Well problems, more silt than water.....

[mx842]

As old Junior Samples used to say, ifin' it wernt fer bad luck....I'd have no luck at all. I'm still cleaning up around the place from the last hurricane almost two years ago. Here lately I have been trying to divide my time between working on my pole barn project and completing boo boo's that happened during that storm. Since that time we have had several other storms with high winds and a lot of rain that have taken out several more large trees in the yard. It seems just about the time that I might see light at the end of the tunnel something else happens.

I still haven't been able to rebuild my Koi pond and have been doing the best I can to keep my fish alive with only half a pond. This weekend I decided to spend the whole weekend working around the house trying to reclaim my yard back from the wild. Warm weather is coming and I wanted to clean up around the house and do a spring cleaning on what is left of my pond. Clean the leafs off the bottom and clean out the two big temp filters I had to put in after the other ones got smashed by a big oak tree. Everything was going along well but once the filters were clean and about half of the water in the pond was drained out and I started to refill the pond with fresh well water I noticed it was taking a real long time to fill the pond. Normally it would take a little over two hours to fill the 2000 gal pond and now I have less than half that amount of water in it and when I went back to check the water lever it still was not full. At first I thought I had left the drains on the filters open but they were shut off and I didn't see any water flowing anywhere so I checked the fill valve and the water was hardly coming out, I mean, I could pee more water than was coming out the valve. After checking everything I noticed the pump cycling more than normal so I figured my expansion tank was bloated but even if the tank was waterlogged I still should be seeing more pressure than was coming out of the fill pipe.

So I went out and pulled the top off the well and it wasn't long before I found the problem. The well had filled in and the pump was buried under 3 feet of mucky silt. I'm surprised it worked at all but it was still doing the best it could. I thought I would break my back trying to free the pump out of the mud but after 10 minutes of grunting and straining and at one time I thought I had stained my shorts the pump finally broke free of it's watery grave. I pulled it up a couple feet off the bottom and tied it off then went in and got a string line with a heavy fishing sinker on the end to measure how much water I had left.

When I had that well dug we had water coming in at around 35' and at 42' he hit a pretty good stream then at 55' a river flowed in he went down 12 more feet and stacked three well curbs on top of the last curb right at the ground level and left them there until the next day. He ordered concrete to seal off the sides of the curbs and set it up for the next day. When he came back in the morning those stacked curbs he left had settled down to within 6" of the ground level so he added a couple more and left them there until the concrete came. They had settled all they were going to so he removed the two full curbs and put on a half curb and filled in around the outside of the curbs with concrete, told me to throw in a gal of bleach and put the top on. The next day they inspected the well and the well man measured the water level and depth. It was 66' feet to the bottom of the well and the well had right at 31' of water in it. He told me other than maybe a well pump you will never have a problem with this well as long as you are here, there will always be plenty of water for anything you want to do.


Well fast forward to the last hurricane the knocked 3 big oak trees over and they all three landed on the well. The top was broken but luckily it didn't fall in and I got it off and replaced the top. I thought the pump had gone bad too and got the insurance company to replace it but I later found out that one of the big trees had broken the wire going to the well when the root ball came up. I never figured out why I had voltage to the wire going down to the pump but it wouldn't run the pump motor. I had already pulled the pump and dropped the new one in when that one wouldn't run either. there was voltage on the meter but it just wouldn't run the motor. Later I found the bad wire and replaced it and all was good. I also checked the old one and it worked so I pulled out the new one and put the old one back in service and kept the new one for a spare.

At that time when I measured the water the well had filled in about 6' and had 25' of water in it and it took 19 years for it to fill in 6' so I figured the well man was right with it only filling in 6' in 20 years and even if I live another 30 years I should be good to go. Well something went wrong cause now there is only 12' of water in the well and it filled in 12' or more in less than 2 years.

As I said I raised the pump but how long is that going to last at that rate of filling in. It was dark as heck last night when I was looking into the well and could not really see if surface water has been entering in around the upper curbs. I know it was sealed well because they dumped 6 yards of concrete around the curbs before it stopped taking any more and I had to find a place to dump the remaining 2 yards left on the truck. There did seem to be a wet spot at one of the joints down about 12' but last night it was just too dark to tell anything.

It's been raining this morning but as soon as it clears a little I'm going to investigate a little more to see what I can find. I'm worried that when those trees fell on on the well they somehow broke the seal without crushing the curbs although it doesn't appear to have pushed the top curb into the ground cause there is still a good seal at the surface. Next assuming surface water is the cause of the fill in once I seal everything up again how the heck will I ever get the silt out of the well down to an acceptable level again?

 

[Dr Dave]

Sorry for all your bad luck! Like you said maybe the concrete to seal the curbs has cracked, and is letting surface water in. Another place to check is,

were the wire was damaged, could surface water and soil, be following the wire into the well?

Could you rent a large 4"or 6" pump and suck the silt out?

Dave

 

[SPIKER]

Dave

sounds like you and I have similar luck issues for sure. I agree with DR Dave, maybe a grinder sub pump to try & suck out some silt.? Have to get one of the water proof fishing camera setups and drop in well to see if there are cracks underwater?

I am going to assume the concrete curbs means you have larger diameter well then 24" OR? Up here they drill 4" or 6" wells and use PVC to case them down to bedrock (mine is 63' deep with 4" steel casing to 38' or so) I had to have my pump pulled and the well cleaned and new pump put back in. they are submersible pumps usually good for 20 years unless there is silt/lightning issues. Mine was a Amish Boy set the hose bib handle on spray while he was cleaning up his dads tools. when it quit running he dropped the hose and left it run the well had emptied (sucked it dry) as it was September after long drought. It cost me about 1200 for new pump, well guy who installed it is one I called, & had wanted to go deeper but could not. We had 2 earthquakes that were felt the months prior when my well issues first started so my aquifer collapsed some I'm guessing. It has not been right since anyhow, he ran the drop tube cleaner out and managed to get 2 or 3 feet of silt/sand out and dropped camera in to find the original pump broke off (prior to my ownership) and was lodged in bottom of the well we managed to get some of the top chunks out s all. That Oct 2011 so not real happy with it but some time soon will just do a NEW 6" well deeper in new location for better water & use the SCH80 PVC for casing so no rusting issue that the old well is suffering from now.


I wish ay luck...

Mark

 

[mx842]

where the wire comes into the well curb is a piece of 2" PVC that along with the water pipe is encased in concrete 2' out from the well. Both are sealed good on the inside of the well with hydraulic cement and there was no sign of water coming in there. I don't know if a pump would work or not down that deep normally the suction hoses on trash pumps are pretty short.

 

[mx842]

Dave

sounds like you and I have similar luck issues for sure. I agree with DR Dave, maybe a grinder sub pump to try & suck out some silt.? Have to get one of the water proof fishing camera setups and drop in well to see if there are cracks underwater?

I am going to assume the concrete curbs means you have larger diameter well then 24" OR? Up here they drill 4" or 6" wells and use PVC to case them down to bedrock (mine is 63' deep with 4" steel casing to 38' or so) I had to have my pump pulled and the well cleaned and new pump put back in. they are submersible pumps usually good for 20 years unless there is silt/lightning issues. Mine was a Amish Boy set the hose bib handle on spray while he was cleaning up his dads tools. when it quit running he dropped the hose and left it run the well had emptied (sucked it dry) as it was September after long drought. It cost me about 1200 for new pump, well guy who installed it is one I called, & had wanted to go deeper but could not. We had 2 earthquakes that were felt the months prior when my well issues first started so my aquifer collapsed some I'm guessing. It has not been right since anyhow, he ran the drop tube cleaner out and managed to get 2 or 3 feet of silt/sand out and dropped camera in to find the original pump broke off (prior to my ownership) and was lodged in bottom of the well we managed to get some of the top chunks out s all. That Oct 2011 so not real happy with it but some time soon will just do a NEW 6" well deeper in new location for better water & use the SCH80 PVC for casing so no rusting issue that the old well is suffering from now.


I wish ay luck...

Mark

Around here shallow wells, wells 100' or less are encased in 3' concrete casings. They are 3 or 4 feet tall and connect in a tongue and groove fashion. Once the desired depth is reached they encase the whole tower in a hot mix of concrete grout to fill in the void between the curbs and dirt that the cases are positioned in. This also seals the joints in the curbs and when complete you end up with a fairly solid tube down to around 30' or more depending on the type of soil.

Around here the use the 6" PVC for the deep wells and most of these they dig down to a depth starting at 275' and some are 450' or more with the average of around 325'. I wanted to put in a deep well but they were a little too expensive for me at the time they start out at around $6500.00 and can go to $10,000.00 or more depending on how deep you want or need to go.

$1200.00 for a well pump sounds kind of steep. I bought one to replace the one that is now in the well when I thought it had gone bad the first time and I think that one was under $400.00, maybe $375.00 or so. I looked at them at Lowes and I think they were around the same price as the plumbing supply place I got mine at. It's the same pump they use in the deep wells and good to around 400'. But I guess up there in union country things are a bit higher than down here where we live.

 

[mx842]

I spent the whole day yesterday getting set up and ready to go down into the well to find out what was going on. Tools needed were, 1 section of scaffolding, 1 12' section of heavy wall 2" square tube, 1, 4" pulley block, string line with weight attached, hand tools, screw drivers, hack saw, wire cutters, box cutter, pliers, wire nuts, electrical tape and other odds an ends that might come in handy. Also needed, was several sections of hand line and tool bucket to lower things down into the well as they were needed. 10 lb tube of hydraulic cement, a pail of water.....oh yeah don't forget to draw the water before you power down the pump. The other hand lines were needed to tie off scaffolding to a nearby tree and one to secure the piece of 2" square tube to the scaffold buck. and a couple other things along the way.

The first thing I did was to check all my filters to be sure that they were not stopped up causing to low pressure. I pulled them and they were full of sand but after changing them it made no difference in fact I couldn't even get enough pressure to get the pressure switch to cycle. When I crossed the contacts on the switch I could tell the pump was coming on but there was no pressure. So that meant that the water line was stopped up with sand and silt,.......not likely but possible, or the pump just didn't have enough left to make pressure so I cut the power and prepared to pull the pump.

I had to go down into the well anyway and had already set up my scaffold buck over the well head but it was no trouble moving it aside so I could pull out the pump. I dropped a short piece of ladder down the side of the well with the piece of 2" tube through the top rung and went down and cut off the water line at the turn down to the pump and a large amount of water came streaming out......oh yeah don't forget to drain remaining pressure from the tank by opening a spigot somewhere before cutting pipe.LOL once the pipe was free I cut the wire going down to the pump and I was ready to pull the whole thing out. As soon as the pump broke the surface of the water I saw why there was no pressure. There was a kink in the plastic line right at the pump, I guess this happened the night before last when I raised the pump out of the mud. I didn't go down into the well to shorten the pipe when I pulled it out of the mud and pulling on it by the attached rope must have kinked the line as it is really stiff and didn't have anywhere to go as it was still hooked up at the top. Now I know why it was a back breaker to raise it up because the water pipe didn't have anywhere to go but up and with it still hooked up the only thing left was bend someplace and right at the pump was the weakest place as I was straining my azz off at the other end of the line.LOL Hey, it was dark, I was tired and all I wanted to do at that point was take a hot shower and get something to eat. That nights shower was a long one cause there was so little water coming out of the shower head I thought I was going to have to go outside and find a mud hole to get the soap off.

So I went on and pulled out the whole thing thinking this pump could not possibly still be good but once it was out I decided to cut the kink out and at least drop it back in to see if it would still power up and make pressure. I figured if anything if it pumped at all I could use it to maybe pump out some of the loose light stuff off the top by jamming it into the mud and pulling it out as it was running. I dropped it in, hooked up the power and that thing shot a stream of water out the end of the pipe 6' and completely soaking me and everything in a 20' circle. With that test done I decided to leave the old girl in there and I shortened the hose enough to keep the same thing from happening again and moved on to the main problem of finding out why there was so much silting going on.

My original plan was to put the piece of 2" box tube on to the top of the scaffold and tie it off then attach the rope block to it so I could hoist yours truly down into and up out of the well but thought better of that plan because with only one rope block I didn't know if that would be possible and what would happen if the rope somehow got away from me sending me to the bottom of the well so I had to rethink my plan. I really hate to have to ask anyone for help but this was one time I saw no way around it. Normally when I just need to go down a few feet to unhook the pipe I use the ladder trick but this time I wanted to go all the way in to check each joint down to almost water level and I wanted someone at the top just in case something went wrong.

Then I remembered I have this man lift winch I bought years ago for a job but we never used it and I had it laying around all these years and this was the perfect time to test it out. I called my son to see if he could come over to help and while I was waiting for him I went on a search for the winch. After tearing the place apart I finally found my prize and took off to the barn to rig up some way to attach it to something solid enough to pull from. I quickly came up with a plan to make a trailer hitch attachment to slip into a reese style hitch on my truck. I found a piece of tube that would slip into the receiver, welded a plate on top of it, drilled a few holes, then made a block that I could attach to the winch with bolts and welded that to the plate and soon I had this kick azz winch plate I could use again if I needed to and didn't have to alter the winch at all. It was now time to give it a try.

By this time my son had arrived and we set out rigging the set up and getting to the task of checking out what needed to be done. It was getting late by this time and I knew there was a lot I needed to get done before dark and about then It dawned on me......just how was I going to be lowered down? A rope around the waist or neck didn't seem all that appealing so we decided we would also have to make some sort of seat to sit on while being lifted and lowered so it was back to the barn and shortly there after we made a nice seat out of a 10' piece of 5/16 chain a small clevis. We looped the chain through a 2' long piece of the 2" sq tube and connected the ends with the clevis. This clevis was large enough to accept the hook on the winch. Then for comfort we cut a short piece of 5/4 deck board the same length as the sq tube and attached it to the tube with self tapping medal screws and it actually was fairly comfortable to work off of. All it needed was a self warming seat cover and cup holders and this thing would be the bomb.

Finally I was able to enter into the abyss where no man has ever gone before and once I got down to the second curb I could see the problem. Either the whole tower had settled or for some reason the joints had come un-glued. I could see where ground water and sand had been entering the well and in a couple places there was still some water trickling in and from this vantage point I could see that the cases seemed to be staggered from side to side, in other words they were no longer straight and seemed somewhat offset from one another. There was a nice smooth gap on one side of the curb and on some of them there was an inch and a half gap. This could have been like that since it was drilled but I don't think so because I could see where the old grout line was formed as it sealed the joints and it was broken. Only the first 5 or 6 curbs really needed to be sealed because by this depth you are in good thick clay that the surface water can't get through so once sealed you should be free of ground water contamination. But I could tell the grout had made it's way well beyond this point and past the point where the water level was at.

My only guess is the a couple years ago right before the last hurricane we too had a pretty good earthquake in this area, a 5.5 if I remember correctly and the ripple effect must have actually moved the curbs from side to side and shifted their position enough to break the grout seal. I was able to seal the first 4 joints last night before running out of cement. I'll probably have to redo these again because on one or two of them there was still quite a bit of water coming in in places and I don't know if I got a good seal or not once the cement's expanding properties took full effect once it cured fully. I may have to do this again later this summer once the water table goes down a little.

For now I'm back to full blast showers and I'll probably wait a few days to see if the seal job worked on the joints I was able to get last night. Now I can work on figuring out how to get the silted in area cleaned out. I'll probably wait for a few weeks for when my wife is gone to visit friends for a week and I'm home alone to start that task because what ever I come up with will probably stir up the water quite a bit and will take awhile to clear up once it's cleaned out. I would like to get about 10' of the silt cleaned out or back down to the point where the 2nd big gusher we hit was located and If I can get the top sealed back up I should be good from now on or until the next major act of mother nature occurs. I'm working on a plan to remove the silt and if it works I'll let you guys know how it worked.

 

[texasjohn]

Am loving your story:thumbsup: Although I feel your pain. At least you had some good father/son work bonding time:thumbsup:

Your creativity in fashioning work devices to meet the need is impressive...am sure you will come up with something to remove the dirt/silt. If nothing else works, you could put several 5 gallon plastic buckets down there, use the pump to wash the silt into the buckets, then pull bucket up to empty. Might work, I dunno.

 

[muddstopper]

Well at least you can go down into your well . My 6" well was drilled back in 1984. It was 200ft deep, with 20gpm. the last few years it has been filling with silt also. I have had to raise the pump twice in the last 10 years. I usually end up raiseing the pump after it has burnt up from trying to pump the silt. I have been trying to figure out a way to clean the silt out. My casing is the steel casing. Currently my plans are, sometime this summer, is to get the local fire department to bring over their tanker truck to pump the well to overflow with water. I will rig a lenght of pvc to reach the bottom and stick it as far down in the well as I can. My intent is to pump the water thru the pvc at pressure to stir up the silt and hopefully the rapid water flow will just wash it out of the top of the well. Will it work, I dont know, but think it cant hurt and a free try is better than a new well. I figure if I pump in water until it runs clear, I can disinfect the well and reinstall the pump and that should do me for my remaining years. And it could also collapse the well and then I'll endup drilling a new one anyways.

 

[SPIKER]

MX842

On my well work the $1200 was for a clean out too, new wire, schedule 80 1" Threaded PVC pipe & 20 or 25 yr pump. The well guy used a Cable Winch that dropped a big heavy tube with a Hammer Check valve on the bottom. The hammer opens the valve when it hits bottom filling it full of silt/sand/debris. it managed to reclaim 4 or 5 feet of depth in this method. When the pipe is pulled out we pushed it to the side & sat it onto the hammer end and opened the valve dumping water sand and silt out of the tube. We did this for about an hour or so, after 5th or 6th drop the water had been lowered to really get a good hit on the bottom. at one point it dropped about 3 or 4 feet at one hit, (tape was on the cable at the starting depth.)

We surmised the original pump was broken off and setting near the bottom wedged there and the pipe knocked it loose and down to the very bottom. that or a bigger rock? we pulled out plastic, metal copper wire and lots of electrical tape... not very appealing to say the least.

You may be able to use similar device to clean out your well. the device was simple enough and inside was a mating cone with a 3" OD maybe 10' long. the cable needs to free drop so it drives into the bottom but can pull up slower if ya want.

Other method would be a Trash Grinder type pump dropped into the well with a straight outlet pipe & run it full blast out of the well into a big settling tank and then run the settled water back into the well to help stir up the silt. That way the well wont dry up, might need to put a filter on the return line could even pump it back down with force to help stir up the silt.

Mark

 

[mx842]

I have been kicking around a couple ideas that should work but it will be trial and error kind of thing.

One is to run a piece of, 1 1/4" or 1 1/2" pvc pipe...(the grey kind with the belled ends, cheaper too..) down into the well long enough to hit the silt. Along the outside of the pvc I'll run a piece of 3/8" plastic tube down to the last 2', then I'll change it over from plastic to a short piece of 1/4" steel brake line and turn it up into the pvc pipe about 6 or 8". I don't think I will have to glue the connections, just push them together and wrap the connections with 100 mph duck tape to keep them together as they are raised up and down. Then run an airline out to the well head and connect it to the 3/8 tube going down into the well and pump air into the tube. I'm thinking 30 or 40 psi should be plenty maybe less depending on just how heavy the silt is and I'm thinking I'll have to play with air pressure to get the rig going. The idea is to push the end of the pvc pipe into the silt and as the air is pumped into the pipe and heads upward it will cause a vacuum at the end. As the air is pumped in, it has to go up the tube because of the 15 or so feet of head pressure caused by the water in the well and the end of the pipe being jammed into the silt and as it rises to the top hopefully it will vacuum the bottom taking the silt with it.

If it works, I'll have to have the top end of the pvc rigged so that I can add more pieces of pipe as it removes the silt and the well gets deeper. Depending on how it works will depend on how far I go down. I'm shooting for 6' min but 10' or 12' would be great. This would be the best way because it probably wouldn't muddy up the water as badly as some of the other ways will do.


The other way I was thinking about was what spiker was talking about. Dropping a piece of 6" or 8" steel pipe about 6' long into the well and as it pushes into the silt the pipe fills up and then raise it back to the top to be dumped out. This is how the pro's do it around here only they use a larger dia. bucket type deal and it is hoisted up by their well rig winch system.This would probably be a faster way to clean it out but would probably leave the well unusable for a few days. Of-course I would have to come up with some kind of flapper system on the bottom of the pipe that would close as it is lifted to keep the material from running out as it is lifted out of the well. I have a couple ideas on how to do this I just have to take the time to build it and get it working. Heck if I can come up with some kind of fool proof closing system I could probably make a few bucks going around the hood cleaning other peoples wells out to use to fund some of my habits I have acquired over the years. Tools, tractors, guns, fancy boat.....LOL

Now that I know whats going on and why it is filling in I'm going to wait a month or so until the dry weather comes and the water table drops so I can go back into the well and seal all the joints again. Hopefully by then the amount of water that is flowing in through the joints wont wash out the concrete like it was doing on my first attempt. But believe it or not the first sealing stopped over 3/4 of the water coming in but I don't know what will happen if we got a really big rain event. In any case I want to stop all this action before I start pumping anything out.