HELP!! Need Advice!!

I'm a newbie but in dire need of help Our shallow well has lost pressure again! We have pulled it now three times in the last 5 years. We have a sand point and everytime we pull it it is crusted with gunk. Are we using the wrong one? Our water tables are VERY plentiful - water at 12" and we are down
at about 25'. The water here is very hard, however after reading and researching I'm wondering of we are using the wrong point? Or -
What are the best points to use in sandy areas? Water pressure is very important to me as well. Will we get better pressure if we use 2" rather than
1-1/4"? Commom sense tells me yes but not always true? Being that we need to pound another point I'm looking for the best advice possible becuase it's not easy work to be doing multiple times...**ugh** I believe the pump we are using is a flotec and have read they aren't the best, any suggestions?
Also, is there anything you can buy to pound? Electric pounder maybe?
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance!

Where are you located?

I have a hammer I would love to sell. As I don't ever want to use it again.

If you knew the size of the material you have around the screen we could help you choose a size of screen to use. Are you using the screen covered pipe called gauze screens or the slotted ones that are usually stainless steel?

You might want to move over a few feet and start over. The gunk on the screen is also building up where the old screen is, so each time you pull it and replace it your putting it back in the same old gunk.

bob...

Hi Bob,
Thanks for replying. I live in Minnesota. I did actually find a general rental
place here in the cities that has a pneumatic driver that we can rent.
Thanks for the offer though Although I will keep it in mind.
I bought the point from our local farm store here and I believe it's stainless steel? It is about 30" and has half moon shaped slots in it? The hardware
stores in this area don't give you a choice they usually only have one to
choose from. Although we have not gone to a specific plumbing place to
purchase one
We did try "jetting" one in a couple years ago and it didn't work to well so we reverted to pounding with a fence post pounder. It is such grueling work
that is why we kept sending down the same hole. Even though it's sand and
smaller gravel we ended up breaking one off and digging for it! Luckily it wasn't too far down!
The first one we pulled - put in before we bought the house - was a point that had like a coiled outside - that I'm sure is maybe called screen. Yes must be stainless cause it's not rusted at all just the tip which must be metal. No idea how long that one had lasted? Our soil is very sandy with
some smaller rocks. I guess what amazes me is that with the sand it doesn't plug up right away!
How does the screen size work, smaller guage the tighter the mesh?

The larger the number the smaller the opening in gauze. Its the opposite with slotted screens. The screen you described is the worse of the bunch. It has the fewest openings of any screen I have ever seen. That is a good reason for it plugging up so soon. I only have the Stainless Steel wire wound screens used by drillers. They are normally expensive, but I sell them for $45.00 each to get rid of them. I can't use them here. The only problem with the wire wound screens is if you have to hit them too hard or too many times, they can turn into a large Slinkie.

bob...

A well is nothing more than a hole in the ground meant to collect and store water for future use. They do not create pressure. You probably mean you ave no water or very little and the pump sucks air.

A pump creates the pressure (psi) but... a single line (shallow well) jet pump sucks water out of a well and pushes it to the fixtures, so if it can't suck much water out of the well, it can't provide much water (gpm). Your well point is probably gunked up with IRB (iron related bacteria) or hardness scale which restricts/slows down flow into the well. With 1.5" or 2" pipe, you don't have much stored water in the well, so what you use must enter the well first, and with the screen blocked, that doesn't happen as quickly as you are using water. And higher pressure settings on the pump switch uses more water than a lower setting.

Some times acid cleaning of the screen can remove the encrustations. The mesh size of the screen is based on the size of the sand and gravel and what is needed to keep them from getting through the screen into the well.

Thanks all for the help and info We found the first point we pulled and it was the wire wrapped point. Funny that we kept it? Anyways the screen wasn't bad at all compared to the couple of them we have pulled since.
Which we have been dropping the bad screens! I can see that the wrapped ones will let much more water enter! The original is about 48" and the ones we have been putting in are only 30". I'm certainly interested in the ones you have for sale Bob. We are just afraid that they may not make it down a new hole without turning into a slinkie..he he Yet we have been doing it the hard way too and not using a post driver to put them in. It's been manual labor with the fence post pounder! I did find another kind of point too called the
"Sand Blocker Drive Point" found it online from the Dean Bennett Supply Co.
As suggested we are not going to drive down the same hole and hope for better results as far as longevity. Now it's just a matter of figuring out what point is going to be the best to use. Bob, what size pipe are the points you have? And with using a post driver do you think we can be successful without turning into a slinkie? They obviously got the one down there
that we pulled? We only intend on going down to the depth of about 30'.
As far as what kind of gauze size we don't know what size we have bought
but the best guess is 80-guaze. We don't get sand coming through it's more
of the corrosion like Gary described. Would you be willing to ship the points to us in Minnesota?

Sure, I'll ship anywhere in the US. These are all different, mostly 12 slots which would be somewhat equal to a 60 gauze. I have different slot sizes also. All larger than 12 slot. I also have extensions that can make them twice as long with a coupling.

I have only slinkied a couple in my experience and this is beating them out the end of two inch pipe in a drilled well. I had to beat on them pretty hard and long to slinkie them. This is with approximately 63' of double X pipe which is twice as heavy as standard pipe and beating on one for more than ten minutes in the same spot with a drill rig hitting it 60 times per minute. You would be pretty tired trying to do that by hand.

It would be a good idea to try to measure some of the larger pieces of sand, gravel stuck to one of those screens.

bob...

The size screen you need is determined by the material that you are going to be pulling water from. Without having a sample of that material, its impossible to size the right screen. Not knowing the size material,i would go with a 10 slot well screen. With only 1 foot to water,what would be the reason for you to go to 30'? In most areas the material goes from coarse to fine.The deeper you go the finer the material gets and you eventually come across clay. The fine material is what you want to stay away from. I would do some experimenting and start by setting that screen at 15' and see what you will get for water.You might be in a zone with some super hard water or a bed of iron. I would try to stay as far away from the original depth as much as possible and see if the quality changes. !5' would be the minimum depth i would start with. Going 5' deeper to 30' would not be enough to make a difference in the water quality but being above the zone that is producing the poor quality water would give you good results. I would return the flow tec and buy a good quality pump from Bob along with the screen.

SAM