Driving a sandpoint well. Please help

[jhartsock]

Ok here is the scenario. I have been attempting this for two summers and cannot make progress. Below is a detailed description of what I have tried any help would be appreciated.

I first started off blindly buying a 3'x2'' sand point and began driving it into the ground with a weighted post driver. I got down to about 12 feet and hit water. Tried hooking up a pitcher pump and it was just impossible to pump.(felt like I was pushing down 100 pounds on the lever). Proceeded to drive deeper checking with the pitcher pump ever 3 feet and filling with water to see if the water level would sink. Got to about 22 feet and just could not drive any farther with a post driver. I asked for help here and Speed bump suggested that I make my own driver. I had a car body shop weld together a driver using speedbump's design and it resulted in a massive driver weighing about 80 pounds. I then began driving again and got to 26 feet. And i could not drive any farther. with the 80 pound driver. I tried pumping and could actually pump a little water but not any amount useful. When I fill the pipe with water it slowly drains down 12 feet in aobut 1 hour and stops leaving about 14 feet of water in the pipe. I tried back flushing with a hose and it didnt help but I did notice that water was rushing up out of my whole on the outside of the pipe with fine sand coming out. Finally I decided that I would slowly pull up the pipe a foot at a time and try pumping and backflushing. This did not help. sunk the pipe back down the whole and tried to drive it down again and no luck Im still at 26 feet. with about 14 feet of water in the pipe. When I pump with a pitcher pump the lever is difficult to push but water does come out. ANY IDEAS

[speedbump]

The water your pumping; does it have sand? If so, how fine is it? How fine is the sand coming up around the pipe?

I'm not sure why you can't get any deeper, but that sounds like what you need to do. If you beat on the pipe long enough with it not moving, you will certainly break it somewhere.

How about pulling the whole mess out and going with 1-1/4". This will take all the friction off the first twenty some feet and the point might go deeper into the aquifer.

bob...

[jhartsock]

SpeedBump,
No sand is coming out when I pump but when I push water down the whole sand comes up around the outside is fine like beach sand. As for drivingdown deeper. At 26' I can only go down another 4 feet as most pumps cannot extract beyone 30'. If I have to go deeper than 30 feet is there any other solution.

[speedbump]

The sand beside the pipe is coming from the vein. You would want a screen capable of trapping that size of sand.

Don't worry about the well depth, it's the water level that counts. You could have a 100' well with a 24 foot water level and still use a shallow well jet pump.

bob...

[jhartsock]

OK, If the sand outside the pipe is the sand from the vein and my screen had wholes too big then I would get sand when pumping. Today to prove that there was no sand getting in the pipe I ran a pump with at 1.25'' pipe down the 2'' pipe and pumped it dry. No sand came out just dark brown cloudy water. I knew it was dry because it sounded like a straw in an empty cup. Because of this test Im assuming that my screen is sutable for the sand in the vein. Am i Right?


Also If i was in the vein wouldnt the water in the pipe just drop as quickly as I put it in? I believe im not deep enough like you said and if i can go as deep as I need to with out worrying about a pump working as long as I have a static water level above 30' then Can you suggest to me any other ways to get the pipe down without driving. Ive been reading about sand suckers. and using pvc pipe and a garden hose to sink a the pvc down. Do you think any of these methods would work for me? Unfortuantly I would have to pull the pipe again and that is verry difficult but any suggestion would be useful. Going to a 1.25 gavinized pipe and point seems like a good Idea but I just dont want to get it down there and still not be able to drive it down. Let me know if you have tried any other methods of these other methods for getting a pipe in the ground.

[Porky]

By what you describe you don't have sufficient water where you're at. If you can't go any deeper I'd say you are done.

When it is hard to pump the handle on the pitcher pump means a well doesn't have any water; the well point is stopped up or the water is too deep for the pump.

Speedbump is right, a well can be 100' or deeper and you could still pump water with the pitcher pump or a shallow well jet pump as long as it isn't over 25' to the pumping level. I would hope that it wouldn't be over 15' to 20' maximum to the top of the water (static level).

If you are unable to get more than 26' deep you may have encountered a hard formation. Most of the time water will be just on the top of a hard formation or just below it.

You may have just encountered a situation that without the proper drilling equipment. . .you're done.

There are some other options but they would require pulling everything and washing a 2" PVC pipe (with a Sand Shark Bit) to the hard 26', then going inside with a 2" steel bit to drill through the hard formation and continue drilling until you encountered a sand. Once you have encountered a clean sand formation, pull everything out of the 2" PVC and rerun your sand point and your drop pipe and drive it into the sand. You should then have water!

[speedbump]

Yup, what Porky said!

And remember the depth to water is 25 foot not 30. 25 foot is the max any shallow well pump can lift.

One other thing. If your still getting brown water, you haven't developed the well yet. Instead of running pipe down the 2", assuming you have no air leaks in the 2" pipe, hook your pump directly to the casing. Then it will continue to pump a steady stream regardless of the wells capability. It may only be 1/2gpm or so, but that will tell you what you actually have.

bob...

[jhartsock]

Ok Guys,
I was able to drive through the rock or what ever was at the bottom Im at 27 feet and I rigged a contraption with 1.25'' pipe that is 30 feet long with a weight at the top. I put the 1.25'' pip in the 2'' pipe and use it to drive the 2" pipe down. I have not read about anybody doing it this way. should I be concerned?

[speedbump]

How about a picture or two?

bob...

[sammyhydro11]

I drive well points that way when my drilling rig cant push it anymore.For 4" PVC wells i have a 3" steel 200 lb. weight that i lower down the well and i pound it with the cat head. I also have a weight for 2" wells. You have to go real easy because if the upper part of the casing gets caught you can pound the well screen off the female adapter. If you are driving steel casing just keep pounding. I would stop every 5 feet and test to see what you have for water.

sammy

www.tylerwellandpump.com

[Bill Arden]

My folks drove the pipe down without the tip and used a wood auger bit connected to a smaller pipe to remove the dirt in the pipe. Once the hole was made they pulled the whole thing out and put the point back on.

I'm thinking of making a rig that will do that in order to make a series of 50 foot deep wells for a ground source heat pump project.

[jhartsock]

Thanks guys for the input. I have used this method for driving through something tough at the bottom(im sure it was a rock and actually this method seems alot more productive than pounding from the top of the pipe. and I can get alot more force with the accelleration down the pipe. I will remember that If I get suck again to go slowly so I dont knock the point completely off the female adaptor. Thanks again