New well being drilled right now..questions

Hello all, we are on Lake Superior waterfront with the drill rig starting about 200 feet back from the shore and about 20 feet above the lake level (around 620 feet above sea level) The well next door is claimed to be (he drilled it too last fall) 30 feet of grouted casing to sandstone and 13gpm at around 120' of depth. We took the cap off of the well next door and the static water level was at only 4 1/2 feet! First of all does this sound right? (It costs over $3000 dollars for this kind of footage) And if it does, what is a good powered temporary solution before I get the actual underground ran to my cabin. At this static level do I need a submersible? Or not enough data?

MarkHash said:

At this static level do I need a submersible? Or not enough data?

Click to expand...

Not enough data, static water can be .5 GPM flowing over the top of the casing, and still .5 GPM at 100' and 20 GPM at the water producing layer, at say... 120'

Rancher

thanks, I suspected as much. This well so far has only 5 gpm at 113' but he suspects it may get better as he goes to 120'. Since the casing holds 1 1/2 gallons per foot I suspect a 12 volt RV pump with a rated suction pipe length of 10' (static water at 4.5 feet) and a 4 gpm rating give me a temporary solution to fill 6 gallon jugs to haul over to my storage tank? Just avoiding the drive to town would be great. Should I just install a hand pump instead?

How far away is your storage tank?

With an RV pump, you could use 1/2" black poly irrigation tubing and it comes in rolls of 500' and I think even 1000'.

Rancher

I'm not sure how far an RV pump will lift, but if the well does at least 13 gpm, that little RV pump won't draw down the well at only 2 - 5 gpm.

bob...

My storage tank is still at a store yet unnamed. I haven't trenched yet either. My well driller went down to the proposed 120' and 5' further to make sure he was in a clean vein. (his words). I have decided to install my own pump. The water is in the sandstone and they attained 8 gallons per minute before they installed the pitless, capped it and left. (they left the male half in a box on top of my well cap) At what depth would you drop the submersible down to? Is it typical to do a field test at different depths or is there a rule of thumb? The static water level in my well ended up at only 2' so at 100' I'm looking at nearly a reserve of 150 gallons standing in the pipe? (of course there is only 30' of casing sealed to the top of the sandstone) TIA guys!

Rancher, sorry, I thought you meant a bladder tank, which I haven't purchased yet. The storage tank is at the back of my new garage/guest house on the backlot which is across the main gravel easement road that runs through my property. The last phase of this ordeal will be trenching across that road but for now I can't really stretch a hose across it but for real short periods of time. It is about 140' to the storage tank from the well head. The cabin isn't ready for prime time yet.

At 8 gpm, I would hang the pump at 100'. As long as you don't try to use more than 8 gpm for a long period of time, you should have no problems overpumping the well. There is no difference how much the well will produce at different levels, the big deal is to keep the pump wet at all times. This is why I would hang it deep.

A 1/2hp 12 gallon per minute would work great along with a 42 gallon bladder tank (PC-66) and a Cycle stop valve. This would put you in business except for a few accessories.
bob...