So where was it located? In or outside of the house? Was the wellhead above ground? (If not, you will probably have to put it there to meet codes. Hope it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.)
If you are going to paint it, use blue paint to mark water lines. Orange is usually used for telecommunication lines. You can also drive a fencepost nearby, as long as you are certain that you won’t hit anything when you install it.
My front yard is a steep hill covered by trees. My side yard has some trees, but not as much. The water pipe goes straight out the side of the house and we concentrated most of our search in the side yard.
It actually was in the front yard and up the hill a little. It was partially covered by leaves and debris just because that part of the yard is never accessed. But it wasn’t fully covered.
I found it by scanning in ever-widening “circles” (it isn’t really practical to make circular passes, but you get the idea), weaving in and out of the trees. The metal detector I have wasn’t too great, but it beeped when it hit the metal cap and that was all I needed.
Even knowing where it was, it wasn’t easily spotted when I took them to show them where to work.
1300 dollars all told. They told me they replaced “everything.” But I don’t really know what that means, since I’m not familiar with the bits belonging to a well.
The pump was covered in muck and I wonder if the well partially collapsed, but they did not offer an opinion when I asked. They said to let it sit for 24 hours before turning the water back on.
In PA It has to be down at least 5 feet. The wire is usually at a similar depth as it’s easiest to put them in the same trench.
In the well you typically have:
a drop pipe, pipe the water comes up in
a wire going down to power the pump
a pump tork, the pump kicks when it starts the helps prevent the pump end from hitting the side of the well and getting damaged
Nylon torks, these are simple wire guides to keep the wire off the side of the well so it doesn’t get scraped.
In some cases if everything in good condition you can simply take the pump off and reuse everything else. Sometimes just the pipe. In your case they decided nothing was worth reusing.
It’s highly unlikely the well collapsed to any degree, in that case pulling the pump up would be near impossible. It’s common to have build up on the pump from minerals present in the water, iron being a big offender. Also some of the older pumps used steel or cast ends which corrode badly and cause significant build up.
When the equipment is removed and replaced it shakes everything in the well up. It knocks loose scale and rust. They’ve told you to let it sit 24 hours so everything settles. I disagree with that way of doing things but it does get them out of their faster and saves you some labor. I run the pump off the top or at the pressure tank to flush the well and remove as much of the scale as possible. You can do that yourself but it will put you in a real jam if the pump gets plugged in the process.(very rare)
For all my customer files I have a diagram for the well location. I measure off from two corners of the house to the center of the well.
I’m very good at finding wells but would prefer to never have to. My records go back about 60 years so I have a lot of homes on file. The local towns like to direct people to me when they can’t find their wells and I can often tell them the location.
It would be a good idea to try to arrange the vegetation so that doesn’t happen again (trim a tree, remove a bush, etc.). Remember, the well is a direct injection line to your personal water supply, and anything that can get in the top may be pumped out the bottom into your drinking water (and your neighbor’s). That why it’s important that the cover be kept clean and away from debris as much as possible. Debris can also form a bridge letting other baddies inside the pipe.
Apparently he is the only guy who can find it. 
Where is a submersible pump positioned in a well WRT the bottom of the well? Is it chained in place? I can’t imagine a pump being at the very bottom of a well where sediment can collect. I assume the pump has a float switch on it in case the water level gets low for some reason so the pump doesn’t run dry and destroy it’s bearings?
The one I examined hung on a nylon rope. I don’t know about a float switch.
I have an above ground shallow well pump, and the third foot valve I bought is made of plastic rather than iron or brass.
IANAWell driller, but my deep-well submersible pump is a few feet from the bottom of the well, and has at least 15 ft of water above it. It is suspended on a pipe in a 6" casing, not touching the sides.
It’s in a water-bearing strata that is unlikely to be pumped dry (It’s 300 ft from Lake Michigan, so there’s no lack of water). So I doubt if there is any provision for what might happen if the water wasn’t there. So far, it’s worked for 25 years maintenance-free.
I’ve seen ones like this replaced, and a guy just pulls the pipe up and disconnects sections until he reaches the pump from the bottom. He attaches a new pump and lowers it again. It doesn’t require a drilling rig, just a couple of guys, a lot of pipe, some wrenches, jacks and other hand tools.
It seems to me that a nylon rope isn’t a good choice for a long term option for securing a pump above the lowest level of a well. Won’t it deteriorate?
I am amazed that a pump would work for 25 years without maintenance. I work in the car wash industry and none of my heavy duty hydracell pumps would last that long without preventative maintenance.
I wouldn’t think so. An iron or steel chain certainly would. The failures in my above ground pump have been metal in the water.
I never knew people wouldn’t know where their well was. I’ve only ever observed above ground well pumps covered by well houses or fake rocks.
All this and it could actually involve two pumps at different depths, ours does.
Do you have an outside faucet you can open when you start pumping water. When we had to replace our pump the water was really bad for a couple of hours. It took several days for the water to clear up completely.
You might want to remove the strainer screens from your faucets for a few days. Just in case there’s any tiny bits of sediment in your water lines. They are a bitch to get off if they are packed with sand or grit.
Yeah, but if it doesn’t need fixing, I don’t mess with it. I called my original well driller after about 10 years and asked him what I should do to keep it running, and he said, “Nothing. Just use it until it breaks.”
And the guy who installed it is still around, and his son is taking over the business, so I know who to call when that happens.
I may wake up one morning with no running water, but at least I don’t have far to go to get a pail or two for emergencies (the lake is outside my window). Let’s hope it’s not February.
Generally set 10-15 feet off the bottom. The pump hangs by the drop pipe.
At one point manufactures added loops to the top casting of the pumps to serve as an attachment point for cables. There were various logic’s for doing so, installers could use cheaper pipe because the cables could instead hold the weight of the pump, If for any reason the pump became stuck the cable could be used to pull with more force, and it offered an alternative method of pulling for pvc and steel pipe that usually require a boom 25 feet above the well.
These days I know of no one that uses cable and the manufactures don’t make any recommendations of doing so. The loops remain more as a legacy. They could change the molds but don’t have much reason to. All the reasons for adding them turned out to be not worthwhile. Any pipe used at depth is already sufficiently strung to support the pumps. Pulling the drop pipe pulls on center making it less likely to get stuck and if it does the conditions are usually such that the cable isn’t going to help either and the method of using the cable to pull 20 foot sections is a terrible one.
The pump is sized to the flow of the well. Ideally the pump can not pump water faster than it enters the well. If a pump does out pump the well, left running it will burn itself out. There are some attempts to deal with this via devices in the well itself but in my opinion they are less reliable than the pumps so lead to having to pull the pumps up before their normal lifespan.
In wells in danger of running dry I use low pressure cut off switches in place of a regular pressure switch. The switches for submersible pumps are at pressure tank, which is usually in the house. If the pump pulls air it can’t make pressure, if the pressure hits zero a low pressure switch turns off and will not turn back on until it is manually reset, the prevents pump burn out.
Our record is 54 years.
The pump motor is hermetically sealed and the well serves as a near infinite heat sink. They are well designed for a specific environment. Trying to use these pumps and motors outside of that tends to cause failure much earlier. Starting and stopping shortens the lives of the motors considerably so it’s important the pressure tank is sized right for the pump. if it’s too small the pump has to turn on and off more rapidly.
Industry average is ten years. Average for my company is about 15. The pumps I use have a five year warranty, In the last ten years I’ve only had one failure inside the warranty.
Pulling equipment installed by my grandfather is not all that uncommon. He died over 20 years ago and was retired a while before that.
What is the material of the drop pipe, and what depths are we talking about?
I have experience only with shallow well above ground pumps using black pastic for the draw pipe.
PVC, ABS, Polyethylene and Galvanized steel are the main ones.
ABS has fallen out of use, it might still be used somewhere, I don’t know off hand what it’s max depth is. It came in 20 foot sections. Our business used it on 100-200 foot wells.
PVC has a max depth of around 500 feet for 1inch 60 psi, Higher pressures and diameters reduce the max depth. Larger pumps can’t be used on PVC because the torque will break it. It comes in 20 foot sections. I don’t use PVC but its often used as it is the least expensive option out there.
Polyethylene, which is probably the black pipe you refer to is available in different psi ratings. I use 200psi primarily which can be used at depths up to 600 feet. The largest pump I use with it is 1.5Hp. Polyethylene comes in rolls up to 600 feet.
Steel is used for deeper depths and larger pumps. I think the standard pipe available caps out at 2500 feet. In MA the deepest wells I deal with are 1200 feet. It comes in 21 foot sections. We usually use a crane to pull and set these.