deep well will no hold prime

deep well will not hold prime

i have a 80' deep well with a two stage pump. the well is 2"casing with 40' 11/4" drop pipe and it was not used for a long time. it would not hold a prime when you filled the drop pipe the water would go down pretty fast. pulled the drop pipe (pvc) replaced all the fittings and foot valve(packer). still have the same problem when i fill the drop pipe the water run out. i can get it to pump with a 30 gal. tank on. i get no sand and when i pulled it didn't see any sand then so i think the casing is good. when the pump shut off at 55 lbs. it takes about 10 min. th get down to 35 lbs. at one point i run the pressure up to 80 think it would seal the leathers that didn't help.
any ideas would help thanks

If this 30 gallon tank is good and is not waterlogged, you should be getting around 3 - 4 gallons of drawdown. So it's taking ten minutes to use 3.5 gallons of water. That's a pretty good leak. If the well is 30 years plus old, I would think you have holes in the casing.

You can tell if this is the case by timing it like you are doing over a long period of time. Like maybe a month. If that time keeps getting smaller, you probably have bad casing and it's slowly rotting out further.

bob...

if i had a hole in the casing should i be seeing sand being pumped out and i had no problem pulling the drop pipe?

Sand can't get in, the casing is always under pressure pushing water out.

I still can't believe you pulled a packer jet out with PVC for droppipe, your one of the lucky ones with that scenario. You must have some very clean water.

bob...

a little trick use a little bleach let set for about 20 min. then pull.

Bleach does not effect minerals in anyway that I'm aware of. It just makes PVC pipe slippery and hard to hold onto. If you haven't put that jet back yet, I highly recommend Galvanized pipe.

bob...