Well pump head fitting

[Valveman]

That tee is holding your pump up. It is probably on the top of a 20' joint of pipe. You will have to remove the entire 20' joint of pipe to replace the tee. As was said, you probably need a pump hoist truck. Less than 100' deep on plastic pipe you could pull up by hand. But not knowing how deep you could be pulling on hundreds or thousands of pounds.

That hole was caused by electrolysis from two dissimilar metals. The brass hose bib screwed into the iron tee caused the hole in the iron fitting.

23 years is a long life for a pump that was designed to survive 7 years of on/off cycles. But it could still be better than some of the new stuff they have cheapened up over the years. Gonna have to pull it up to fix the tee. Might as well have a look at the pump and be prepared to replace it while you are at it.

 

[turnkey4099]

I have rigged and maintained a fair number of pumps.
One thing I learned early in that game is to not mix match fittings.
NEVER use common steel fittings, galvanized or not, in the mix.
For sure that steel one is the one that'll always fail.
I've seen them totally rotted out to completely clogged from rust growth.
For me it's all brass but also OK with HD poly B for the piping.
Also always use a safety 'pull cable' attached directly to the pump.
Then there is a 'pitless head' that makes removal simple if the need arises.

For sure. Galvanised pipe here whether in a well or buried in dirt does not last I had to replace almost a 1/4 mile of galv swith PVC when the old stuff rotted. It was about 40 years old at that time. Then I had a new well drilled at my lot. It made about 20 years before the 'down' pipe in the well sprung a leak. Well outlet pulled it and was sready to put it back in when I stopped him and told him to replace that black pipe with the special plastic sstuff used for 'down pipes'.

 

[LouNY]

It sounds to me as if everyone thinks you have a submersible pump, do you or do you have a single pipe jet pump.
Shallow well or deep?

 

[JJT]

"Also, the well pump is 23 years old. Was wondering if I should replace it as a preventative measure rather than it fail at an inconvenient time?"

You're on borrowed time. I had the pro's replace my 25 yr old pump, pressure switch and bladder tank this summer. A well spent $2,150. I did the original 200' install by myself 25 yrs ago. Mow that I'm almost 60, I'll spend the money and watch the pro's.

 

[bcp]

"Also, the well pump is 23 years old. Was wondering if I should replace it as a preventative measure rather than it fail at an inconvenient time?"

You're on borrowed time. I had the pro's replace my 25 yr old pump, pressure switch and bladder tank this summer. A well spent $2,150. I did the original 200' install by myself 25 yrs ago. Mow that I'm almost 60, I'll spend the money and watch the pro's.

Neighbor has the same done here, about 140 deep. It was over $6000.

Bruce

 

[gary49]

Submersible pump because there’s a junction box on the top of the well seal. Tee is supporting pump and drop pipe. Would be good to know how deep the well is. Might be galvanized pipe in 21’ joints all the way down or could be black polyethylene pipe or even 20‘ pieces of 1” PVC pipe with glued joints. What I do is to try to loosen the bolts that go into the sanitary well seal, they sandwich a piece of rubber with another steel piece that is tapped for the bolts And that squeezes the rubber piece to produce a seal. They are usually seized, unfortunately, but the seal will usually pop out if you pry it up at the outside edges with a wonder bar or something like that. If you get it popped up, you can move it aside and look down the well with a good flashlight. If you see black poly pipe, it’s probably not terribly deep, no more than 300’. in any case, to change the tee all you need to do is to raise the pipe and pump enough to get something below the seal to hold everything up while you unscrew the tee. I use a small bench vise, a pipe vise would work, too. Just make sure the vise is tight, you don’t want it to slip. You’ll need a pipe wrench on the fitting and another one below the seal to keep the pipe from turning. This is the old way of putting a pipe in a well. Pitiless adapters are much better, both in ease of installation and service as well as keeping surface water out of the well, the pit often will fill with enough water to cover the seal, and they aren’t that good at actually sealing, not to mention that the electrical connection such as your system has, could end up underwater. A brass tee would hold up better than the galvanized one you have. You don’t actually need the tee, normally there would just be a 90, that is, unless you need the connection for a hose.

 

[JJT]

Neighbor has the same done here, about 140 deep. It was over $6000.

Bruce

I had 3 quotes, one was over $7,000, one was TBD, "should be under $3,000", I took the third - a firm fixed price of $2,150. Fortunately I have two wells so this was not a 911 situation.

 

[bdhsfz6]

That tee is definitely supporting the weight of the feed pipe and pump. As previously said, the right thing to do, if you have the $$, is get a well specialist to look at it. In the mean time, a cheap fix would be to try drilling out the pin hole a bit and use a sheet metal screw & rubber washer to seal the leak. Might last a week, might last 10 years but worth a try. I've used this idea many times on air pressure & water tanks.

 

[ning]

The nuts you see on top of the plate are providing compression on the rubber gasket below it (the entire unit is the well seal).

If you loosen the nuts, you may be able to pull the whole system up (disconnect the pipe from the well to the house first - it looks like you may need to cut the PVC first; if you're lucky you'll be able to simply patch in a union so you can reconnect things afterwards and if you're not lucky then you'll replace a bigger chunk of that PVC; also disconnect the wiring. THROW THE BREAKER FIRST!).

There may also be a lifting ring - like an eye bolt - on the well seal.

My pump is 180' down and I'm able to loosen the nuts and pull the thing up a couple feet on my own. There's a nylon rope leading to the pump as well that you should be able to support the pump with if you disconnect the T.

I replaced the pump on my well on my own about 15 years ago; I rigged up a set of rollers to transfer the force 90 degrees and attached the T to my truck trailer hitch and slowly pulled the whole thing out of the ground. I'd use my tractor now, probably, but the truck was fine. This only worked because my well has poly pipe in it; if PVC or galv was used obviously my pulling method couldn't work.

If my well was much deeper however the length of pipe + the column of water in the pipe going to it would've been too heavy for me to even get started and lift up, but things were just right and DIY was sufficient; something like $700 for a new pump and that was it.

 

[Alien]

I just replaced my pump with new electrical cable and bore iron treatment as well. Pump is a 1.5 kW and total cost was Au$3700.
The old pump was smaller and only 8 years old but the foot valve was leaking so I decided to just do the lot.
It was at 180 feet depth. (60 meters)