Yet Another Well Pump Issue

[Carl_NH]

Dave,

Sounds like you have things under control - sorta now.

Time to stop typing and start piping - ha ha..

Carl

 

[Looking4new]

I have a 17 year old son, trust me, it won't get any better.:laughing:

Mine is 44 and it don't get any better.

Just to clarify something here, are we talking about a dug well or a drilled well?
What is the diameter of the casing?

 

[QueBota]

Drilled well, circa 1979, based on previous owner and neighbors accounts wells are around 225' +/- deep. PVC casing at the surface, I installed a "modern" plastic cap on the casing few years ago, the old metal one was a bear to remove, looked like it hadn't been touched in a while.

Casing appears to be approx. 4" in diameter, water feed line from casing to pressure tank is 1" standard black poly pipe.

Dave

 

[QueBota]

Photolink at Snapfish, not sure if this will work. Will try to annotate pics sometime this AM.

For some reason the allow browsing without creating an account is not working at this time, looks like Snapfish wants you to create an account before it will allow you to browse the pics. Working on that and adding some explanatory notes.

Added the notes, looks like you have to create an account to view. The pictures don't do the roots justice, there are way more than you can see and they are larger and more massive than you could imagine, some a like trees underground.

http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/t...k/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/] Well Pipe Leak Pics

Dave

 

[Carl_NH]

Dave,

You can just add pics here - two or three should get the general idea. Go to manage attachments and add them - there is a 1MB per photo size limit. If they are bigger than that you can compress them too.

I get enough junk mail now without signing up for another photo acct etc.

From the one pic I did see you need to expand your hole a bit I think..

 

[turnkey4099]

Due to the roots and other issues it looks like you have a real major project. I had much the same (no roots at least) in a 1/4 mile run to a community well. Leaked badly, basically wouild leak almost the entire out put of the the pump.

Happened also in the spring. My solution was to string a temporary line (I used PVC) between house and well, wait for after harvest, rent ditch witch and just "go for it ignoring any wire/pipe etc encounted, except for the phone line, I had that marked and handdug that stretch. When ditch was finished I just moved the new piping over and dropped it in.

Temp line above ground would only require digging a bit at the well and house ends, cutting existing line (and wire if unavoidable) and patching the temp pipe in. that would give you all summer/fall to do the replacement right without being rushed.

Harry K

 

[QueBota]

UPDATE my own thread.

Finally had enough time to work on my "project" for several hours in a row.

Had to dig approx. 3 feet further towards the house and 3 feet down. Fortunately at this point the water line was clear of the incredible mass of roots. Looks like I was lucky for a change. The break in the water line appears to have been caused by the levering effect of the root mass it was passing through.

There was a small stress crack on the top of the line where the roots were really tweaking the pipe. I cut the pipe off as close to the root bound section as possible and installed a "patch" section about 3 feet long. Took a bit of wrestling to get the patch to align with the rest of line. I had to run it in a loose curve above the mass of roots. I used irrigation style barbs and double clamps to install the patch. If I went with brass or the standard poly barbs they would have been to long to accomadate the bend/twist in the patch section. Had to tap the barbs into the existing pipe ends with a soft block of wood the forced the patch ends onto the barbs, they didn't want to sit square to the shoulder.

My son had to hold the patch in place will I clamped down the patch section. The nice thing about the irrigation barbs is they are a bit shorter than standard barbs, have a nice shoulder in the center, and I think they are slightly flexible, which enabled the patch section to be clamped to the barb in a circle instead of an oval, the longer barbs would have levered the pipe away from the barbs.

I thought they were going to blow apart when we turned on the pump, but knock on wood, no leaks as of this AM, approx. 12 hours since the splice was installed. Waiting for the next weak spot to spring a leak now that this leak has been addressed.

Now that I have regular water service for the wife and girls I can remove the giant root mass and lay the pipe flat in the trench. I plan on digging a new trench during the summer and placing the power feed and water line in a larger pipe or conduit.

Will take some pics and post them to the photo section this evening, never could get the SnapFish photo links to work out the way I wanted them to.

Thanks for all the good advice,
Dave