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!