Sand, low pressure and H2O softener

I have a submersible down around 60ft and recently started getting an excessive amount of sand. My inline filter after the pressure tank was nearly full of sand. Here's some history on my water system. My well only produced 2-3gpm when drilled. I also have a flowing spring. When we bought the house the flowing spring was the only source of water and the previous homeowner used a distiller with separate line to the sinks for drinking water. There was a sand filter and softener on the flowing spring system after a holding tank and shallow well pump. The excess spring water over-flowed the holding tank.The health department wouldn't accept the spring water and forced the seller to put in a well. So I have two water systems, 2 water heaters, 2 pumps etc.

When the kids all left home about 2 years back I replaced the softener resin bed media and moved it to the submersible system after the inline filter, got rid of the spring water heater and used the well water as the only supply to the house, using the spring only for outside water. In the last couple of months I've run the well empty 3-4 times and I have the sand issue as noted. The pump was struggling to get to 55psi so I dropped the shut-off to 45si.

It's the middle of winter here in northern Indiana, today it's 5 below. I don't want to pull the pump in this weather. I'm hoping to limp along into summer before I do anything else. Will a 35-45 pressure cycle be sufficient to fluff the resin bed. Any ideas regarding the well since we had no problems over the last 2 years.

Your sand is eating the pumps impellers. That is the reason for the decreased pressure.

Most softeners will backwash with 30 lbs of pressure if that is in fact the pressure at the softner. With that inline filter full of sand all the time if front of it, I would doubt the pressure at the softener would be the same as it is in front of the inline filter.

bob...

Ouch I was afraid of that. I've got a gauge downstream of the cartridge filter. I'll do a manual regen on the softener and watch the pressure.
Is there any help for the well if I have the driller look into it?

Also, if it is what it is, short of a new well is the pump worth rebuilding and do a periodic swap on the pump as routine maintainance.

Submersibles can be repaired. You can change out the impeller stack. I don't recommemd it and it isn't price effective to do so.

The well may or may not be repairable. I would let the driller decide that one. Sand is not something I would want in my well water. It just has the ability to ruin too many things.

bob...

ok, the well is 12 years old, so it's acceptable to buy a new pump every 10/12 years. The area I'm in is water-challanged, my neighbor had to drive a new well and the other neighbor had 3 wells driven before he found descent flow. What I'm getting at is I may do no better with a new well and may have to come up with a scheme to deal with the sand. I'll contact the well driller, he's familiar with this area. If he doesn't have a silver bullet, what options are they to deal with sand beyond the inline filter I currently have? I'm guessing my pressure tank is pretty load with sand also.

If you have a bladder tank, it's not full of sand unless the bladder is bad too.

Yes it's normal to buy a pump every 7 years actually. That's the average life of a sub these days.

If you have a sand problem, I have a sand filter that will remove it. It's a lot larger than that thing you have and will do the job. It can be manually backwashed or if you want to get fancy, we can make it automatic.

bob...

Can you give me a link, quote + shipping on the sand filter, not sure at this point if I need one (see what the driller comes up with) and if I would want auto or manual, my zip is 46923. If it's less expensive I could pick it up at a freight terminal instead of home delivery.

There is no link as I don't have them on my website. They look like a carbon filter. Nine X forty eight inch tank, In/Out head, distributor tube and a 50# bag of sand (you provide the sand, to save shipping costs). The ball valves and fittings; we put together to make it backwashable. Probably not more than twice a year. Your cost would be $280.00 plus shipping. These are not something we sell a lot of, we just throw one together if someone needs it. If you wanted it to be automatic backwashing you would add $300.00 for the Autotrol head.

bob...

Thanks for the sand filter info, I suppose I monitor the pressure drop across the filter to determine backflush. Is there anything special about the sand?

Nothing special about the sand. It's just silica sand used mostly in swimming pool filters. A 40 lb bag would be plenty.

You could use a gauge, but in most cases a flush every 6 months would be sufficient unless you are really getting a lot of sand.

bob...

Thanks for all the help, going to ride out the winter and get all this resolved in the spring.