The Well Saga of 2020

The Well Saga of 2020

The water well saga, continues here on the homestead

I heard the pump kick on a couple times the other night, we only hear it when we're running something and we weren't,  so I went down cellar and I hear a hissing sound over by the well pump. I assumed we were sucking air as the water levels in the state are bad with this drought, I found there was a hole in the housing where it had rusted out.  (too much sand being sucked up?).  I shut it down for the night and powered it off, we went to Home Depot the next morning and purchased a new one. $300 later I had the new pump and expansion tank.

The newly installed pump

As this was out 4th pump in 20+ years I was determined to make the change out process faster and easier.  Off to Ace hardware to pick up some new pieces, mainly a union and a reducer, the union will allow me to disconnect the pump from the inlet pipe from the  The reducer will allow me to install a Shark Bite connector to the outlet side of the pump from the PEX piping we installed last year in a few seconds too. I am assuming that I'll be able to disconnect the power in about 5 minutes so all told it should be a 20 minute job to completely replace the entire system next time, let's hope there isn't a next time though...

So I primed the new pump and is started drawing water Yay!  Our hopes were dashed though as it was pulling up mud and sand... then stopped working.

Saturday was overcast and humid as hell, we were off to the well to have a look to see why we were getting sand and silt.  Eversource called, our power would be out for 4 hours to make a repair somewhere, great, no water, and no power...

 

The wild roses had completely overtaken the well, I'd brought my Machete assuming the worst and I was right, I went and got a couple snow shovels so we could take al the leaves and debris off the partially collapsed well cover. Rose walked back and got a couple loppers even then it took us an hour or so and numerous ouch, ouch, ouch from the damned thorns to get the wild roses all hacked back and away from the well so we could begin work.

You could see where a couple of the 2"x6" boards that made up the well cover had rotted and fell into the well as there was a small puddle of water in the tarp cover with a frog in it on top.

We slow pulled back the cover revealing more rotted boards that had to be carefully extricated so they too didn't fall into the well.  Rose saw the yellow rope used to keep the foot valve down towards the bottom of the well and noticed the rope was cut, I could see saw the rope against the left side of the well heading down the side of the well and into the water, somehow the rope though severed didn't fall in the water, that would have made the job a lot harder.  I grabbed the end and tied it back to the other end, whew!

The Well

 

Looking down into the well we could see the water level was way down but it appeared there was still 4 feet of water at the bottom, there was a good 12' or so to the top of the water.  

It appears that a board fell on that rope causing it to pull the water line and one way foot valve down to the bottom of the well and into the mud. The foot valve at the end of the water pipe keeps the pipe full of water so we're not pulling water al the way from the well each time we ask for water.  I was able to temporarily relocate the water line and foot valve a foot or so off the bottom where it belongs. 

Tired and sore, we finished up covering the well with some leftover metal roofing panels for the night. Back to the house, still no power, changed out of our dirty, wet, and sweat drenched clothes, no power and no water meant no shower,  we were both exhausted.  Power came back on at 4pm I started up the pellet stove to take the chill off the house and decided to take a quick nap, two hours later it was time to see if I could get the pump to go.  

The priming process is simple really, you need to fill the pump housing and completely fill the water line all the way from the house to the well by pouring water into a priming tee at the pump inlet, luckily we had 6 or so 4 gallon jugs of water ready for when we lose power in the basement.  Priming the line took all 6 of the 4 gallon jugs, several hours pouring water down the water line and 8 or so frustrating tries of turning the pump on only to have the pressure fall back to zero again time after time.  FINALLY it took apparently we finally got enough water into the line and water poured out of the bathroom sink upstairs YAY!

 

The well cover on, we'll come back and trim the excess from around the cover later.

The Birds, sparrows are playing house this morning.