Well repairs,,, OUCH!!

[Professor Marvel]

I might have missed it but I have still not heard where the pump is placed in relationship between the static water level and the bottom of the well. If it can be dropped farther down it will allow use of a larger reservoir.

 

[MikePA]

Post #30

Well is 425' deep, pump sits at 400', static water level is 370' so pump only has 30' of water above it. I understand it's a low capacity well. The problem is I believe I have a pump that is oversized if it is a 10gpm as I suspect. The bigger problem is that because the motor is so grossly oversized, it prevents me from adding a pump protection device.

 

[Old Junk Man]

So with 30 feet of water in the very bottom you only have about 40 gallons of water available before your pump starts sucking air. a very small pump and a 30 gallon bladder tank are all that the well can handle & supply. the well guy is a crook or just incopentent or maybe both. and you have a almost useless well. The cure is to drill a deeper well that has more static water thus more capacity.

 

[oldpilgrim]

So with 30 feet of water in the very bottom you only have about 40 gallons of water available before your pump starts sucking air. a very small pump and a 30 gallon bladder tank are all that the well can handle & supply. the well guy is a crook or just incompetent or maybe both. and you have a almost useless well. The cure is to drill a deeper well that has more static water thus more capacity.

yup, you've basically got a dry well.

 

[gsganzer]

I wanted to follow up with some new/final information.

The well guy confirmed it's a 7gpm pump with a 5hp motor. The reasoning for the 5hp motor was so we'd get into a motor with a 1500# thrust bearing rating, as the well guy felt we had a good bit of scale and corrosion present that could damage a lighter constructed motor.(I guess I'll never know the gpm for certain until I pull the pump someday when it fails) I'm not sure I truly buy into the motor upgrade story, but we'll roll with it and see what happens.

I've been playing around with the well over the past week and found that when I had a truly recovered well (10 minutes or longer), I could usually fill the accumulator without going dry (depended on how much I continued drawing off the tank as it was filling). I think for normal household uses, I'll be OK. My concern was that it seemed real easy to get into a dry pump condition and I could see that easily happening if the kids left the water running somewhere.

The well guy came back out this morning and installed a dry pump protector and it works as it's intended (it's actually the model used for a 1.5 to 3hp motor, because we're drawing amperage well below the 5HP full load amps)

Bottom line is this well should really have a smaller pump and a 2000 gallon storage system to be correctly configured.

With that in mind, if the pump goes out in the future, I'll pull it myself and install all the correct equipment. I'm looking at storage tank options so if I ever stumble upon a tank cheap, I'll buy it and have it in place and ready to go.

 

[TnAndy]

1500gal tanks (the largest our local Tractor Supply carries) run about $800 here. I hooked two of them in series for our spring water system, giving us 3,000gal of storage. They are not buried, but in a 10x20 insulated block building.

 

[Old Junk Man]

I know of a off grid home. they have a small spring . It has a water ram that fills a 50 gallon tank. they have a 12 volt system. its wind and solar powered. so they use a 12 volt pump to transfer water from the 50 gal tank to a larger tank up in the rafters of the house. then gravity feed to the faucets ect. solar heated water in the summer. and a wood burning furnace with a water heater for when the sun don't shine. they have a spring house and a propane refrigerator to keep food from spoiling. the water rams output can be diverted to water the garden when needed.

 

[Xfaxman]

Call Cycle Stop Valves 1-800-652-0207, ask if their system would solve your problem> Cycle Stop Valves, Inc.