Any plumbers/well experts here?

[smokesahoy]

The background is on an old house with multiple water supplies. As each well dried up, they had another put in. I bought the house with a 10 year old deep well, they drilled to 600 feet cased to 90 feet and lowered the pump to about 80. The well has already been lined with PVC.

Anyway I started pulling really fine sediment periodically that would resolve itself in about a day, until the last time where it wouldn't clear. I did some research and I think it is colloidal clay. It doesn't settle out after days. I called all the well guys out here in the phone book, I could only get ahold of one, he asked me for all the information about the well which is thankfully all recorded on the state website. When we got to the part about the liner he was like "ooh, so this had already happened and they fixed it" now that the fix is in place apparently when it fails again that's pretty much it for the well. He said the only thing I could do short of drilling a new one is attempt to flush it out by running the well dry and turning the pump off after it stopped, then giving it some time to refresh before turning it back on. Figuring if this was the last option before drilling (even if it could burn out the pump) I figured give it a shot.

The pump drained the well in about 7 minutes and after refilling it did seem clearer, and continued to clear up until the next day when it started pulling mud again. I tried it again today, and the mud continued coming up this time where it seems the pump has now died as after shutting it off it never came back on.

After moping around for a while I started to think about alternatives to the 5-7k for a new well. One of the previous water options is a well house with a little positive pressure. Gallon a minute or so. But it's good clean water collected from my well house in the woods. I was thinking to hook up a cistern in the basement to slowly fill, while having a pump pressurize the diaphragm water tank for use. It seems like a good fix that won't break the bank, I just need to figure out a way to shut the water off after the cistern tank is filled (something like a toilet bowl shutoff? But for a cistern tank Does this exist?) Then I can leave the main tank to charge slowly all day so there will be water pressure in the house as needed.

My wife said "if that would work why didn't the last people do that and save thousands? I figured I was just thinking outside the box and maybe they weren't. But do those of you with experience with this see any glaring issues with this plan? If I get a tank for holding water is there a device marketed for this use?

I figured this would be great because if anything else happens this is a system where I can maintain/replace anything myself.

Thank you for any and all advice!

[Plate plinker]

Maybe look at stock tank floats/valves.
These are essentially glorified heavy duty toilet float valves.

what part of the country are you on?

[Wolfer]

The stock tank floats/valves would be my first thought also. It could also be done with a bulb type float switch and an electric solenoid. The type of float you would see at a man hole at a lift station.

I once knew a man back home that had a cistern that he filled from his pond. He filtered the incoming water through multiple layers of fine sand alternating with layers of crushed charcoal.
I never drank the water there so I can't say how well it worked out.

Is it possible to just put in an overflow pipe in the cistern so that when it's full the excess just runs back outside. Of course if your basement is completely underground this probably won't work.

[Kent Fowler]

Why did they drill to 600 and only case to 90?

[wv109323]

Do you have electric at the well house in the woods? Build the cistern there and push the water to the house with a shallow well pump.
Or they make plastic tanks of 250 or 500 gallons that you could use with a float valve. Feed the tank with the gravity feed well house and use a pump in the house. For a float valve look for something used for livestock water troughs.

[wv109323]

Does the original well have a concrete slab around it? Many times surface water runs down the casing and fills the well with silt.

[Superfly]

Sounds to me like you need to Power flush the well Yes it is expensive It works though They basically Power pump the well with the drill rig Just like the Do after they Finish drilling the hole To check water output. And if the wells are going dry WHY are they Going Dry Putting another hole in the Ground 100 feet away is still in the same Aquifer.


We need more INFO


thanks Jaime

[smokesahoy]

Thank you, I will check out stock tanks.

Overflow pipe could be made to work with a little more plumbing. I was thinking of putting the cistern near the sump in case of failure, it would pump out the flood. But I could still probably find an angle to run a pipe out and gravity feed it out. great idea thank you.

I don't know why they drilled so deep and cased so little, but it seems common in my area, I looked up my neighbors and they have the same casing situation. Maybe the rock down there is pretty solid?

Yeah the well house is about 200 yards away, and the piping is already coming in the house below the frost line. It would make the most sense to me to capture it in the house. This is in Vermont.

No concrete slab on the deep well, I'm thinking of just forgetting it exists. I could have the whole cistern set up for less than the cost of having the pump replaced. I could then use a simple to maintain and cheap to buy pump from home depot to charge the pressurized water tank that feeds the house.

I have the spring hooked into the house now and it allowed my wife to do the laundry, bathe my baby and I could wash the dishes, so there is plenty water there, but not all at once and pressure is low. A 300-500 gallon tank should suffice to collect and serve the house over a day without worrying about running 2 faucets at once.

Thank you all very much for the ideas, it definitely helped, I know better what to search for now.

[drago9900]

Maybe put the storage tank outside or in another building to prevent flooding in your house and get the largest tank you can. You can use sediment filters and UV lights to kill germs. My brother has a setup that catches rain water at his deer lease like this.

[trapper9260]

From what I understand from what the OP wrote and I under stand is for in the past I use to work for 2 different well company and also install and service the systems. Ok for them to put 90' of well casen is that they must of hit ledge and that is what is use to do because you use the rock of the ledge to take the place of the casen.And then went to 600' for the well and maybe at the time they where getting what they think is enough water per a min. .But some one did not check it right or when they put the casen in they did not seal the well off right and like was stated silt went into the well and fill it up and now you have the probelms you have now.Because 1gl.a min. is not going to take care of even a small house of cabin .It should be at lease 5gals. if not go deep and use that to use as a tank for water storage. But where they set the pump it looks like that the one put the well in or the pump know there was a problem with the well.As for what is thinking of doing is use a shallow well pump from the place you plan to get the water and pump it into a tank and then go from there. and to check to see how much that well makes see how many sec. it take to fill a gallon pail or some sort and then divided it by 60 that will be because of 60 secs. and then you have how many gals your well makes and tell you more about how you can use it.like if it take 10secs to fill a gallon then your well is maken 6 gallons a min.Hope this will help.

[jmort]

My last well was 500 feet and pipe/perforated pipe all the way. I don't get it. I would roll with the gallon a minute artesian well . Run it into a storage tank. There is a pump from Australia that would work real good with your dirty water:
http://www.brumbypumps.com/
Good to have options on water delivery.

[MaryB]

If you want to drink the water get one of these http://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/big-berkey.html I use the smaller one to filter my city water to get rid of the chlorine and who knows what else is in it

[joatmon]

Your idea for a basement tank sounds good, all pressured pipes in the warm is good and why pay for a deep well if you don't have to! If you can let the overflow drain that would be best in the winter to help protect the feed pipe. If a drain is a problem I would use a fill valve to shut the water off and have a overflow pipe leading to a vessel with a float and buzzer or a float and electric sol valve to shut off incoming water. I hope you get it taken care of soon! Them wives arn't happy without H2O!!

Aaron

[wv109323]

Again in my neck of the woods, solid casing of metal or plastic is used down to the bedrock( through all the top soil and small rock. Then perforated 4"thin plastic pipe is used the entire depth of the well. The theory is that the thin pipe will allow the pump to be pulled out. If a small rock would fall out of the bedrock it may be impossible to pull the pump past the protruding rock.
I don't understand why they would drill the well so deep and set the pump so shallow. My hunting camp has a well 114 feet deep. The pump is at 105 feet. The water level is only 30-40 feet deep so I have around 70 feet of water that can be pumped even if the well makes no water during the time the pump is on.

[sdcitizen]

There is a float valve designed for auto-filling cisterns, don't remember what it is called offhand at the moment. They are made from PVC and come in sizes up to 1 1/4 inch, its just a floating ball in some fittings that shuts off the incoming flow when a level is reached. 1 gallon a minute is 1440 gallons/day, plenty of water.

To fix your well it needs to be developed again, that is what the well driller what having you do with pumping it dry, but you need air to do it properly. You need an air hose down the inside of a pipe that will fit in your well, and it needs to be run nearly to the bottom of the borehole, and the air will pump out the water. Probably will need 50 cfm or greater petrol engine driven compressor to do it, pump out all the water that comes into the well for a few hours, it will remove all the colloidal clay as sand gets left behind in the rock fissures.

[jmort]

The float valve is like a giant toilet bowel unit. I had two 3,000 gallon tanks with those mechanical valves which I really like. Ran my well into the tanks and pumped out of the tanks to save the well pump from cycling.

[Bullwolf]

I use a simple valve like this, to keep livestock animals watered.

http://www.orderstorm.com/wordpress-ecommerce-images/cartimages/l/69420.jpg

Like the Miller Trough-O-Matic float valve with brackets.

They also make an aluminum version that's somewhat more durable.

http://www.southernstates.com/catalog/p-4943-miller-trough-o-matic-aluminum-float-valve-with-brackets.aspx

I'm not real keen on using aluminum cookware, or putting aluminum into my water storage though.

One downside is that larger animals (cows/horses) can be kinda rough on stuff, so sometimes you need to isolate the float valve in order to protect it from livestock, or else they can break it.

I had a hard time visualizing something as simple as this without a picture.

When I first encountered these water float valves at the feed and fuel store, I was very pleased. They work decently for what I do.

My water source is a deep well. I don't have the specs for it in front of me at the moment however. I pump my water into a concrete water tank storage house.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=127702&d=1421474052

My water storage house is located on the top of the hill, which gives me ample water pressure since I'm located below it.

I know this wasn't exactly what you asked about, but I figured in true Cast Boolits style I'd go a tad off topic relating my experiences, and a little bit of what has worked for me. (including few pics)

Maybe the information will help someone else out at a later date, or failing that be a somewhat entertaining read for us all.



- Bullwolf

[ballistim]

If you want to drink the water get one of these http://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/big-berkey.html I use the smaller one to filter my city water to get rid of the chlorine and who knows what else is in it

I've used one of these since the 90's with well water from a cistern, clean the filters regular and change them yearly & produces drinking water everyone in the family prefers over bottled water. I highly recommend it to anyone with questionable drinking water, I've read it's been used by the Red Cross in third world countries.

[RogerDat]

Not sure if either of these offer a direct solution but may spark some ideas.

My grandparents out in Kansas ran downspouts into a concrete cistern located beside the house, I think by the time I came along this was only used for watering the garden as the city water system had made it out to them. Water was drawn using the houses original shallow well pump. It had some sort of float valve that controlled which source the water input for the well pump came from, the cistern or the shallow well. Or possibly it just kept the pump from running if the cistern was empty until grandpa went and manually closed the cistern input and opened the well input. Whatever the set up was grandma was able to run it after he passed into her mid to late 80's

If you have a spring with good water you could probably do a stab well in that area, in our old house I could get good water with a well point on pipe pounded 15 or 20 foot into the ground but that was in sandy soil. Digging a well pit allowed putting the pump under ground and running an electric heat source to keep the pump and pipes in the pit from freezing. My neighbor did that outside I did it in a laundry room under the floor so it was in heated location. Plus one pump and stab well out back above ground for watering the garden, drained and stored that one every fall.

[Plate plinker]

Rogerdat. That's the benefit of living in Michigan. Lots of water and good water at that.

[Blacksmith]

Is the feed from the well house (may be what we call a spring house) by gravity or by pump?

If it is gravity you probably need a float valve, but you will need to check the pressure coming in to be sure it will shut off. Here is an example but Google will find many others:
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=102303&catid=569

If the feed is from a pump at the well house then you probably need a float switch to start and stop the pump. They come in many styles and electrical ratings, here is a catalog for some ideas:
http://www.liquidlevel.com/products_switches_standard.htm?gclid=CLPKkJ3Tjb4CF QKhOgodpwIAzw

Be sure to provide overflows in case a valve or switch fails so the basement doesn't become a giant cistern.

[PULSARNC]

In a previous life I drilled wells for a living .Do not know much about hard rock drilling but the well should have been cased the entire length at least they are here .Maybe the do things different up north . Pulling the pump and developing it with an air compressure should clean it up but there are no guarantees . Here a well that deep should be good for anywhere from 30 gpm to 100 or more depending on the size of the pump

[Plate plinker]

Wonder if they (drillers) fill those type wells with the crushed Quartz up to the casing? Seems they would use some sort of screen ?