Low-yield well, is a trickle feed possible?

Guvner

Guvner

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I'm just looking to get some advice as to solving my lack of a well water problem.

My wife and I have been trying to sell our house for almost a year with no luck and now my (new) agent seems to think the lack of a producing well is the problem as buyers get scared off when they see that we use a cistern. We do have an old well in the basement, its 75' deep and was drilled back in 1960, the previous owners used it just for the kitchen sink and then relied on the 4000gal cistern for the main water supply, we did that when we moved in, but late fall the well went dry and I simply shut off the pump and used the cistern.
Now last September the well was flow tested by potential buyers of the house and the well tester guy said I was getting 1/4GPM, but that the recovery rate was bad, he said the well was effectively useless. I asked if I could use whats there to feed the cistern and he really didn;t know what to say, yes, no, he didn't want to say either. Now I have done a bit of research on this and it seems there are systems out there that say even 1/4gpm can be used to maintain adequate water storage.

What are peoples opinion on these so called Well manger or well booster systems? would 1/4gpm be enough even with a bad recovery rate?
 
A 1/4 gpm is lower than any recovery rate I've heard of but...

How much storage do you have in the well or..

What diameter is the well?

How deep is the pump in the well?

Since teh well goes dry, nothing is going to help that as long as the buyer doesn't want to use the cistern. And you say it is the need for the cistern as to why the house isn't selling.

So why not drill a new well or reduce the sale price and let the buyer drill a new well?

For what I remember a Well Manager to cost, you might be able to all but drill a new well.
 
1/4 of a GPM is 360 gallons per day. Technically that is enough for 3 to 5 people. There has to be enough standing water in the well to be able to pump at least 1 GPM. If so then you can set it up with a Dry Well relay like the Cycle Sensor. This would let the pump run until the well is dry, then shut off the pump. You set a timer for long enough for the well to recover (30 minutes to 5 hours) then it starts the pump again and the process is repeated until the cistern is full.

So if you have 20' or more of standing water in the well, you can make this work. If there is only 5' of standing water in the well, it is hard to pump just 1/4 GPM.

I do know the Well Manager works, if you have enough standing water.
 
Drilling a well is not really an option since well water is hard to get around here. I talked with a well known well drilling guy yesterday and he said its unlikely he will be able to find much water, he knows my area very well in fact his Dad drilled our well back in 1960, he said most people around here have cisterns or a well & cistern. I could spend $4000 to drill 100' and find nothing and thats not something I'm prepared to do, as for lowering the price my agent says that will not help, people don't want to buy a house and then hope they get well water they want to buy a house that has that already done.

As for the specs on the well I have a copy of the original well record, it has a 6" diameter, static level 18', depth 78' and the pump being used is a jet pump in the basement with a 1" flexible pipe going down the well also says water found at 48' and water height 30'. When the well was tested it had sat for 1year and that season there was a lack of rain if that matters.

I don't know the current water depth, but I could try to measure that plus pump the well dry and see how long it takes to recover, or I could have it re-tested if the cost is not too bad.
 
A single line jet pump can't suck water deeper than 20-25' @ sea level, so your pump is not able to use all the stored water in the well and in reality, with a water level of 30' in the well, you shouldn't get any more water than the prime water in the pump.

And if a cistern is normal in your area, why don't the people looking at your house understand that wells are few and far between. I'm thinking there is another reason they aren't buying the house.
 
Guvner said:
relied on the 4000gal cistern for the main water supply,
I was getting 1/4GPM
Click to expand...
So 1.6 weeks to fill the cistern, then you can splurge. . .
Is the pump performing to original elec. and mech. spec's when it does pump? You have a link to your pump's curve?
 
Last edited:
I know the cistern is not the only reason why the house is not selling, but its a big factor. The fact that the basement is a rock floor is the major factor, but that I cannot change, the water issue has potential to be corrected. I just want to do what is feasible to get this house sold, the agent firmly believes this is an issue that when corrected will help the house sell.

So back to the jet pump, what you're saying Gary is that with a proper submersible pump I should be getting better flow? but at the same time I was able to run it dry almost 2yrs ago, I even had dirty, muddy water coming out the taps so it should be sucking up everything.
 
Thatguy said:
So 1.6 weeks to fill the cistern, then you can splurge. . .
Is the pump performing to original elec. and mech. spec's when it does pump? You have a link to your pump's curve?
Click to expand...


I know nothing about the pump except that it draws 12.5amps max and is noisy. Its got to be about 15years old.
 
Even if the drop pipe is all the way down to 78', it will stop pumping when the water level gets deeper than 25'. So you are not utilizing all the water available to you (last 50'). This is also what makes the pump noisy. You will have some crud to pump out but, a submersible set at 77' will give you lots more water than you have now.
 
Then how can you explain how it started pumping brown water and sounded like it was drawing air?
 
Guvner,I bet if you listen to Valveman and put in a 1/2 horse Submers. on some polypipe,He should be entilted to 1 percent of the sales price.Upper
 
Thanks upper! 1% would be fine.

You are getting brown water because that is what is at 25'. When you pump it down to 78', you are going to have to pump out a lot more crud, but you will get a lot more water.

The air sound is cavitation. This is because your pump can't suck from any deeper than 25', and it is just pulling the air molecules right out of the water.
 
Haha, funny guys.

how would I pump out the crud? would a submersible take care of that?
 
May only be as deep as the drop pipe is long, because sometimes they fill in to that point. Doesn't mean it can't be cleaned back out to 78'. You would be surprised what I have pumped out with a submersible. With a shroud, sometimes you can even make new hole.
 
Well guys I'm in the middle of messin around with the well. I measured the depth and its still about 80' deep, the water starts 25' from the top. I ran the pump for 20mins pumping probably an average of 2.5gpm and it took 20mins until the pump was pushing almost 0psi, at this point the water level now starts at 55' down. I'm going to wait 20mins and remeasure the depth of the water, I'll post up the results in a few minutes.

by the way I have no idea of this helps you guys, but its the best thing I can think of.
 
Guvner said:
the water starts 25' from the top.
it took 20mins until the pump was pushing almost 0psi, at this point the water level now starts at 55' down.
Click to expand...

55-25 = 30' ~ 13 psi, when you started?
 
I started at about 35psi.

I checked the water depth after 30mins and there is no recovery.
 
By this morning there was only 5' of recovery.

I talked with a local guy this morning that does well pumps and filtration systems, etc and he's hoping that there is good recovery at the bottom of the well so I'll likely have him come out next week to test the well. Said he would bring along a submersible and run the well dry to see what kind of flow the well is offering down near the bottom, he says there could be a good vien near the bottom that flows good.

Does that make sense to you guys that the well could recover quick at the bottom, but as the water rises the recovery drops?
 
water level

The water level will only be the same as it is wherever the vein starts. IF the major level at that point is 50' below your basement floor, then the water level WILL NOT recover above that point until something happens to raise the vein's water level.
 
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