated around the world. Especially since it's the most important resource in the world.
@@SuperDeinVadda -- The town has spent millions trying to improve the quality of the water: a facility to remove manganese using bacteria; equipment to add lye and fluoride to the water; a "stripping tower" to remove the trichloroethane; ... I don't drink the town water.
I really enjoy practical engineering, we read but sometime can't understand the details. By watching you videos makes me feel better. Once again thank you.
Grady! Love you and your content!!! Big thanks for all you do! The geotechnical content is my favorite. You’re editing and content are top notch. Keep rocking top dog!
Grady, consuming your content assures me I made the right choice going into engineering. I know that qualitative engineering is a heck of a lot more fun than quantitative engineering, but the interest remains. Thank you for sharing.
A video on fracking would be great!
Agreed
"Even now, the rules that govern groundwater in many places are still _well_ behind our collective knowledge of hydrogeology." I see what you did there, Grady.
Amazing breakdown and explanations WITH a verbal delivery that keeps viewer engaged and eager to learn. Too bad ALL engineering is not this easily accessible.
Yayyy! Another episode of "Garage Arts and Crats with Grady" !!!! But seriously, your arts and crafts are always so informative and useful.
I'm one semester away from finishing my hydrology degree, and if this video had been made 4 years ago, I would have understood everything so much more easily! Amazing video!
Same here!!! One semester away! Where's your program if you don't mind me asking?
Another way to engineer the refilling of aquifers is by the construction of water management structures like Swales, permeable damns, terraces and ponds to catch the run-off from storms or monsoons and allow it to naturally seep into the groundwater system. These have proven extremely successful in areas of India, where almost all the water used throughout the year comes from aquifers, but the only time those are refilled is over the few weeks of the monsoon. Every bit of water that can be prevented from immediately running off the surface and into rivers means more water ending up underground meaning more water for the rest of the year. Whereas deforestation, removal of hedges, draining of wetlands, filling in of ponds and such results in surface water being able to move quickly into rivers and away, not only resulting in fewer water reserves in that location but an increase in flooding levels downstream
This is the best produced and one of the very best overall films you've made, Grady! 👍🏼
I actually work for a geotechnical drilling company and this video brought joy to me I don’t see hardly any talk about the type of stuff we do.
I love your stuff! Please keep being you. I really enjoy your videos on these topics that never seem to receive attention, and your explanations are wonderful. Again, thank you.
Let’s just appreciate all the work he put into this model. Also explain how the coal ash pit from duke energy in North Carolina got into the ground water and contaminated all well water permanently it was a news story a while ago.
Also explains how the ground water around Lake Somerville , Texas was contaminated by a local creosote plant a century ago. Dang.
I'm a water engineering student. Your channel is the best discovery I made ever since I started my course
Reading for my exams using your videos. Our professor, sending us your videos, gave us the best way to learn hydraulic engineering. Really helped us a lot
Unsurprisingly, another very well researched video with amazing topics and exciting explanations. You truly are amazing. Thank you for your amazing content!
Your videos are simply consistently excellent. This was such an amazing demo of groundwater ❤️
I've seen several artesian wells in the mountains of Virginia. Some of the clearest, cleanest, coolest water I've ever had in my life
"It just so happens you're watching the Number 1 channel on the Internet about dirt." One hell of a flex. Thanks for the video.
I would love it if you did a video on fracking. It's hard to get unmuddled information about it.
As a farmer in Illinois, I find this fascinating. Although we do not rely on aquifers to supply water for our crops, our water management might have an impact way beyond the gates of our farm. It would be interesting to see a video talking about the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. I know you would present it well!
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure you are right about the impacts. Farmers tend to massively over fertilize their crops and the fallout is toxic, cancer causing nitrates which are polluting our groundwater and surface water. So sad.
@@julieheath6335 Over-fertilize which leads to high cost, be real.
Even though I'm just a well owner interested in aquifers and how water reacts underground, I find these videos fascinating and informative. Thanks!
Thanks Grady, I always learn a ton from your videos!
📺Get access to both CS and Nebula for only $15/year: curiositystream.com/practicalengineering 📚 Did you know I wrote a book? Get it at a discount before November: practical.engineering/book
nah
Could you put a direct link to the video in Nebula at the top of the KZhead description. KZhead is much better for browsing but the ads are annoying. For creators that are also on Nebula it would be great if I could click through once I have found a video on KZhead. Thx
Clearly part of the show opener should be "The number 1 channel on dirt"
Thx Grady, perhaps you could link and research or create separate video on Sidoarjo Mud disaster, I believe it greatly reflects the nature power of groundwater
Refering to your book, do you plan on doing an audio version?
This reminds me of an aquifer related incident where a worker nearly got buried alive when a pressurised aquifer broke through a layer of silt, causing quicksand conditions around the caisson's walls. This occured during the construction of an underground lift station for wastewater, after the caisson sunk to contain it was drained, removing the counteracting force keeping the lower aquifer from seeping upwards. insufficient site surveys missed the deeper of two aquifers, and nearly proved fatal as the caisson rapidly flooded and caused quicksand conditions beneath a worker standing on the surface. I think there's a video about it out there somewhere i remember seeing at some point, it was in BC.
Ah, quick sand, there's a topic for Grady to do a video on
Wow, the demo was really good! Every time I think I know what to expect, you exceed it. Well done!
The GOAT of civil engineering on KZhead.
As a future civil engineer, I can't thank you enough for this channel. I'm starting my major-specific studies next fall and your videos are perfect to get interested in the most random engineering topics.
Good luck in your studies
Me at 3 AM and 2.1 M people learning how wells work for no apparent reason
Very well spoken, and easily understood. I'm glad you drilled down into this subject
The beauty of the intelligent simplicity on your model is so educational and visual that it is almost artistic
Very interesting. I would love to hear you explain how the giant aquifer exists under most of Sahara in northeaster Africa.
Great model. It's not easy to visualize this kind of movement.
I have a well at my new to us house. I tried to find how wells work a few months ago with not really any luck. This was cool to see. Thanks for the video, I love the content.
I am a well driller for a ground water control company. Thank you for this video. I will now be sharing it with everyone that asks me about what I do for a living.
0:22 "So it's no surprise that misconceptions abound, around water below the ground." -Grady Hillhouse, expert poet, 2022