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Travels and personal perspectives on Iloilo and Panay Island
Digging our water well in Tigbauan, Philippines
Tags: Building a house Philippines, Our House Project, Philippine water well, Tigbauan, Well digging Philippines
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. That’s why a well is the first order of business when building a house. Most of these wells are what we’d 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. It’s 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.
Making culvert/well tiles at Damasco, Pavia Iloilo
Philippine wells almost always use precast 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 http://goiloilo.com/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 digger's 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.
Now, after several months the water is still 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. Chlorine powder in small packets is sold in grocery stores and given away by government to help residents keep their wells safe. When we lived on our New York farm our fabulous water came from a mountainside spring. Our Iloilo water is nothing like that. Filipinos struggle to find and afford safe drinking water and the situation is only likely to get worse as forests disappear and population and pollution grow. We are fortunate to have a good supply of water from our well but we’ll likely keep buying bottled water for drinking and cooking.
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Posted by GOIloilo on 07.16.09 8:28PM under Our House Project
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Posted by jim monreal on 07.20.09 4:09 am
congratulations to Juanito Trogani and his crew for doing a great job in rebuilding your deep well. hopefully more residents will be able to use their expertise.
the total extra cost is well worth it. i will do the same thing you did if i were in your shoes, Bob.
Posted by Virgie on 01.10.10 2:13 am
Hello there,
I read with interest this deep well digging in Iloilo.
I plan to do the same and was wondering how much would be the total cost of this. We have our house erected already. We have also used the NASAWA water supply In Dipolog City when we built our house and the perimeterwall.
How did you put this chlorine in the well. Just direct in the water? Were some stone placed at the ground of the well?
Do you used an electric water pump and how powerful should this be?
Thank you.
V. Michel
Posted by GOIloilo on 01.10.10 10:23 am
Total cost was about P60,000. The well diggers did put a layer of gravel at the bottom of the well.
We buy 100 gram packets of powdered chlorine at the local supermarket.
This type of chlorine is widely used to decontaminate wells in the Philippines and is sometimes handed out by public health authorities.
I don’t know much about the stuff but assume that it’s similar to the chlorine used in swimming pools. At first I used one packet per month but found it worked better to use one-half packet per week. That seems to keep the water clear without an over chlorine taste.
So far, we do not use the well for drinking water but it might be OK is chlorinated and filtered.
We only have a “Dragon” hand pump so far. It get a lot of use watering all the trees and shrubs we have planted. It’s been 12+ weeks since we have had any rain. When our house is finished we’ll have an electric water pump to fill our water storage tank. Not yet sure about horsepower.
Posted by GOIloilo on 01.11.10 7:31 am
Have you had your well water tested?
No, we’ve not had the water tested although we’d like to. Typically local water tests are for coliform bacteria to detect fecal contamination. We’d be interested in a more comprehensive test. All of the well water in this area seems to be quite mineralized. Toilet tanks and wells accumulate a blackish coating. I think this may be manganese. I understand that iron is another common mineral in local water. Of course our property is surrounded by rice land where agricultural chemicals are used — herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers so that’s another concern. Finally rice land ground water seems “swampy” and stagnant with quite a bit of algae. So, it would be interesting to have a detailed test to see what the situation really is. It’s likely this testing would have to be done in Manila.
All that said, the quality of water from our well seems clear and good. The weekly chlorine seems to keep the algae under control.
If you leave your well unused from year to year it might become a bit unpleasant with algae growing, insects and maybe even lizards get in and perhaps expire. My guess is that you’ll want to pump it out and scrub it out with bleach. This bleak view is based on the few wells I have some experience with. Hopefully your situation is better.
Posted by Our house project: week three at goILOILO.com on 02.07.10 9:24 am
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