Spin Down water filters

[beersngars]

The water well at our cabin property is marginal at best. It tests very good for iron, hardness and so forth but since it's use is only on the weekends, it puts out a lot of sand/silt. It makes the water tea colored. Sometimes if we use alot of water in a short time, I can run it out of water. When this happens, it gets very sandy/muddy looking until it settles out again. The space in the cabin that houses the well bladder tank and hot water heater is very small so my options are limited.

I am looking to install some sort of filter. I want to put it in the 1" line coming from the submersible pump before the bladder tank. So far the Rusco (or other brand??) spin down filter seems to be the best option over a woven style replaceable type filter. Anyone have experiance with them? I was thinking around a #250 mesh size.

Any help would be a graet help. Thanks

 

[westcliffe01]

You would do better if you installed a less powerful pump, raised it up a bit and then added a cistern. You never want to run a pump harder than the well can supply. If you do a cistern that holds 2000 gal, and filter the water going into it, all the superfine stuff will settle out in the cistern itself. Then you add an RV style pump to pressurize water into your bladder tank for the house. The cistern would need some sort of float switch to turn on the well pump. Ideally this would have a lot of hysteresis to that the level has to fall quite a ways before it turns on the well pump again and then it runs a nice long time at a slow pace to be easy on the well.

I see your in OH, so ideally the cistern would be buried so that it would not freeze in winter. The temperature a few feet down is steady in the 50's and no light to encourage algea.

 

[beersngars]

Thanks for the reply. I don't know how the cistern idea would help me. If the well will not keep up with high demand, wouldn't the pump still cavatate when replacing water to the cistern? Maybe if a timer was used to let the well recover???? My thought would be to deepen the well or try fracking it. Neither of these ideas are in the immediate future for me though. Bottom line is we use the cabin about 30 hours a week so it's not a huge problem. I just need to try a bit of filtering for now and am looking for some insight on these types of filters.

 

[westcliffe01]

What I meant was replace what is today potentially a 2hp pump with a 1/4 or 1/2hp pump. it can take as long as it wants to fill the cistern. The cistern is your buffer and you pump from that to the house. Filter going into the cistern and any superfine stuff will settle out in the cistern. Perhaps flush it once a year based on condition. The rate of flow will be reduced as will be the pressure (the cistern is not pressurized) and the well should be able to keep up. If not you have more serious issues.

This is in fact the normal approach that is used when using solar to pump water. The idea is for the small pump to run all day while the sun is shining. It eliminates one of the big headaches in how to power an enormously powerful well pump which then runs only for a minute or 2 at a time and is off the rest of the day (unless watering the garden)...