This is a big one. In September of 2005 we discovered that our well was not really on our property. In fact, it was located across the street! That means that if anything happens to the pipe coming from the well to our house we are basically out of luck since the town will not dig up the road to replace a private well pipe. In the words of the town highway superintendent “What the hell is your well doing across the street?” Ah, they don’t mince many words around here, do they? It is, after all, a valid question, one of the many I had for my “home inspector” who has since stopped taking or returning my calls.
Obviously, we needed a new well drilled on our property, which we did promptly. Then, for the next year and a half it proceeded to precipitate at a rate which made digging the trench between the house and the well out of the question. We tried once, only to have the trench quickly fill up with water and collapse. Fast forward to today!
The Kabota KB161 excavator has been dropped off and quickly put into action. A four foot or deeper trench was completed in about four hours. It began to slowly fill with water, but not nearly as bad as last time.
As discussed in two previous posts, all of the well equipment has been on site for a while. My brother in law is a
The first thing I did was lay out the pipe run between the house and the well. This is 1 inch in diameter PEX pipe. Since we have rocky soil around here, I decided to sleeve the PEX in 4 inch waste drain PVC. Within the PVC pipe also runs the electric feed for the well pump (#10 3 wire UF), a #2 ground wire, and a secondary run of 1/2 inch PEX back out to the well head location.
The reason for the #2 ground wire, we get a lot of lightening around here, since my background is in RF and electrical engineering, I like to ground everything. I mean really ground everything. Part of a good ground system is to have every ground potential point bonded together forming a single ground point reference. This is important because more than one ground reference can cause problems if lightning strikes near by. This is the way we do it at mountain top tower sites with huge steel towers. It works there, it should work here as well. I will bond the #2 wire to the copper pipe at the well pressure tank and then run it over to the electrical panel and connect it to the ground buss there. If you are really interested in lightning grounds let me know, it is one of my favorite subjects.
The pipe between the house and the well is buried greater than 48 inches deep to stay below the frost line. We get a lot of cold winters here, so I wanted to be sure that we did not have any frozen water supply lines.
Then, cutting a hole in the six inch well casing. I used a standard 2 inch metal hole saw, by the end of the cut it was ruined, but it got the job done. The other option was to use a acetylene cutting outfit, which would have cost more than the hole saw to rent. Attaching the pitless adapter to the well pipe was difficult. I broke one drill bit on the well casing.
Next, I laid out the rest of PEX pipe and cut it to 195 feet. Our well is 210 feet deep and the drill company said to install the pump and the 200 foot level. I subtracted the four foot depth of the pitless adapter and added a foot as a fudge factor. Once the pipe was cut, I installed the 1 HP well pump on the end with a brass hose barb securing it with two hose clamps. Then a ran out the well pump wire and safety rope along side of the pipe. I used the water proof splice kit to attach the well pump wire to the well pump and I secured both the wire and the safety rope to the PEX pipe every ten feet or so using black wire ties. When heating the tubing on the splice, it states to heat until the tubing shrinks around the wire and the water proofing material oozes out of the end, but not too much. I take if if the tubing starts to smoke, that is a little too much heat. I attached the torque boot about 2 feet above the pump.
Putting the pump in the well was a little difficult. The pump itself is quite heavy, include the PEX and the wire and it gets a little ungainly. I had a little problem attaching to the pitless adapter. I needed my wife to hold a flash light so I could see the part attached to the casing. Once I found it the two parts slid together.
Finally, feeding the PEX and electrical cables through the basement wall and into the new pressure tank. I actually went into the crawl space under the kitchen. Unfortunately, somebody filled the hollow cinder blocks with concrete. It was no fun at all trying to make an inch and a half hole through 8 inches of solid concrete.
But it is done. Our well is connected, we have lots of water and great water pressure. I ran it for about two hours to get all the turbidity out of the water. I also dumped about a cup and a half of bleach into the well head before putting the sanitary cap on. We will need to install a green sand filter, as the water has noticable iron in it. Fortunately I foresaw this and install a bypass feed for a filter.
Now the yard is a mess, but that will pass soon enough. I am going to leave it for a month or so while the dirt settles back into the trench, then I will rake it out and plant some grass.
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I can’t believe you finally did it. Looks like you did a very nice job. I can just imagine…all that thinking about it and putting things together perfectly in the basement, then once everything starts moving, all hell breaks loose.
Honey, honey!!! This thing weighs a ton!!! Holy #$%^…GRAB THE CAMERA!!!
Nice job.
Thanks Jay, how did you know what I said? Were you hiding out in the bushes? It does feel good to cross that one off the list.
MAN! I am tired justing reading this. Well, also, I just got done replacing the heating elements in my hot water heater. Found out that the bottom is almost filled to the bottom element with junk. I gotta figure out how to get that out of there. Also I need to figure out a whole house filter that does not involve a water softner.
Thanks for keeping us abreast of your blood sweat and tears.
I am a little sore today… mostly my hands and shoulders. About your water heater, yikes! That much stuff in the bottom of your tank could be trouble. You should check your sacrificial anode and make sure that it is still there. If the tank walls are that far deteriorated, you may want to replace the whole unit as these things have a habit of leaking when you least expect it.
Ah, a little confusion I see, read “junk” as calcium from the hard water. The water heater is only 4 years old. It is one of the short fat one instead of the tall skinny ones.
Calcium deposits, I understand. Wow, that must be some hard water for them to accumulate like that. Where I grew up we had calcium in the water, it got stuck to everything, shower heads, faucets, coffee makers, tea kettles, etc. Our hot water heater would percolate when the heat was on.
Why not a water softener?
Why not a softener? My wife, and somewhat me, don’t like the way it feels after a shower. I am not too big on the taste in the drinking water.
Hi I’m new to this ..But I need to know something? I need a new pump for a shallow well.Do I buy one with jet or not ? and bladder tank ??
What happened was I was out watering my garden and the water STOPPED ! It lost it’s presurer..this pump is very old and it has been rebuild.So I’m sure we need a new one. Any info would be help full..
Thanks so much Jan
Hi Jan, It depends on how deep your well is, a shallow well jet pump will work with a total suction of 25 feet or so. If your well is deeper than that, an attachment can be connected to the jet pump (the pump will have two pipes coming out of it) that can increase that to 100 feet.
A shallow well jet pump is usually located in the basement next to the pressure tank, so they are easier to work on. I did do a post about it last year Replacing
a shallow well jet pump
How do you hold the pump up from hitting the bottom?
Safety rope?
Safety rope. Once that 1 inch PEX filled with water, the safety rope was (is) pretty tight. I wouldn’t count on the PEX (and the hose clamps on the brass barbs) to hold up all that weight.
Thx :-)
I thought so
i put a new water pump in got it prime left it turn off all day turn it back on and it would not draw up water to prime losen up primeing plug to let air out in about ten min. it prime. well left it off again and it did the same thing do i have a small leak and would that make it so hard to prime been with out water for a month at least this is the closet i been to haveing water
garry, sounds awful. Since you are priming your pump, I am assuming jet pump. It seems like you may have a bad foot valve or check valve.
thanks for your answer i got it workinging got a small drip at the bottom of the injector and a leak at the splise in the well going to footvale going to get a ladder to put in the will to tighten it up in stead of diging line up again
For more help on installing Goulds submersible well pumps contact the helpful guys at ds-watersystems.com. They can supply you with all the support you need with your Goulds submersible water pump systems as well as the Goulds submersible well pumps themselves.
Personally, I don’t like the feeling of soft water either. As far as taste is concerned, if you use potassium instead of salt it is healthier and tastier.
Cyrus Herrera Jr.
J&J Pumps Inc.
Redding, California
Sorry I forgot to post a link to the KLIFE potassium company:
http://www.nasalt.com/products/watercondtioners/klife.html
My blog is about well pumps as well if you want to take a look:
http://www.constantpressurepumps.blogspot.com
Cyrus Herrera
J&J Pumps Inc.
http://www.jandjpumps.com
Thanks for the info- great photo shots.