Letter Re: Water issues

Hello,

We have a submersible in a four-inch casing/well. Our well is 125 feet deep. I don’t know what the static level is right now. The well casing sticks up out of ground about 18 inches and has the cap on it, where the electrical goes up into the cap next to the casing. There is a pitless adapter. With the four-inch casing and because of the pitless adapter I don’t think there’s room in the pipe for a manual pump. Is there any other way that we could make a hand pump in our existing well? If not, do you have other suggestions beside a sandpoint? – M.

HJL responds: You have several options in dealing with your existing well. You need to find out how much room there is from your pitless adapter to the opposite side of the well casing. If you have at least 2”, there are several hand pumps that you can place in the well parallel to your submersible line, as long as you have the headroom available above the submersible pump. If the water level inside the well is within 20 feet, you can use an inexpensive pitcher style pump and the maximum diameter of the drop pipe will simply be your pipe connectors. A 1 inch drop pipe will usually have connectors of less than 1.5” in diameter. If your water level is deeper, you will need to use a pump type where the actual pump is at the bottom of the drop pipe and this pump mechanism becomes the limiting factor. In my well, I used a “Simple Pump” and the pump section was 1 3/4” which will fit in a 4” casing with a narrow pitless adapter with some care. In my case, I wanted to be able to service the pump with ease, so I had the original 4” PVC casing cut off about 5′ below the surface with a 6” steel casing (10 ft long) pounded down over the top of the original casing. This allowed the pitless adapter to be mounted on the steel casing (giving a much stronger mounting point for the submersible pump) and much more room in the 4” well casing. You will have to change the well seal, but a good hand pump will come with a well seal. You will just need to specify your casing diameter when you purchase it.