My water flow has been good, but twice in the last week it’s slowed to a trickle due to high use for springtime landscaping projects. High use periods result in an excess of granite dust in the whole house filter.
Popped the cap on the well, the water level looks good, about 15′ down. Live on a lake, so the water table really isn’t a problem.
Well is about 180′ deep, the pump was set by the installer at 140′. Usually have about 17 gpm flow.
I’m figuring I may have to pull the pump, then pump water down the well to get the silt in suspension, then pump the silt-filled water out.
I have several hundred feet of black pipe and pumps to do it. I have a swimming pool as a water source for pumping into the well.
Just have a question. Probably a simple answer, but the well guy hasn’t called back, and we’ve had some good well threads on here in the past, so I figured I’d ask you’z guyz…is there a tool, or a certain technique, that is used to use to pull the pipe off the hanger inside the well casing?
My impression…correct me if I’m wrong…is that I need to pull the pipe off the hanger (about 4 1/2′ down), then pull the 140′ of black pipe, wiring, and pump out of the casing.
I’ll then drop a weighted bob down to see where the silt level is.
If it is silted out, I’ll insert two pipes down the well. One pipe, maybe 5′ longer than the second, to pump water in, the other shorter pipe to pump water out.
Reinstall the existing pump/pipe/wiring, which is 8 or 9 years old.
Make sense? A better way? If the well guy calls, he gets the job. However, it’s the busy season…
Thanks.
Replies
Make your own tool...get some black pipe, 1 1/4"(od) and a threaded tee. Use a 6' (or 8' if needed) length and 2 6" lengths (nipples), cut threads on the ends of the pipes and then assemble as a tee. HD will thread it for free.
Kill the power, relieve the water press, thread the 6' leg of the 'tee' into the pitless adapter in the wellcasing and lift/pull with the 6" handles. But be prepard...it's kinda heavy and 140' is a lot of pulling.!! Make sure you have room to pull and lay this stuff out too!
bob,
That should work. My well does indeed have a pitless adapter, I'll take a flashlight out there tomorrow and see if I can see the top adapter with the female thread.
I'll cobble together a cam-locking vise to release the pipe as I pull it up and to hold it when I reach for another handful of pipe.
Much thanks.
This is a bit off subject but worth the laugh. We had a well at my family home, the pump was in our basement and the well just had a point at the bottom of the pipe run. Every once in a while when the point would get blocked up, my dad would unscrew the top of the run which was buried just below the driveway. He then would pull out a WWII German P-38 , he found it during the war, and fire a few rounds down the well pipes. and just as easy as that we had water again! I'm not so sure about the lead counts:)
" so I figured I'd ask you'z guyz...is there a tool, or a certain technique, that is used to use to pull the pipe off the hanger inside the well casing?"
I'm assuming that I'm confused, but....
When I pulled my pump, there was some kind of nut or something there where the pipe made the turn out of the well casing and towards the house. When that was loosened the pipe pulled right up (but mine is only 80 feet if I recall correctly). But before I figured out what to loosen, it was a real b***h to move it even an inch.
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
Hey Rich:
Bob was talking about how to remove the pumpp if there's a "pitless adapter" being used. That's a two-piece brass fitting. One piece threads into the side of the well casing, below grade. The other piece threads onto the well pipe leading down to the pump. The "inside" piece, attached to the well pipe can be removed, along with the pipe and pump.
What you do is to thread a piece of black steel pipe into the inside fitting, and lift up. That separates the two parts, and enables you to lift out the well pipe and pump. Bob was describing a "T" setup, so that you can thread the black pipe onto the pitless adapter, and the top of the "T" serves as a handle to give you a grip to lift it all.
The other reason for the "T" is to save you if you lose your grip. The pump and well pipe will fall back into the well, but the "T" handle will stop it from dropping down into the well, and out of reach.
If you had to remove a big nut on the outside of the well casing, it sounds like you may have been actually removing the pitless adapter. You should have been able to separate it as Bob described, without digging and without removing the big nut.
Does any of this make sense?
:)
Edited 4/23/2004 8:37 pm ET by melissa
Around here wells are scarce and sacred.
No one in their right mind would mess with one without careful supervision by a well man until they know how to go about it.
It is very hard to fish after stuff dropped in a well, even the pipes themselves if you drop them in there.
Several wells have been ruined by careless or ignorant mistakes. No one was happy about that.
We clean wells with a special "baling" pipe, a heavy pipe with a rod welded inside on one end, in a loop, to hang onto, that is dropped other end first in the well and the sand at the bottom packs in there and we pull it out and shake it out. A few times of baling cleans most wells just fine for several years, lowering the level of the bottom without having to redrill and recirculate into a pit.
Around here well pipe is 21' to the length, so to pull well pipe you need a rig taller than 21' by a few feet, like three big tall pipes, a hoist and a pair of horses or pickup to pull, or a crane truck.
We use a "hand" made of a heavy square piece of metal that fits around the pipes and holds each length at the top of the well casing, below the coupling of the next length, so we can unscrew them apart and lay the one lose down, then pull until the next pipe shows up and do the same, until the pump shows up.
Ruby
I'm curious...are you saying that the 21' sections are pipe casings and screwed together all the way to the pump? How deep are the pumps?
Here (CT) it is a rigid plastic/rubber/? hose from the pitless adapter to the pump. My pump is 150' down and I had no problem removing/installing it. Simple to do and the worst that could happen is knocking the 'O' ring out of place on the pitless adapter.
Interesting. I had never heard the term pitless adapter before, but perhaps that is because all the wells in my area are old enough to have a "pit", or small concrete basin, in which the top of the well casing protrudes. What I have is a sell seal, someimes referred to as a "sanitary seal" (although that term is also sometimes used for the grout around the well casing) such as the one pictured at:
http://doityourself.com/store/6489272.htm
The arrangement that appears to be discussed here seems more like that diagramed at: http://www.wellowner.org/awaterwellbasics/typeswellcaps.shtml (I had to look it up to be sure just what a "pitless adapter" was.)
The wells around here are old enough that most have galvanized steel pipe running in the well - either to a foot valve (with a jet pump) or to the submersible pump.
I will be pulling the guts out of my well soon. However, the sytem now has a deep well jet pump which means there is a down pipe, an up pipe, and a foot valve in the well. I will be borrowing a 30' tripod from my neighbor and pulling the pipe with a block and tackle and providing the motive force with my compact 4x4 diesel tractor. I have had a device constructed, similar to what was described above, which is simply a 2' piece of large angle iron with a notch cut out which will slip below the coupling when a length is pulled out of the well to prevent the pipe from dropping back into the well again. I also have a 36" and 42" pipe wrench that will hopefully allow me to unscrew the sections of pipe. I am having made up a pipe plug that will be drilled out and a eyebolt fitted so that the plug can be screwed into the coupling where the previous pipe section went to allow hoisting the pipe up another section.
I just purchased a previously used rough terrain forklift, so I may use that to provide the lift of the sections, although it will only do it 12' at a time so I will need something to grab the pipe section at the halfway point for the second half of the lift. Will still need the tripod and the block and tackled, however, it will just save me from messing with the tractor instead of the fork lift.
I am hoping to avoid any fishing expeditions at the bottom of the well...
Sounds like quite a chore to R&R your type of pump
Now I can understand why Ruby cautioned any attempt to do this. Must be a full days work to R&R if you have a deep well.
I believe Mongo is in CT, as I am, and good chance he has the same type of arrangement as I do.
I like the idea of the baling pipe.
However, that's actually a method that I'd be afraid to try.
With my luck, the dropped pipe would rattle against he sides to the well as it fell and cause a cave-in!
I won;t have to pull and unscrew any metal pipe. The steel well casing will obviously stay in place, and my actual water pipe that has the pump attached to it is one 140' long piece of black plastic pipe.
Should be fairly easy to pull by hand.
---"With my luck, the dropped pipe would rattle against he sides to the well as it fell and cause a cave-in!"---
Sorry not to have explained baling better. You lower the baling pipe in gently and then lift and drop and lift and drop a few times for the last foot or so only.
We get about 3' of sand packed in there out of it each time we retrieve that baling pipe.
On lightning hitting the well, we have two lightning arrestors in series to protect the pump that blow up when lightning hits. They are set by the electrical box, and are a little smaller than a tennis ball.
Have not lost a pump motor to lightning since we have been using them the last 20 years or so.
Kind of tongue and cheek with my comment about caving the well. I figured it wouldn't be wise to let a length of steell pipe rattle 140' to the bottom of a well.
I was thinking about it today while outside building a stone wall. I may try your idea before I go to the trouble of pumping the pool water down the well.
I could cobble together a tripod and use a motor to do the heavy lifting.
I don;t have any steel pipe on hand, but it wouldn't be much trouble to get ahold of a length.
Thanks for the follow-up.
Melissa,
As I said, I was confused...
My set up is different from what you describe.
Whatever it was I loosened, it was inside the well casing. It clamps the pipe to the side of the casing where the pipe to the house is.
I knew I was confused because Mongo asked the question. I'm sure there must be SOMETHING I know that Mongo doesn't (well, I tell myself that...), but the odds that he would be asking about that particular something (whatever it is) seem remote at best.
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
Rich,
Here's a picture of the pitless adapter:
View Image
The piece in the upper left is attached to the water supply pipe that runs down into the well. The nipple on the piece in the middle goes through the well casing and is secured on the outside of the casing by the nut and washer.
The "T" that bob told me to build will thread into the top of the piece that's in the upper left corner of the picture.
The weight of the pipe and pump hold the two pieces together, the O ring provides the seal.
Rich, on your well, "...where the pipe made the turn out of the well casing and towards the house", was that above grade or below? did you have to dig down to get to it?
Thanks for posting, I always value your input.
Now that I see it, I can say that a pitless adapter is what is above the pump in the dosing tank in my septic system.
"Rich, on your well, "...where the pipe made the turn out of the well casing and towards the house", was that above grade or below? did you have to dig down to get to it?"
It is below grade, but it is accessed from inside the well casing. I just went outside to look, but the wiring prevents a good look down to the clamp and I didn't want to mess with the wiring. The whole shebang is held up by a T across the top of the casing into which the pipe is threaded.
If memory serves, I ended up using a length of pipe with one end flattened a bit to serve as a wrench (now that I think about it, I wonder if one of those water shut off doohickeys would work??).
Regarding the rope, I've pulled two pumps and neither one had a rope on it. They both had ropes going back in.
Rich Beckman
Another day, another tool.
I plan to live in the house I'm in now till I die in another 20-30 or so? That said, if yu plan similar, spent the effort as I did a couple years back to re-build the pumphouse with a 27 foot tower and a permanently installed electric winch and pulley at the top so it'll be easy in your '80s to pull the pipes if need be again.
Subdivision went in uphill last year, so before that took down old pumphouse and deepened the well down to the bottom glacial layer (was 20 feet, now 60 ft) to get > 30 gpm in August. At 55 ft, hit fine black sand that caved in. Had the pumps and pipe like you (lots of 4" DWV, did buy an extra 50 ft 3" firehose) to reach from a 50 ft by 30 ft pond 10 ft deep - dumped 10 gal bleach in the pond, hooked up 750 GPM 3" pump at 80 psi (driven off a 2.2 L Chrysler engine) and pumped the pond dry in 7 hours even though the water ran back to the pond. Beleive over 5 yards of sand came up suspended in water - did not return water to surface with a second pipe as you mentioned, let it flow out the 8" casing.
Good Luck.
All new wells drilled here are in open ground, easy to access, not in a well house. The well houses are a little way from the well itself.
At the top of the last pipe, they have a special brass fitting below ground you can access to disconnect the horizontal pipe to the well house, to pull the well, described above. All that sticks out of the ground there is about 1' of casing with a lid.
That permits pulling them without having to unbolt the roof off the well houses, like we had to in the old ones or making a special lid in them to get the pipes out.
If you can, change your well setting to that or if building new, keep the well house off the well hole.
Our wells here go from one at 40' with 10' of water to about 300' for irrigation wells or windmills. All galvanized 2" to 2 1/2" pipe except irrigation wells, that some go to 5".
my well is 85 feet, I pull mine with a seven foot tripod. block and tackel, really a pully with a rope witha loop tie in it. I put my foot in the loop and let body weight pull rod five feet, Then hook vice grip to pipe to keep from falling, then do over. I just let the pipe bend over at top
I remember that pic from the previous thread...you certainly are the master of improvisation. I'm definitely envious of your skills.
My well is a 6" well, so figure if I have 40' of sand in the bottom, I'm looking at less than a third of a yard of sand.
I originally thought of doing what you did...just flooding the well and letting the water and silt overflow. I'll revisit that thought, but I thought I could use the least amount of pool water by using the pumping in/pumping out method.
So many ideas, so little time...<g>
Has no one mentioned it, or did I miss it? Attach a ROPE. A STRONG ROPE to the pump. They all have an eyelet for that. And every pump I've ever installed has a rope from the pump to something strong in the wellhead or vault box.
140' of poly pipe is pretty strong in tension. But how good is the connection at the bottom? Or, for the folks with steel pipe, what if you slip as you are unscrewing sections? The rope is a nice belt to the pipe's suspenders.
Another approach is to LOWER the pump (temporarily). Disconnect from the house service pipe and use the current pump to move the silt (dumping to surface or somewhere). Not good for the current pump, but maybe not too bad for it. Pump the silt out, raise it back into its current position. I've done that for silt and clay and never poofed a pump. I'd avoid doing it for sand, though.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Well sheeeeeeeeet! 140' that taint nuthin.How about 500'?Lets see 500' of 1' pipe, plus saftey rope,plus pump..Cant pull that sucker by hand.Most pump guys down here have a rig with a small motor and 3 rubber wheels that roll the pipe out of there.Anything under 200 ' a scaffold and block and tackle may work.Around here where wells take a hit fro lightning i know of at least 2 guys who keep the rig set up over the casing begrudgingly knowing theyll just have to do it all over again.
My well man is a great Amish guy who doesnt believe in the torque rings some people install on the pipe as they lower it.he says hes seen them jamb up in the casing and its impossible to pull the pipe.
Im glad ive got a 1/2 mile driveway because 525 ' of pipe unspooled goes a long way. plus the 3/8 saftey rope and wire taped to it every 4 '.
17 seconds from time u drop a pebble in there till u hear it splash.Kinda make a fellar thinK!Only 75' short of Washington Monument.And ill tell u what .youd be suprised at how much drilling tailings come out of a 600' hole.Musta been about 3 tons of 'takes ur shovel with it' mud.
"My well man is a great Amish guy"
Cool. Can you post pics of his horse-powered drill rig?David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
That's one thing I noticed when I initialy popped the well cap...no safety line on the pump. I'll certainly put one in place when I reset it.
When I say "silted up" I'm not being accurate. It's more "sand." At least that's what's in the whole house filter. Sand, like granite dust. Probably from the initial drilling when the slurry acted like a grout and was frced into the fractures in the circumference of the drilled hole. Over the years it's possible the grout has been getting washed out and settling at the bottom of the well.
When I built, I tried hiring someone who pounds wells, but he has jobs lined up forever. So drilling it was.
Thanks for the ideas, David.