new well - advice sought

hey everyone... our house in S FL is on a well. We love it and want to stay on well water. But our well stopped functioning a while ago... seems our galvanized steel pipe finally rusted through (its probably 40 years old!)

Anyways, I cant get a permit to have a new well drilled b/c the city will want to put me on city water (probably $2000). And even if I could find someone to come out and drill the well, they'd have a problem getting any equipment back there, and it would still end up costing me (about $1500).

So I'm thinking about giving it shot myself with a well point, some pipe, a sledgehammer, and 3 or 4 friends. If it doesn't work, i figure the worst I'm out is about $250 bucks in materials and a Saturday afternoon.

The whole process seems pretty straighforward except:


And guys, please, any other advice you can give me would be appreciated.

aram

Are you certain that it is absolutely mandatory to connect to city water, or may you install a private well at your option?
Either way, you're going to have to have a permit and inspection(s). If you're ever going to sell your home, you may be required to provide proof of a permit for the new well, for instance.
In any case:
A private well should not be within 100' of any part of a septic system.
You can hand-drive, wash down or push (backhoe) down a shallow well point and pipe. The tip of the point should be no more than 25' from the above-ground shallow well pump and pressure tank set-up. You've hammered it deep enough when it reaches the max depth of the pipe and point or when you hit a bed of clay or something, if any, at about the same depth. You can tell the difference between sand and clay when you're driving it (resistance).
Here, where the water table is high, as it probably is in S FL, we usually use three 5' 1.25" galvanized pipe joints and a 5', 1.25" SS point for a shallow well. You can use two types of pipe thread protection for driving a well...either a Schedule 80 black iron pipe coupling or a 6" nipple between two regular galvanized couplings (I've used both, and I like the latter better). These are tightened on for driving the point and each pipe section, and then removed and replaced with teflon tape and a standard galvanized coupling tightened on as tight as you can get it.
You will need two 18" or larger pipe wrenches...one to use as a back-up and the other for tightening the joints. You may find it easier to use a piece of 2 X wood over the drive coupling, too.
Good Luck!
Mike
Wells And Pump Tutorials:
www.peekspump.com
www.IrrigationTutorials.com

Thanks Mike, I'll double check with the city regarding the city water thing. The well we've been running on has been there for so long, there's a chance we may be grandfathered in (technically, they may consider that we are simply 'repairing' the old well iinstead of driving a new one).

Either way, I'll keep the board posted as to what happens. Thanks again.

The only area in the State of Florida that banned the drilling of Private Wells is Dade City. I'm sure you can get a permit, even though some underhanded people will tell you otherwise. Just call a Well Driller in your area. They would know.

If you have a two inch well, your all done, if it's a three inch, you can still put a three inch Submersible Pump in that well. You would want to seal the top of the pump somehow to keep the surface water from getting into the aquifer though.

bob...

thanks Bob... I'll definitely double check on the permits, now. The one well guy I spoke to said that if the opportunity to hook up to city water is available, then the city will not grant a permit to drill a well for drinking water - only irrigation. I'll let you know what I find out, though.

Can you explain the second part of your reply:


What I plan on doing is digging a hold about a foot deep and about 3 feet in diameter. Then hammering down about 20' of 1.25" pipe (and well point) and then filling in my original hole with concrete. Does anyone see any obvious problems with that?

I can't believe City's can get away with that. Next thing you know, they'll have us all riding the Bus and taking our Cars away from us.

The idea is sound, but if this is for your house and if your area is like mine, you don't want surface water. People think that if they don't drink the water it's ok to use for bathing. Not so, your pours absorb water too and the pollutants go directly to the blood stream. If you can't drill a new well, as much as it hurts so say this, the City Water would be better.

Assuming you had a deep well hookup, with a two inch well, the casing (2" pipe) is a pressure pipe and once you get holes in that casing, the well is no longer going to work. With a three inch well you can change from a jet pump to a submersible pump. At least two companies make a 3" submersible pump.

bob...

A city might not allow private drinking water wells if public water is readily available and if there is a record of known ground water contamination from various sources. The permitting authority will know. Mike

I would still call a Well Driller. The City and County has a bad habit of telling people they can't have a well even though it isn't so. I have heard this from many customers over the years.

bob...

hey guys... ok here's the update. Some friends and I bought a 3' 1.25" well point and several lengths of stainless steel 1.25" pipe (3 pieces 5 feet long, and 2 peices 6 feet long).

We started sledgehammering away, and we got the 3' well point down, and just a little less than 17' of pipe down, and then started testing with a pitcher pump.

Almost right away, we got a pretty good amount of water via the pitcher pump. It was pretty brown and dirty at first, but started clearing up as we kept pumping.

My question is, should I go any deeper? I mean - including the 3' well point - I'm in about 19.5 feet deep (and most people around here thought I'd have to go about 23 feet at least). But then again, I don't want to go too deep, because they told me then I'd start getting into sulfer, etc. So how do I know when I'm deep enough??

How deep is it to water? To be safe i would like to see about 10' of water over the screen. You might want to continue developing with the pitcher pump. Once the water gets clear, unscrew the pump so the column of water drops back down the well and out through the screen. That will loosen up the fine material packed around the screen. Get the pitcher pump back on and start pumping again. The water should get dirty. What you are doing is opening up the pours in between the larger particles of sediment by removing the fines. This allows water to enter the screen freely by creating a good gravel pack around the screen. The development procedure is very important. Once you cant get that water dirty anymore by dropping the prime and pumping, you should then get a gas pump and do a pump test to see what the gallons per minute will be. Let the gas pump go at a good rate. If the water starts to pulsate, throttle it back or regulate the flow with a valve until you have a steady stream of water. Measure the flow rate with a 5 gallon bucket.See how long it takes to fill the bucket. Take that time and divide it into 60, multiply that by 5, and that is your GPM.

Sammy

Thanks - but how do I measure how many feet of water is over the screen?

Plus, some people around here have dug their wells too deep and hit sulfur and/or iron. So I don't want to go too deep - I'd rather err on the side of caution. Thoughts?

Get yourself some string and a weight. Bob it up and down as you lower it down the well until you hear it hit the water. Once you hit the water tie a knot,lower the weight all the way to the bottom,tie another knot.pull it out of the well,measure the distance between both knots, subtract the length of your well screen and thats how much water you have over the screen. You also have to figure in your distance between the top of the well and ground surface too.

Sammy

Stainless Steel Pipe???

I would be more concerned with the smell of Sewage than Sulphur at that depth. Unless your area is totally different than mine up here in Hillsborough County.

What do you consider a good amount of water with the Pitcher Pump? You might want to use a five gallon bucket and measure the GPM.

bob...

great - I'll measure today.

And Bob thanks for the peace of mind, i should be able to go several feet deeper and not have to worry about the sulfur, etc. I'll probably continue hammering down in increments of 3 feet, and keep testing.

Will keep you posted - you guys' help and advice is very appreciated.

Are you sure you bought Stainless Pipe. I would bet it's galvanized.

bob...

(yes, galvanized... sorry Bob)

UPDATE: I hammered down another 5 feet or so, so I'm now at about 24 feet (which includes the length of the 3' well point). I'm thinking that I'm probably at the right depth.

So I now turn to the issue of water pressure... I haven't been able to do a super accuarate test yet, but with our 1hp pump, its looking like it may be pumping about 6 gpm. Probably not enough for our house (soon to be 3 full baths + kitchen + laundry) & irrigation system.

So my question is, what's the best way to increase the gpm. I'm fairly certain that well capacity is not an issue - so I'm guessing I would need to go to a bigger pump? Or am I over-simplifying things?

Did you do the developing procedure with the hand pump? How much water is over the screen?

Sammy

Hey Sammy... I did (and am still) developing the well. However, I'm using the electric pump and not the hand pump (too tiring - esp after sledgehammering all day). What I did is:

I have a cap that I use to cover part of the pipe when pump is pumping... once I get a decent flow of water, I shut off the pump and remove the aforementioned cap. That causes the well to lose its prime and the water to drop. Then I repeat. (I hope I explained that OK)

I measured how much water was over the screen as best I could and I estimated only about 2 to 3 feet... thats when I decided to hammer another 5 feet of pipe into the ground. So there's currently probably something like 7-8 feet (including the 3 foot well point).

Thats good stuff. If you keep getting dirty water after dropping the prime, keep going. Instead of a cap, you could put a ball valve where you are threading the cap. That would allow you to drop that column of water real fast and will cause that water surge through the screen at a more rapid rate.

Sammy

I'm not sure how your using this cap, but for my money, I would be pulling directly off the casing. This will help draw the fines through the screen allowing larger sand particles to gather around the screen. Sort of a reverse gravel pack.

The amount of water you get will depend on the size of the sand your screen is in and the size and amount of openings you have in this well screen. Where did you buy this screen and what kind is it?

bob...