Well Issues

It never fails that when I am away, things happen. When I arrived at home wifey told me of losing water pressure on the second floor when the garden sprinkler was running. after mulling over the possibilities I was panic stricken for a moment as I watched the sprinkler stop sprinkling.

Saturday I went in the basement to check the pressure switch and gage. The switch seemed fine but the gage was stuck on 30. It had dirt plugging up the Bourdon tube, which seems to happen every 5 to 6 years.

I placed my hand on the copper pipe and I could feel surging and when water was flowing the pipe would get cold. The well was slug flowing so there are two possibilities: 1. the well is going dry or 2. there is a pump problem.

So I called the well driller whose number I got from the well cap and was referred to the pump guy. I called the pump guy and he said he could be right over, on a Saturday, on a holiday week end.

The problem turned out to be a seized pump which was determined in the basement by taking a clamp-on ammeter readings. Normal current flow is around 6 amps and the failing pump was pulling locked rotor amps of 22.

While he was changing the gage I asked him if he observed holidays and he said not usually and that he went where the business would takes him. 

Here is the contraption to pull the 400 foot of black poly pipe out of the well case. I paced off the diameter of the circle on the ground to be 20 foot and counted 4 loops and told the pump guy you probably have about another 100 feet to go. He said you must be an engineer. I said guilty even though my math was way off. Then He stopped the puller and looked at the foot markers on the wire and said yup.

 You can see the old pump is in the lower left corner and the new pump is on the end of the pipe.

While I was receiving my tutorial on pump pulling he gave me a word of advice. Don't drop pebbles down the well the see how long it take to reach water. This is the first thing I did to determine if I had problem #1 or #2. He said if a well case has a liner it can cause a jam when pulling the pump. Use ice or chlorine tablets instead.

When the pump was pulled I went in the house and got a few ice cubes. When I dropped them in, it took around 3 second to hear the splash. It was later confirmed the water table was at the 60 foot mark using the wire footage markers.

So our well is back in business which means the clear cold mountain spring waters of Virginia will be perpetually flowing into my mash tun.