Deep well problem

I'm glad i found thi site, looks like there's plenty of friendly people who are willing to help. If anyone here has any advise for me with my problem I would welcome it.

I bought some land a few years ago with a drilled well, 600 ft deep. It had a 1/2hp grundfos 5gpm pump in it about 150 ft down but there was also a 1 1/2hp 10gpm goulds pump (brand new) in the small cabin on the land. I put the new pump in the well, 500 ft down, I think this was a little too deep but the static level of the well is about 50 ft and I wanted to know just how good of a well I had.

I did my own makeshift make up rate on the well, not very good, and was able to get about 100 gallons in a 24 hour period. I had a local well company hyrofracture the well (zone) about a week ago. Since then I've been having issues with pressure.

It first started out acting like the check valve on the pump wasn't holding. I installed a check valve in te cabin between the ump and the switch. When the pressure switch turned on air from te well would drop the pressure too low and shut the pump off. I would have to manually hold the switch until water came up to the switch then it would fill fine.

Now it has changed. I think the air has mostly worked out of the system but the pump can only reach 35 psi and tiny air bubbles still make there way up from the pump and cause the pressure switch to chatter as they pass. Waiting a day or two with the breaker off tot he pump doesn't change a thing (my firt thought was I pumped the level of the water in the well so the pump just couldnt make any more pressure).

I was going to wait a few weeks before having a make up rate done on the well but I want to resolve this if I could before I do that. If nothing else I would like to know possible causes for this so if I do have the well guys come back out I can look for things they might not check or at least know what they are talking about.

The only think I can think of is maybe the pitless adaptor or hose is leaking in the well or maybe the well is totally dry.

Thanks in advance.

Alex

One hundred gallons in 24 hours is not a well. It is a hole in the ground with some water in it. You should try to find the original record of drilling and well development before you invest a lot of money in it.

If you want to see what it will produce, you should probably test it with drawdown somewhere near the limit of the Goulds pump. That pump should give you good flow and pressure with drawdown to about 350 feet below the surface. The Goulds 10GS15 delivers 10 GPM at about 435 ft of head (depth below surface to water + pipe loss + pressure; all converted to feet).

You should have a pressure gauge at the top, on the pump side of a throttling valve, and try pumping the well to waste while you watch the pressure gauge and measure the flow. I would throttle the flow to about 10 GPM (Check it with a bucket and watch.). When the pressure drops to about 30 psi at 10 GPM, the water should be at about 350 feet +/- 50 ft depending on the pump a pipe losses.

Shut the pump off at 30 psi and record the clock time and the pumping time. Wait an hour, then pump until you get to 30 psi again. The total gallons of water you get in the second cycle, divided by the minutes from the end of the first cycle to the end of the second cycle, is the recovery rate in gallons per minute.

If you don't ever get to 30 psi in the first cycle, then the recovery rate is greater than 10 GPM. You can open the valve and find the flow where the pressure remains constant; which will be the recovery rate at that depth of water.

A 4" well has about 0.66 gallons per foot; a 5" well has 1.04 gallons per foot. You can use that to determine how much of your first cycle was from storage in the pipe, and how much was recovery during pumping.

Ten GPM will make a fountain about 1.7 ft (20") high from a 1/2" schedule 40 pipe. That would be a good way to watch it while pumping down.

Thanks Bob for the advise. Right now the biggest problem I have is since the hyrdofracturing I can't seam to get anything more than 35 psi out of the pump. I'm going to pull the cover off the well tomorrow and see if I can see the water level in the well. My concerns are that since the hydrofracturing the make up has dropped, if you can say that, from the 100 I was getting before.

I do have plenty of land to explore on for a new well but I don't want to randomly put holes into the ground with no chance of finding water. I was really hoping the hydroing would have found something. I wanted to wait a few weeks to make sure what i was measuring wasn't water they put into the hole before seeing if and how much improvement I got. If it didn't improve then how far away should I try drilling? I'm on the side of a hill with some flat ground behind me. Is it better to stay away from the edge or does it not matter.

I'm not a well driller so I can't tell you about where to drill a well.

They presumably drilled that well to 600 feet for a good reason. And someone got that pump for a good reason.

You need to find the new static water level in the well after the hydrofracturing. You should measure it before you do the next test.

What is the diameter of the casing of that well? You can drop a 1/4" tube down the well and apply air pressure from the top. The depth of the end of the tube in the water is 2.31 ft for each psi of air pressure that it will sustain when you pump a little air down the tube. That would allow you to measure the depth to water as the water is pumped down.

Is there any history of gas in the water. That could affect the ability to pump water. Setting the pump deeper as you have should help that.

If you find that you need more pressure, you can probably replace the pump end on that motor with a 7 GPM rated pump with more stages. That would be a last resort.

You need to be confident that your pipe and equipment are good. You don't know if the 35 psi limit is a problem with the pipes or the pump or the depth to water. If you are unsure of things, you could work at the top of the well. You will need access there to determine depth to water. It's a lot better for you to measure depth to water, flow rate, and pressure; rather than have people here guess at the problem from limited observations.

I'm curious how you arrived at the 100 gallons in 24 hours? Didn't you just start the pump and let it run open discharge? Or just what did you do to test it. If the well is the smallest you can put a 4" pump in, you would still have 450 feet of water in the well with the 50 foot static level. That equals 297 gallons, so I'm not sure how you arrived at your numbers.

bob...

Speedbump how I found out the make up rate before the hydroing was by using the pump to pump the well dry. I brorrowed a pump protector from a friend and once it shut the pump off (I was just running the pump with water coming out unrestricted out of a 1" hose). I waited an hour and started the pump, not much came out so I waited over night and then retested by filling a 50 gallon barrel, emptying it, then filling it again until the pump was shut off.

I'm pretty confident that nothing from the connection at the well to the house is bad. It worked fine and I was easily able to reach 50 psi with out any air, I just only could use an average of 75 to 80 gallons a day. I'm building a house on the land and I knew that wasn't going to be enough.

When the guys were putting the pump back in the well they made a comment that the well must have been 5 1/2" in diameter because they had a hard time getting the pump to drop into the well. The last 50 feet they kept lifting and dropping it to inch it down. Finally they had be turn the pump on and off a few times using the torque of the motor to get the last few feet. They assured me that as long as they didn't push the pipe down the well it wouldn't hurt anything.

I used the cable protectors every 20 feet or so to keep the wires from chafing on the side of the well so I'm not sure if I could drop something down the well to measure it without hitting them. I had thought about getting a fishing line with a bobber and stainless nut for a weight. I could drop down to 7gpm or even 5 gpm if I am that low but if waiting over night doesn't raise the water level in the well so I can't get higher than 35 psi then the well is just what you said in your first reply bob, a hole in the ground.

I know asking for help when you can't see or test things as you would like is almost impossible. I really do thank both of you for your imput. I will ask the well guys about gas in the water, thanks very much as I wouldn't have even known to ask. I will see if I can get a hose down the well to try the hose idea.

Ok, now I see how you did it. I'm not sure about the 5.5" well though. A 4" pump will fit nicely into a 4" hole, so 5" should be easier. I hope when this pump goes bad, you can get it back out. I don't think juking a pump into a well is the approved installation method. There are other ways of opening the hole up than using a pump as a drilling bit.

bob...

The pump has a torque arrestor just above it thats adjusted to what you guess is the right size so it wasn't the pump that was causing it to go in hard. I did find out that one of the two contactors inside the pressure switch has burnt up so when I was measureing voltage on each terminal to ground I was seeing 120v but this time I measured across them and got nothing.

Is there a company that makes a switch that can handle #8 awg? I read that the usual Square D switch is for #10 and higher.

You might try the GSG-2, they are the big brother to the FSG-2 and will accept heavier wires.

The best method is with the small switch and a contactor.

bob...