Need more water

Hi all,

I got a submersible sump pump in a well that produces 5 gpm to 4 hydrants scattered throughout my yard. Is there any possible way to increase the gpm that this system produces by perhaps installing a jet pump or whatever on one of the hydrants. Mayby there is another way. thanks for your help as always

Replace the pump with wone that has more HP and output.

Rather than give you answers that may not apply, give us a bit more information.

Is it a sump pump or is it a submersible well pump? Five GPM is small for a sump pump.

What is the model number or flow/pressure characteristic of the pump?

Is there a limit on the amount of water available? Why was the 5 GPM pump selected?

I will do the best I can. Old house and the pump is probably old too. I have no idea where I can find that information. It can probably be found on the pump but I can not look at it sense it is far in the ground. I was given no owners manual by the previous owner of the house. It is on a 20 amp 220 volt circuit breaker. In the front yard there is a large diameter pipe that comes out of the ground with a cap on it. I imagine this is where the pump is. It is on four hydrants around the yard and I took that measurement at the hydrants using a stop watch to fill a 5 gallon bucket. Honestly, it took exactly 1 minute to fill a 5 gallon bucket. I did it three times to make sure there where no variations in measurement. I thought that there might be something that existed sense I rented a pressure sprayer and connected it to one of the hydrants. The pressure sprayer seemed as if it increased the flow of water from the hydrants. Thanks a look.

5 GPM isn't to bad to be coming out of a 1/2" line from a well. You can adjust the pressure up and get a little better

OK. It's a submersible well pump. Five GPM is a small pump; about the smallest that might be installed. I assume that you are talking about 5 GPM at one hydrant at a time.

A jet pump will reduce the back pressure and increase the flow a little, but the limit might be your well. Also, if it is really a 5 GPM pump, you can't get much more through it and could damage the pump.

The 5 GPM limit could be your hydrant or piping. Try to find out how much water you have to discharge to keep constant pressure at the tank, below the shutoff pressure. How much water do you need to discharge so the pump never reaches shutoff pressure?

The next question is whether it is operating as designed, or if something happened to it to degrade it.

You can try to find out what the pump is by checking a couple of things.

Is it a 2-wire motor or a 3-wire motor? If it is a 3-wire there is a control box between the circuit breaker and the pipe to the well. If no box, it is a 2 wire pump.

Is the wire #14, #12, or #10?

What is the size pipe coming in to the house? Probably 1" or 1 1/4". A 1" pipe will be about 1 3/16" OD. A 5 GPM pump doesn't need any more than 1".

You could detemine the size of motor by measuring the current when it is running, or by measuring the resistance of the windings. You need to find someone with a meter. The resistance of windings of submersible motors is published by Goulds. They will apply even if it is not a Goulds pump.

If you have a 75 psi relief valve on the pump you could determine the pressure margin of the pump by throttling it down and over-riding the pressure switch, and measure the flow at 75 psi or some other pressure.

na it is worse. That 5 gpm was measured with all four hydrants going at the same time. I ran hoses to a central spot and filled a 5 gallon drum there with a stop watch. I get more water out of it with more hydrants open. It doesn't decrease that much though. Also the system is not on the house. The house uses city water. The four hydrants are used to water livestock, grass, and to do other things. I also found a control box. The control box has some information on it of which is Goulds submersible pump HP1/2 230 volts. and the wire is 12 gauge. It sounds like there really isn't much that I can do except replace the pump. Drat

robj said:

na it is worse. That 5 gpm was measured with all four hydrants going at the same time. I ran hoses to a central spot and filled a 5 gallon drum there with a stop watch. I get more water out of it with more hydrants open. It doesn't decrease that much though. I also found a control box. The control box has some information on it of which is Goulds submersible pump HP1/2 230 volts. and the wire is 12 gauge. It sounds like there really isn't much that I can do except replace the pump. Drat

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That pump can do much more than 5 gpm, and you've proven that BUT.... you can't get more water through say a 1/2" line than it can deliver; especially hydrants with garden hose with all the valves etc.. So i suggest that you don't replace a pump until you know its condition and find something wrong with the pump. It may be the plumbing condition and/or size that causes low flow and it certainly isn't the hp of the pump. Pumps come in two parts, the wet end which is sized by the volume (gpm) and pressure needed and then you select the hp to do the job.

To check out the pump and cable, go to www.franklin-electric.com and look up their troubleshooting section for 4" residential sub pumps and check the ohms and amps of your pump. Then you could lift the pump up out of the well a bit, the drop pipe actually, and test it's output at the well. You should get double digit gpm (open discharge) and if you connect a pressure gauge and a stop valve, you can determine gpm under say 50 psi, then you'll know the condition of the pump. Or call a pump guy, well driller or a plumber (that knows well pumps and can pull one). If you can get to the pressure tank, and there is a drain valve, you can do the gpm check there instead of lifting the pump.

Another possible problem is the level of water in the well; especially if you are in a drought.

well

Md. used have a reg. that you couldn't sell a house with less than 1 gal. per min.[ not sure if this is still true], but the point is if the well will not produce the water a larger pump will run it dry and burn out the pump if you don't have a low water cut-off on it. If this is a new prob. you will have to check your existing system.

You have found that you have a 1/2 HP 3-wire motor. You probably have a 5 GPM rated pump, probably set quite deep, with substantial depth to water.

You are not going to get a lot more from it and the well may be the limit.

If you can find the depth to water by dropping some kind of weight on a wire, you can size a new and bigger pump, but you still need to be concerned about the well capacity.

You can also find the depth to water with a piece of 1/4" tubing, a bicycle pump, and a pressure gauge. You need to get the tube down the well to below water level. Come back here if you want to do that. It is too much to explain if you don't care to do it.

I think, for know, I am just going to sit on it for a while and think about all my options. Thanks for all the assistance

Hello everyone I am unfortunately back with a reply to this thread. During the summer my water output gradually went down. Middle of july it was at 3 gallons per minute and know it is around 2.5 gallons per minute. This is the worse it has ever been. I am contributing this problem to the extreme drought. Usually I don't see a drop in water output until the end of the season and even then it has never been this low. Also, all my neighbors have good water flow. They must have better pumps than I do. The well must be low though causing the pump to have to pump more upward I think. I have placed a picture on the web of the pipe that sticks out of the ground in my front yard that I assume is where the submersible pump is located way down http://plumbingrobjesse.spaces.live.com/PersonalSpace.aspx?_c02_owner=1 What do you gyes recommend I do. Also I live in a place where plumbing is installed below 6 feet becuase of the cold weather. That probably makes things more difficult for me. Thanks for all the help

The first choice is to get a pump or well guy out to take the casing cap off the casing, the things in the picture, and measure the ohms, amps of the pump and then how deep the static water level is. The pump could be dying or too small or it could be the drought.

The casing cap shoud have set screws/bolts somwhere, maybe under the lip, that allow taking it off the casing. Careful, there should be 240 vac in there.

Thank you for the reply as always,

Probably will have to get a bigger pump. It could be that the pump is dying and also because of the drought but there is so much evidence to support it that I am convinced that the drought is, if not all, but at least part of the cause of this. This is the lowest the water level has been in a long time. We usually go boating at a lake nearby and if not that one then there are others but know we have to drive very far inorder to put the boat in water. I suppose I will be winding up replacing the pump after all.

Inorder to replace the pump, I guess, sense I am in a very cold region where pipes are buried more than 6 feet they will have to bring in a backhoe and make a very large hole about 7 feet deep by 7 feet wide. Thank you for helping

They don't have to dig... the turtle shaped thing in your picture that sits on top of the two pieces of pipe in the pit is the well casing cap. The large rusty pipe is the casing, the smaller is electrical cable conduit. The cap comes off allowing any length tee handle to be screwed into the drop pipe part of the pit-less adapter inside the casing that allows lifting the drop pipe and the submersible pump that hangs on it from the well. A well driller or pump guy knows all about this stuff and has everything needed to test and if needed to repair/replace the pump and measure the water level etc..

That is good then. No digging necessary. I'll be able to keep my grass in that area. Let us say that it turns out that the well isn't deep enough. Then what?

The well depth isn't (all that) important, the recovery rate gpm is. That's the volume of water running into the well as you pump water out. The depth is important for storage only; in a 6" well, 1.47 gals/foot of water above the inlet to the pump, although water quality issues are more likely in a shallow well.

You probably have started water conservation already but if not, you'rlate in implimenting conservation; short infrequent showers, flushing less, stretch out loads of laundry, no watering grass/plants or washing vehicles etc..

The well depth isn't (all that) important

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It's important if the aquifer is dropping, though, isn't it? The recovery rate must be proportional in some way to the depth of the pump below the aquifer level, I would think.

The static water level is propotional to the precipitation level over the last days/weeks/months/years which dictates the water table (level); what you are calling the aquifer.

The recovery water can/will enter the well at any level from the bottom of the casing down if a rock bore type well and at any screen level in a fully screened and cased well. Of course water above the static water level, or water table usually won't be running into the well.

IF the static water level/water table falls, then the pump must work harder because a pump moves water from the level in the well to the highest fixture it serves.

FWIW, some wells can take a very long time to recharge. Somebody did some dating on on the water drawn from the municiple wells in El Paso and found that it was about 10,000 years old. Now, it is highly unlikely you have a well that deep, but it does make one think...they are drawing it out far faster than it is going in - the quality is getting nasty (salty, heavy mineral concentrations) and the nearest water is a very long ways away or highly coveted by those in neighboring New Mexico. If they stop, it will be a long time to recover!