New pump and tank now loss of pressure

speedbump said:

That Stainless Steel Screen should not be at the end of the Jet. I have never seen anyone do that before.

Click to expand...

The well guys just left, once again its up to me...

What he told me when i asked him about the set up was "thats how they did things around here in 1969" he said hes sees that frequently with old wells in this area...?... he took one look at the stuff i took out and told me for 1500 bucks he cant make guarantees but he can try and reconstruct the OLD system....

he said there is no screen IN the well itself, which is what a submersible pump needs. That when they built this well, they drive the tip with the stainless screen on it into the sand 2-3 feet with a 140lb. hammer, which is why they used the steel pipe to the Y. (the last few sections of the large diameter pipes has slight bends in them from being hammered) The interiors of the pipes were covered in brown stuff, and flakes. build up of about 1/8" all around...

he said he could come out with the equipment to drive a new tip, and screen back into the bottom of the well, then install a new jet pump into the crawl space. He would use all new stainless components, for screen, the check valve, and there was one other part (i forgot the name) of the Y piece.

he also said what you guys did, he took a look at the 40 year old "golds?" (wrangler?) pump i removed when the tank leaked, and said it was twice the pump than the water ace i put in its place.

the well was 40 feet to the bottom, the water line was at 31 feet.

he was really discouraging me about investing ANY money into this well. His recommendation was to just abandon it.

the going rate for wells in my area is around 3500, plus for code i would need a minimum of 500 of irrigation work. My yard is small, chances are i wont live in this ranch forever. i usually water about 2-3000 sq feet of lawn (at the most) and wash the cars. i WOULD spend 1500 bucks to get that well going again. 4000K is out of the question completely. Or the alternative of paying city water to do exterior yard work. (cheapest most immediate solution) however im not sure what i would be looking at for sewage and water costs.

what do you guys make of this whole situation?

It would be my opinion that this well was constructed by a weekend warrior. When you put a screen into any well, it is by itself. That way you can pull the jet without having to mess with the screen also. If the sand in the bottom of this three inch pipe is not at the very bottom of the casing, there is no way in heck you can drive that point into the aquifer. The sand in the casing will act like iron. When you pulled the screen, you probably pulled a good heave of sand into the casing that would have to be washed out before the screen could be put into place. This is done with a pump and 1" pipe circulating water as you drill. If you have a way of doing this, you could put this thing back together like it was intended. There should also be a K-Packer or Bremer check on top of the screen once it's in place.

bob...

good points,
does this kind of well have a particular name? what kind of well is this?

im thinking about getting a second opinion on the matter...

The Well I am describing would be a screened well. No specific name comes to mind. But in drilling a Well, you do things a certain way, and the way they did yours is not one of them.

Another thing to keep in mind. You saw how much crud was built up on the coupling between the Stainless Steel and Galvanized. The crud on the SS Screen was a lot bigger and all that crud is still at the bottom of your well. It should be flushed out like I mentioned in my last post, before installing a new Screen.

I did lots of these back in the day, nowadays, most Drillers have moved onto 4" and larger and don't want to fool with the old two's and three's.

Some of the newer Drillers may not even know two inch and three inch wells exist.

bob...

last ditch effort...
for 40 bucks, i bought PVC pipe and dropped components for a shallow well down into the well, i put the tip at about 32 feet from the bottom of the pump intake. and it was no surprise that it didnt work. Im guessing it was just too far to defy the laws of physics.

today im either going to cap the well and bury it, or depending on how i feel, remove all the PVC pipe i put down there and wait for another well guy to give me a second opinion.

Bob, thank you very much for all your help over the past few weeks here...