Water water.......NOWHERE!

[LKTraz]

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Last Wed evening I was in bed REALLY early because I had to drag a tank to Elizabeth that needed to leave the plant at midnight. We have a plus or minus 1 hour window on departure so I could set it in motion any time between 11 PM and 1 AM. On a midnight tank I generally get up at 10 PM, get my shit together, head in and do my pre-trip inspection and all the other shit I have to do then go get it and take off. For the most part, 1 1/2 hours after I leave the house the truck gets underway to destination.

Around 8 PM Barb knocks on the bedroom door and tells me we have no water. First thought? Well pump breaker. She goes and resets it but no dice!

She tells me this and decides that we won't worry about it till I get back and can figure it out.

When I get back home we go through the troubleshooting chain.
________________________________________________________
Confirm power to cut in/out relay from breaker

Check relay for stuck spring or other mechanical problem

Pull relay and feed tube off and check for corrosion/blockage

Lastly connect well pump directly to power tabs on relay and see if pump activates
_________________________________________________________

Of course I couldn't be so lucky that it was just a blockage that would cost $0.00 to clean or shot relay that costs about $20.00 to replace.

No, it was a dead well pump. FUCK!

I checked around to see what a pump would cost and for my depth of well I need a 3/4 hp submersible. Best price was at Home Depot for just under $350.00.

Ok then........need pump and gotta do all the work to replace it. This takes a special tool to thread into the pitless adapter (thankfully I don't have a well head that needs to be excavated....pit access well)

I ended up having to buy all the stuff to MAKE a pitless tool (around $30) but then I'd have one for next time and that friends could borrow if needed.

Knowing that my pump is somewhere around 120 feet down (as best as the old fella who initially sold the property to the original owner could remember) I wondered if it wouldn't just be worthwhile to get a contractor to do the job.

Called around and the one said $75/hour labor @ approx 3 hours and $800.00 for the pump! I told him I could get a pump for $350.00 and he said well that's a cheap-assed "box store" pump and would last only 3 years while theirs had a 5 year warranty. They WOULD do the labor if I got my own pump but he was a bit snotty about it. Problem is that I couldn't even GET the pump till Friday evening and if his guy had to do it on Saturday it would be at the overtime rate. FUCK!

Called the local plumber who is a neighbor and he said he could do it for $900 including the pump.

Still too much for the budget so we called some muscle and figured to do it Saturday morning.

Got started and the tool I built snapped off at the threads because the pump assembly was stuck! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!

Called the plumber and offered to pay him his time to just get us started.
He got his shit together and was here in about 30 mins. He went and got HIS pitless tool and we still had one hell of a time getting it to come loose.

He stayed and we did the lifting while he inspected the piping, wiring, spacers etc as we extracted the pump. Heavy fucker too! Turns out my well is 157 feet from the pitless adapter to the bottom of the pump. We had to lay out the (somewhat) flexible line in the yard and then pull the old pump and attach and wire the new one.

Bottom line....till we got it all done and lowered the new pump we had about 4 hours involved. Bob (plumber) charged me $160 for his time and $20 for an adapter we needed from the pump to the piping. Not so bad when my end total came in at: Labor $160.....part $20.....pump, tool pieces and tax at Home Depot $424.

Total for the job: $604.00

Better than the $900 if Bob had supplied the pump and FAR better than the $1200 plus the other guy would have charged.

But......what a pain in the ass!

Bob figures the pump should last at least 10 years and said you really SHOULD replace them every 15 years even if still working because at that point you are on borrowed time and can still schedule replacement for your convenience.

Turns out he recognized his own work and was the one who replaced it the last time (almost 25 years ago!) So I guess if I can get 15 years out of this one then I'm doing good.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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This is one thing I don't miss about living in the country! We had a well go and it cost us $1200 to drill a new one. 50+ year old shallow well went dry and we had to drill a new deep well.

[LKTraz]

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Well the chance that mine would go dry is pretty slim since they hit water at 80 feet and kept going to 157 to be sure.

If you measure to ground level it's 160 feet.....157 is to the pitless adapter/connector.

In this case, overkill is equal to insurance.

You couldn't touch drilling a well for $1,200 today. You could probably get away with a 160 foot well for around $3,500.

I wish my water was as good as the well they sank where I worked on the other side of the mountain from where I am now. Of course it's at a lower point but........at 100 feet they hit and it was a pressure pocket. They had water flowing at 68 GPM without a pump! It was gushing a stream 6 feet high from the casing. Never did have to drop a pump in....just blind cap it.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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our shallow well was 12 feet. The new one they dug was 150. Where I lived in Jackson we had a 4' water table. You couldn't dig fence posts without hitting water. There is a huge natural aquifer that runs throughout the whole town and most of the county.

[LKTraz]

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The chlorine shock has finally dissapated/run through.

At least it did clean out much of the gunk and scale in my plumbing and the water heater seems to be operating a little better. Some of the dishes with stubborn staining have come clean and the toilet has been rid of the mineral staining. So some good has come from the pump replacement other than the fact that running water is a GOOD thing.

I guess maybe I should shock the well from time to time as a maintainence measure, but just not as heavily as we did for the pump project.

Thinking maybe I should look into a decent whole house filter system to help deal with the mineral content.

[Twitchin Kitten]

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We were never told we had to shock the well at all. We did get a water system for the thing - they called it a softener but it was a multi-purpose softener and filter. Had to fill an external tank fitted to the main line with salt every month or so. Salt was cheap at Costco. Made a world of difference in the laundry, water stains, lime buildup and my hair! OMG MY HAIR! It was always awesome except on really humid days.

[LKTraz]

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Bob, the plumber/neighbor is a cautious type and he recommended we do it since we disturbed the casing and some rust (a few BIGASSED globs) fell in and as well we had the line laid across the ground. He figured that the critters do what they do and just to be safe hit it with a chlorine shock to be absolutely sure of killing any nasty organisms.