Is my shallow well viable?

I submitted a more detailed post earlier, but no replies so far, so I'll try to get answers in steps. I have a well on my property that uses 24" ID stacked road tiles for the well housing. It is 29 feet to the water from ground level and the bottom is only 33 feet. I'm in central southern North Carolina and we are in a drought. How can I tell if there is enough water to warrant getting the pump back into operation? Or is the 4 feet simply not enough? The highest water line I can see in the well only appears to be about 8 feet above the bottom.

Thanks for all replies.
ktmccrary

You will have a hard time making a working well with 29 ft to water. It requires too much lift for reliable operation.

I have suggested this before and gotten laughed at by the well people on this board, but the following will work. Get your hands on a small jet pump and lower it down into the well. That will reduce the lift and you can pump from the well. You can at least run a test to find the daily capacity. It will probably produce enough water for household needs.

You could also use a sump pump with maybe 40 ft of head to pump the water into a cistern or tank, from which your shallow well pump would deliver water.

If you already have your shallow well system in place you could try the following (here is the engineer in me). Put a small sump pump in the well connected to the inlet of your shallow well pump. That would provide enough head so the shallow well pump will work. A Dayton/Grainger 3BB68 $150) delivers 13 GPM at 25 ft of head and that would work fine. I would connect it so the float switch and the pressure switch are in series so it would run if your pressure switch is calling for water and there is enough water in the well.

A submersible well pump would also work but you may not want to invest in that.

"Get your hands on a small jet pump and lower it down into the well."

Wonder why we were laughing? Get a submersible or a deep well jet before you mess something up or get someone hurt.

A sump pump might not be a horrible idea, assuming you find one that can lift the water 40 feet or so, since you could place it in the well and see how the level holds up as you pump out water. That would go a ways to see if the well is viable or not, and would be easier and cheaper than a deep-well jet pump.

I discovered your other post but am going to reply on this active thread.

The Myers Ejecto Pump seems to be a nearly-antique deep well jet pump that was intended to pump from the low water level in the well. I would not suggest fixing it.

The farm in Michigan where I was raised had a well similar to what you describe but there was a pipe that was drilled to about 80 ft. The water filled the crock to a height that it could be pumped by a shallow well pump, so it was a combined deep well and storage cistern. We could pump the crock down but it would recover quite quickly from the deeper source.

If you need the water in the well you can test the well to see how much it can deliver. You could even bail it with a bucket on a rope to determine how fast it will recover. Bail out 50 gallons; measure the depth to water when you finish; and measure it again in an hour. That will give you some idea of the recovery rate.

The well will only recover if you take water from it. If you can bail enough to draw the level down 2 or 3 feet then it will probalbly recover enough for modest needs. A 2 ft well contains 2 gallons of water per inch of depth. If you bail it out so the level is 2 ft below where the water stands now, then measure the distance to water every 15 minutes for an hour, you can calculate the recovery rate. It will recover fastest when the water is lowest. The recovery rate will be zero when the water reaches the current static level.

If it will recover 1" in 15 minutes when it is drawn down to 31 ft that is nearly 200 gallons per day, which is enough for a careful household.

If it will recover enough to meet your needs, then you can put in a pumping system that will work. Se my earlier post on shallow well pumps and sump pump.

You would want to have the water tested and disinfect the well before using it for drinking. If you find that you want to use the water I can suggest a filter and disinfection program that would would kill or remove any organisms that might be in the water.

I think Myers still makes that pump. Despite the quaint name, their jet pumps seemed fairly solid. Brass impeller, probably. If the ejector assembly is still sound, and if the pump isn't seized, I'd think you could repipe it. I forget (being a shallow-well guy) whether you can substitute poly pipe for the steel on a twin-pipe system, but if you can, it will make the job simpler.

Thanks for all the info - I'll try a few things

First, rather than climbing down the well a few feet to make the repair, the lines appear to be taped together in a couple of places, so I may be able to disconnect the one and pull them up together to make the repair. I have an electric hoist I may be able to rig up to help me bail it, which I think is the cheapest way to find out if it is viable. I'm surprised there weren't more comments about the 4 feet of water. It seems like very little to me. If the water table I am in is 10 square miles, then there may be plenty of water, but if its only 10 square feet, then of course there is very little.

Thanks for the info on the pump. It and the motor look relatively new, but I couldn't find out what type it was. Everything I found told me 29 feet was too much for a shallow well pump, so now I figure they always had a relatively low level in the well if this is a deep well pump.

Thanks again, to everyone who's replied so far
ktmccrary

You could make the assumption that the original installation was functional, and if the pump is still functional, then it can work again. Now, how much water will flow into that well, when you pump water out of it, is something you will find out on your own. Guesses need not apply. It may not be all that much. I've pumped old dug wells, and you don't get a lot of water from them. If the soil is really sandy, you might luck out.

Wet_Boots said:

You could make the assumption that the original installation was functional, and if the pump is still functional, then it can work again. Now, how much water will flow into that well, when you pump water out of it, is something you will find out on your own. Guesses need not apply. It may not be all that much. I've pumped old dug wells, and you don't get a lot of water from them. If the soil is really sandy, you might luck out.

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The soil is red clay, not quite as red as Georgia's clay, but basically the same consistency. There's little doubt if functioned originally, but it will take me a few days to get back to it as my mife has straddled me with a higher priority project right now. Thanks for the help.