8)How wet/damp/dry was the soil?
9)What time of year, and when was last measurable rainfall?
10)How much water or other liquids did you tank up on before or during the construction?
11)Keep track of #10 and compare that to what you gained from the still.

The last time I read about one of these things, I think they recommended a hole about three feet deep and almost as wide. The last time I had a hole that deep dug in my yard here in WA, it was a grave for my 50# dog. I hired three 15-yr-old boys to dig it on an April day that was about 50 degrees, in shade. They took turns loosening the soil with a 5-ft steel breaker bar, scooping with a pointy type of shovel, and removing many large rocks by hand. It took them two solid hours, they worked pretty steadily and they were sweating like pigs.

I dug a hole in my open field that was two feet deep and one foot across in the summer, and the soil was almost totally dry all the way to the bottom. And if I had added all of the above-mentioned ingredients to the hole to increase the possibility of producing water, how much would the dry soil have absorbed in the process?

I just can't see that kind of effort being worth the amount of water that most solar stills would produce.

Sue