Help me figure out why my well pumps dirty water

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jasvid

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I am hoping someone can help me figure out where to go from here - I apologize for the long-winded post.

I purchased some land with an old agricultural well on it. The well hadn't been used in at least 15 years and it had an old jack pump with rod and cylinder set up that no longer worked. I pulled all this out earlier this spring - cylinder was at 198' with one 18' pipe under it, so well is at least 216' deep. Static level of water was approx 110'. The old well pipe was really rusty and the jack pump was from 1930's, so this could be an old well. Well casing is tin.

Today I installed a submersible well pump - 1/2 hp Grundfos 5SQ05-180-115V pump and used 1" 160PSI PE pipe. I plan to run pump off generator and fill bulk tank. I installed pump at 180'. I turned on generator and got slightly cloudy water for 80 gallons, then the water quality became really dirty - there was lots of sediment and iron. After taking out approximately 20 more gallons of this dirty water, I shut off the pump because I thought all that sediment can't be good for it. In 5 gallons of water, there were between 1-2 tablespoons of fine sediment.

I am not sure where to go from here - I believe I am at least 25' from bottom of well. Why would the water quality get much worse the more I pumped (I had assumed the opposite would happen)? What steps should I take going forward? Should I try raising pump?

Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated!
 

Reach4

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You could try blowing out the sediment if you have a really big compressor available.

You could use an air lift pump to lift sediment with less air and more time.

There are other well cleaning methods.

Just speculating -- not based on experience:
Suppose the water comes in from near the bottom of the well . As you pump, there would be a flow that could carry light sediment upward.

Suppose in removing stuff and adding stuff, you knocked things off of the inside of the casing. Maybe that slowly drifts down and gets sucked in on the way down.

Did you go with that pump to let you use your little Honda EU2000?
 

ThirdGenPump

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You aren't going to have any idea of what that well actually produces in terms of quality until you've pumped thousands of gallons of water out of it. Taking equipment out and putting equipment in stirs up a lot of crap to begin with in addition to having a well sit dormant for years collecting god knows what. It will take a long time to stabilize.

As a contractor coming upon such a well I'd throw a high volume test pump I don't give a shit about and flush it for a few days. Given that might cost you more than your pump to have done, in your position I'd take my chances running the new pump for a while. Pumps can handle an awful lot of abuse. Pulling sediment like your seeing is unlikely to kill it short term.
 

jasvid

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You could try blowing out the sediment if you have a really big compressor available.

You could use an air lift pump to lift sediment with less air and more time.

There are other well cleaning methods.

Just speculating -- not based on experience:
Suppose the water comes in from near the bottom of the well . As you pump, there would be a flow that could carry light sediment upward.

Suppose in removing stuff and adding stuff, you knocked things off of the inside of the casing. Maybe that slowly drifts down and gets sucked in on the way down.

Did you go with that pump to let you use your little Honda EU2000?

Thanks for the suggestions and speculation - lots of good stuff to think about and research.

I did buy that pump specifically to use with EU2000 - I love that generator!

The thing that threw me for a loop was how it got so muddy and dirty after pumping much cleaner water for 80 gallons, but as I have done more research, that isn't so unusual and it doesn't mean my well won't work out in the end.
 

jasvid

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You aren't going to have any idea of what that well actually produces in terms of quality until you've pumped thousands of gallons of water out of it. Taking equipment out and putting equipment in stirs up a lot of crap to begin with in addition to having a well sit dormant for years collecting god knows what. It will take a long time to stabilize.

As a contractor coming upon such a well I'd throw a high volume test pump I don't give a shit about and flush it for a few days. Given that might cost you more than your pump to have done, in your position I'd take my chances running the new pump for a while. Pumps can handle an awful lot of abuse. Pulling sediment like your seeing is unlikely to kill it short term.

Thanks a lot for the feedback - good to know that it takes time to see what I've got and I have just got to work through things to figure it out.

I am going to try it again tomorrow and see what happens.
 

Valveman

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Like ThirdGen said, 80-100 gallons is nothing. I wouldn't even look at it until I had pumped 10-20,000 gallons. And you never want to turn a pump off when the water is dirty. It might get sanded up and not start the next time. Especially one of those SQ pumps with the Soft start thing. When cleaning out a well, have everything ready and a place to put lots of water, because you don't want to turn the pump off until the water is fairly clean.
 

jasvid

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Thanks, valveman. At 5gal/min, that is going to take some time (and effort since I am running off generator). I guess I will wait for the next clear day and start it up again and pump all day and hope it clears up a bit by the end of pumping so I can safely turn pump off...
 

jasvid

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One question I have: since I am AT LEAST 30' from the bottom of the well, is it OK to keep the pump where it is or should I think about raising it up before I try to clean it out? Thanks!
 

Valveman

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One question I have: since I am AT LEAST 30' from the bottom of the well, is it OK to keep the pump where it is or should I think about raising it up before I try to clean it out? Thanks!

See if you can clean it from there. Only raise a pump if you have to, because the lower it is the more water you have available.
 

Valveman

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Thanks, valveman. At 5gal/min, that is going to take some time (and effort since I am running off generator). I guess I will wait for the next clear day and start it up again and pump all day and hope it clears up a bit by the end of pumping so I can safely turn pump off...

Good idea!
 

jasvid

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I went out today and started the pump up - good news is it started and ran clear after about 20 gallons.

Bad news is after about 80 gallons, the volume (and clearness of water) declined. I was getting air bubbles through hose, so I made the valve at the end of the hose smaller and smaller until there were no more air bubbles and measured my flow. I also stopped for some time and then pumped and measured how many gallons came out until flow slowed drastically. After doing this multiple times, I figured out (I think) that my well has a very slow refresh rate of about 1GPM.

This is disappointing as it means the batch pumping of 250 gallons or so I was envisioning isn't going to work out very well, but it isn't the end of the world. I will monitor the well this year and see if that refresh rate changes during the season and if it stays the same, I may install a solar pump that is a very slow pumper. I will also test the water later in the season after a lot more pumping. We will see...

My question for the helpful folks out there is there anything I can try to increase the refresh rate? Any possibility that the refresh rate will increase if I keep pumping it out and letting it refresh? Anything else I am missing?
 

Reach4

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Any possibility that the refresh rate will increase if I keep pumping it out and letting it refresh? Anything else I am missing?
Try putting nuwell into the search box above.

Try putting well rehabilitation into a search engine.
 
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