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Stupid Water Well
12/24/05 06:55 AM
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I'm having a problem with my water well. I'm gettin alot of dirt sucked up and coming through my pipes. I'm only using this well to water my animals, but, I still need the stupid thing. I had a new well pump put in about two months ago. Could the well people have put the pump in too deep? Its burned the contacts on the, I believe, the regulator that cuts the well on and off and is not working now. Well people are gone for Christmas and I have to wait til they get back. Guess what I have to do to get water to some of these animals that are being watered by this well? You got it, four 100' hoses to get to the back. Has anyone wlse run into this problem of muck being sucked up by the pump? If the pump is too low, can I raise it? The water is darn near at the top of the pipe so raising it wouldn't be a problem. Sorry for the winded explanation. Thanks in advance.
Dick
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egon
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Them things do happen just at the most convienient times.
The pump can be set at any depth you wish. It should be set taking well delivery rates,pump size and pump run time into account.
Egon
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NSbound
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Hey Dick : Here's yet another good resource especially for water well issues. It's called the Water Well Helpline and might be a place to get some help until after Christmas.
Ian M.
Transferred to Nova Scotia, making plans to retire as soon as the economy lets me!
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Pat
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: NSbound]
12/24/05 03:58 PM
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Over pumping the well will in some cases get you a lot of sand/debis from the well. I have a good well with plenty of water but you can't take it out too fast or you get a lot of fines in the form of cloudy muddy sandy water. Pumped slower it gives PERFECT water.
If you are running the well a lot without proper cohtrol perhaps you exceed its capability and have the problem I can get into.
Another issue: changing the pressure switch is a simple DIY operation and you don't need an expert. Unfortunately you have to find a place open to sell you one.
If you have good depth of water over the top of your pump, raise it a few feet and see if it helps clear the water.
 Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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QRTRHRS
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I did some well work already. We would pull the existing pump and measure the length of pump/pipe. We would also measure the water line on the freshly pulled pump. We would then tie a heavy nut on to a piece of string and drop it to the bottom then measure the length. If memory serves, we would try to keep maybe 15' from the pump to the bottom. We never had a case where we had to worry about the depth of the water above the pump so I can't help there. Just be careful to not drop the pump while you are raising it should you do so.
The pressure switch will have a range of operation lets say 20-40. You need to start by having the water drained from the pressure tank and checking the air pressure in the tank. If the tank bladder is suspect, then you are going to have to spring for a new tank. With proper pressure, you adjust to cut in about 20-22 and the cut out 38-40. That is, the pump should come on around 20-22 and pump water to fill the pressure tank until it reaches 38-40 and then will shut off. Hook a hose up to the drain valve so you can cycle the pump a few times while you verify your settings. The pressure switch has contacts just like cars did at one time. Within reason, you may be able to clean them to get through the holiday. If you suspect the tank is bad, you may be able to get the system to pump but then shut the power off until you need water again until you can resolve the issues.
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Pat
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: QRTRHRS]
12/25/05 09:18 PM
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QRTRHRS, My pressure switch is a 20-50 but otherwise is as you describe.
Feet of water above the pump is not a problem, it is a good thing. If you don't have much water depth above the pump you need to be careful about how high you raise the pump. It is unlikely that a pro would install a pump at the bottom of the bore but someone could have lowered the pump or it is conceivable that the well silted in. At any rate a decent space above the bottom is a good thing.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: Pat]
12/26/05 06:21 AM
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I dug down and checked my supply pipe at a given point and found that the pipe is just full of mud. Could this be a possible answer to my problem? I mean, would that make the pressure switch work overtime and burn out the contacts. These suckers are burnt to all h*&^. I can change out the pipe pretty easy if that is a possible answer. Probably should anyway.
Dick
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egon
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Sounds like you are on to something. Would it be possible to flush out the pipe?
Run a temporary surface line??
Egon 
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Pat
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: QRTRHRS]
12/26/05 02:39 PM
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QRTRHRS, I thought you might get a chuckle out of this admission... Untill now I thought QRTRHRS was a short version of Quarter Hours and didn't exactly "get it" unless you were a college student on the quarter system instead of the semester system or some such.
FINALLY what passes for a pattern recognition ability in my brain noticed that it could also be Quarter Horse.... DU-UHHH!!!!
I suppose it comes from spending entirely too much of my life in school.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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CJDave
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 Sometimes when the pressure switch gets a load of mud into the diaphram, it holds it in never-never land and burns the points; that is to say that the points do not SNAP open and SNAP closed as designed, but are held in a contact POSITION, but with very little contact PRESSURE. And since the three things needed to convey electric current are: Cleanliness, Area, and Pressure, you had one component missing from the process. I try not to get involved in homeowner-to-homeowner pump problem analysis but in this case I might add that it seems likely that you have "overpumped" that well a few times and encouraged silt intrusion. What you could do is add a FLOW RESTRICTOR on the pump discharge pipe that would throttle the pump back somewhat and prevent overpumping during low head conditions. A flow restrictor looks like a pipe coupling and has a neoprene "wall" in it with a deformable hole sized for sa specific GPM. All of the other components continue to work as designed, tank, switch, etc.
CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: CJDave]
01/01/06 06:45 AM
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Been gone to Va to see grandkids for xmas. As far as this flow restrictor goes, is it installed before the pressure switch? I suppose there is instructions with it so..... No, I can't flush out the pipes because I don't have any water nearby. Wish I could. I'm going to repace the pipes and start fresh. Never had a problem before with over pumping the well. With so many people moving out to the country and installing wells, I guess that is a real possibility.Darn well used to be artesian, emphasis on 'used to'. The only thing I use this well for is to water the animals in a pasture that only has 12 angus cows that I keep separated from the rest of the herd.
Dick
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CJDave
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The flow restrictor is usually the first fitting after the drop pipe comes out of the well cover and turns horizontal. Yes, it would want to be before the pressure switch. before the check valve, before everything.
CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: CJDave]
01/01/06 07:43 AM
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Thanks CJ, I appreciate the quick response.
Dick
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GaryQWA
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I've worked on a fair number of wells and there is no need for any type of flow control. I haven't seen one yet. And you never want anything that can clog between a submersible pump and its pressure switch. If the thing blocks up, you run the risk of substantial damage to the down the well plumbing; depending on the pump and what material is used. Also, IMO, this is one of those don't fix what's not broken thingies...
Gary
Quality Water Associates
Gary Slusser
Quality Water Associates
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CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: GaryQWA]
01/02/06 08:13 PM
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This is EXACTLY why I try every way possible to NOT post to any threads on domestic water system problems. There is just no way a trained hydrodynamics engineer and former pump company owner like me can possibly out-figger the "experts" that are out there. 
CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: CJDave]
01/03/06 05:22 AM
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Well, I appreciate ALL the responses, and that's some good info you gave CJ. It sounds just like what I really need.
Dick
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GaryQWA
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: CJDave]
01/06/06 10:33 PM
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CJ, a bit of clarification on my part that hopefully will be helpful. He could have controlled the flow by installing a stop valve instead of probably using an open ended hose to fill the cattle's water tank. That wouldn't in any possible way cause another problem BUT, you have him installing a potentially blocked apparatus between the pump and its controlling pressure switch. IMO, that isn't a good thing, let alone in a well that you think is silting up.... That was after at least 2-3 suggestions to raise the pump had already been made while the pump and possibly the tubing had just been replaced meaning the ycould have added a few feet mistakenly and prior to that he never had a problem. Although he does say that the static water level had fallen over time. Lucky he's in TX where he probably has the line coming above grade instead of having him dig up the yard to get to a pitless below the frost line...
Not to mention the dirt filled line he dug up, which to me says maybe he has a broken line adding dirt to the water instead of a silting up well.
Additionally, any/all debate of my suggestions are welcome and if I may, I need to ask you to stop whipping me with your diploma, superior age and years of company ownership..
Gary
Quality Water Associates
Gary Slusser
Quality Water Associates
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QRTRHRS
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: Pat]
01/06/06 10:41 PM
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Pat,
My user name is combination of the desire to keep it simple and having spent to much time working in the old dos environment
I did choose it to kind of honor my 20 year old buckskin quarter horse stallion.
Brian
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Pat
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: QRTRHRS]
01/07/06 02:36 PM
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Brian, Ambiguity cheerfully excused! I'm probably the only bozo who'd mistake it for quarter hours.
Now then... How about a couple pix of the horse posted to the pictures area?
I was INTO DOS when you had the choice of PCDOS as well as MSDOS. I also had TRSDOS (8 bit OS for Tandy box with 68K chip and Z-80 coprocessor to handle I/O but could be booted to run the box on just the Z-80 and TRSDOS instead of XENIX (Microsoft port of UNIX.) Ahh, and Heath DOS for the Heathkit computers and CP/M-80 for the 8080 and Z-80 chips. At one time I was using 7 different operating systems on a daily basis. Five at home plus VMS on a DEC VAX super mini and VMCMS on an IBM mainframe at grad school. Sometimes I'd go into "brain lock" and forget how to do something in a particular OS. LIke with rubout, kill, erase, rm, del, or whatever to delete a file, sheesh!
One time I was running a software emulation of the 8 bit CPM-80 OS on the VAX to be able to read and wright IBM 3740 format single side single density 8 inch floppy diskettes (held a giant 251KBytes)and fired up BASIC 80 to do a simple BASIC program as a test and couldn't remembert how to get out of BASIC (SYSTEM) and sat there with a super mini tied up acting like a brain dead 8080 box. Maybe I needed a few more command sets to remember and keep straight. This while taking classes in UNIX systems programing at lunch time via microwave broadcast and actually designing and programing in Pascal on the job while using only Ada in night school for masters project. THERE, I HAVE CONFESSED. Now you know a small part of what scrambled my brain.
Best to you,
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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Bird
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: Pat]
01/07/06 07:36 PM
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In reply to:
I was using 7 different operating systems
Yep, that oughta scramble anyone's brain. One operating system is enough to confuse me. And I remember the "Trash80" computers. My first computer was when Radio Shack upgraded the color computer to 32k. It was hooked to a 13" color TV, a portable cassette recorder, and a printer with a roll of 4.5" wide paper and 4 different colored ink pens. I thought I really had a fine machine when I got a model IV TRS80 with a floppy disk, and later for only $300 got a reconditioned 5 meg external hard drive. It last nearly a year before it died. 
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CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: GaryQWA]
01/07/06 08:09 PM
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Dear QW: Thank you for your latest response. You may not have run across this, but installations using a DOLE FLOW CONTROL VALVE are routine on many domestic wells that are drilled in low-production strata. The DOLE has a deformable rubber washer in it; which resists plugging about as well as anything that you could install; is non-adjustable and therefore customer proof; and inexpensive. Using that, and a low cut-off safety pressure switch is the standard arrangement for low production domestic wells. Additionally, the DOLE will do the "thinking" for the user and will prevent pump damage from "upthrust" if he runs with an open discharge. Subs are especially vulnerable to damage by running open discharge; can sustain motor damage from electrical overload, and are almost always, as mentioned, mechanically damaged by impeller shaft upthrust. Since the motor and the thrust bearings are on the bottom of the impeller shaft, only the little "upthrust button" is available to take shaft end thrust in the upward direction. It MAY be that the poster's well is a "silter" and not much can be done except to re-develop it with a compressed air jet. Usually, once is enough to get rid of the loose material unless there is one heck of a void in the gravel pack.
CJDave
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Pat
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: Bird]
01/08/06 09:13 AM
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Bird, My first computer was a used Trash 80 model one level two 16k computer. It was a B&W monitor, keyboard (CPU), and a Radio Shack mono cassette for magnetic storage. I paid a ham radio acquaintance $400 for it ($800 new) and bought a set of tapes that ran on the computer and taught you to program in the BASIC language. I wrote a couple simple SPACE INVADER type games and then wrote a program to take celestial navigation data and compute your fix. I was living on a salilboat and thought that was neat stuff. This got be hooked on computers and went I back to school at nights and got a BS in computer sci and then a masters in software engineering, also at night while working full time. Simultaneous full time college and full time employment kept me busy, off the streets, out of bars, and away from strange women.
I recall the CoCo (Color Computer) also. A PhD psychologist hired a friend of mine and I to write him a software to use in self improvement seminars. A very capable box indeed but the BASIC compiler for it was flawed. I was writing graphcs routines to display pie charts and the compiled version would put out one pixel of the circumference of a circle and crash. IT ran OK in interpreted BASIC but was too slow. We had to change computers which was a hassle as a computer was given to each student in the seminar (to keep) as part of the fee.
Exciting days in computing... I recall the first IBM PC units which ran at 4.77 MHz, had single sided single density 5 1/4 inch floppy diskettes with 360K storage, NO HARD DRIVE, and required a system disk in the slot at power up to boot or else it would boot in ROM BASIC. You know, I could never out type WordStar on one of those "SLOW" machines. Now you have Microsoft Word on a CPU running over 1 Gig and it takes longer to load and do things than way back in WordStar days. Oh well...
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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Bird
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: Pat]
01/08/06 10:45 AM
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Pat, even though I've been "using" computers a long time, I'm still pretty much a computer dummy. Of course when I started, I had good friends living across the alley behind us who were both computer programmers. He was a bank vice president and she worked for EDS. At one time, he resigned from the bank for awhile and wrote banking programs at home on a model III TRS 80. He sold the programs to a few banks, but the bank in Dallas finally talked him into coming back. He did teach me a bit about BASIC programming.
When I went to the FBI National Academy at Quantico in '86, I went on my Honda Aspencade, pulling a trailer behind it, and took my model IV and daisy wheel printer. Like you said, 360k single side floppy, no hard drive. I can't even remember what word processor I was using, but I got it from Radio Shack.
When I got to Quantico, I found that the FBI Academy had a room set up with 31 computer stations, but only two had printers. There was an employee there during the day on weekdays who could help anyone in my group who didn't know how to use those computers, but they were available at night and on weekends, too. Many of the guys had never used a computer, but there was a lot of paperwork that made a word processor almost a necessity.
We were split up into groups of 50, and when they found that I used a word processor, I got assigned as the contact for anyone with questions at night or weekends. And the Academy used WordStar, which I'd never seen. So I got in there with the manual and learned to use it. Of course everyone was told to use any computer, save their work to a floppy, then use the floppy in one of the computers hooked to a printer when they were ready to print it. I really felt sorry for the guys who did long papers, then shut everything down without saving it to a floppy and had to start over.  And several guys were working on those computers the night we had a power outage for a couple of hours during a thunderstorm. Needless to say, they were a bit upset, too. 
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GaryQWA
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: CJDave]
01/08/06 11:50 AM
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Dave, thank you for the reply. I'm very familiar with Dole flow controls. I've been using them for various water treatment equipment for 19 years; all softeners and regenerated or backwashed filters have one. Along with UV lights. Most are internal but the external type is used on our large heavy mineral filters and large UV lights. Here we don't use them in wells and in your first reply mentioning a flow control, it didn't sound to me that you were describing a washer type Dole flow control.
We do use low pressure safety cut off switches for low producing wells. And yes I understand thrust bearings etc.. So it looks as if we have two different ways to treat the cause of this problem, we simply seem to disagree as to what that cause is. 
Gary
Quality Water Associates
Gary Slusser
Quality Water Associates
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CJDave
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Re: Stupid Water Well
[re: GaryQWA]
01/08/06 06:37 PM
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Yes, I recall those same flow controls used on the Bruner filters that we installed for so many of the farms on the West Side of the San Joaquin Valley of California. When the San Luis Canal (California Aqueduct) was filled with water in 1970, there was a big rush to get hooked up to the canal for domestic water since the underground water was next to un-drinkable. Some of the farms had twenty to thirty homes on them so the domestic water treatment systems were fairly good sized, that, plus the tractor drivers all got home at the same time covered with dirt and usually hit the shower immediately so there was a huge "shock load" that required lots of treated water storage. Some of the systems used gas chlorine, some were liquid. That San Luis water was high bicarbonate, but very user friendly, and easy to treat.
CJDave
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