How to drill a well do it yourself style
Howtodrillawell.com sent me
their instructions with 2 DVD's.
After watching the DVD's I've
concluded that this method could work in most situations if you are
willing to follow instructions and keep working at it. It's quite
clever. You'll need a good sized air compressor.
The cost savings could be
substantial. Especially if you need a well in a remote location that
would be difficult to get heavy equipment into.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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@Trevor: Their FAQ mentions "carbide", which I assume to mean tungsten carbide. Looking at the drill bits they seem like the usual construction of tungsten carbide pieces soldered onto the steel. That should be hard enough to drill most rocks.
But you're holding the drilling pipe by hand. So the amount of torque that the air motor kan deliver to the drill is limited. And in general air tools rely more in high revs than high torque. Which is why it is so important to have the drill hole filled with water; you need it to keep de drill cool.
According to their FAQ, they claim 0.5-2" per hour in hard rock (as opposed to 5-30' per hour in sand).
So the answer to your answer is "slowly".