Drive point well question

[sucker dave]

Update for sunday. I drove down another 5'. I'm now down 35' + the 3' well point. I seem to have 11' of water at the bottom of the well. I'm going to stop tomorrow and buy a pitcher pump. If my measurements are correct my water starts at 27'. I might be able to use a picture pump to help remove fines in the well.

 

[Speedbump]

The pitcher pump is a great tool, but it won't lift water more than 25 feet vertically.

bob...

 

[Sponsor]

 

[sucker dave]

Your right, I was hoping to get lucky. Kinda the story of my well life. So now the picture pump is out of the picture, what’s the poor mans ( is should say stubborn) best way to develop this well. I’ve looked into some of the ideas mentioned earlier in the thread but most require special equipment. I found a surge block on line that would work except I’d need a way to raise and lower it. Plus I think the fines need to be removed.

Dave

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Dave,
go with the compressor set up.

SAM

 

[sucker dave]

what about using a bottom loading bailer.

 

[Sammyhydro11]

A bailer will work and if its heavy enough it will surge the screen for you. You still need a way to get it in and out of the hole. They can get heavy.

SAM

 

[Speedbump]

You could also get a plunger and drop it to the bottom on 1" rods, then hoist it out real fast. This will pull a good vacuum on the well and screen. With any luck it will bring water and cuttings with it.

When we drilled 2" wells many years ago, the casing was galvanized and was put in the ground first. Then we cleaned it out using the jetting method. By drilling ahead of the casing, you could see what you were going through by the cuttings that were coming back up the casing by circulating water. Once into the water bearing sand and gravel, we would knock the casing to the top of the vein, clean out the casing one more time, then knock a 1-1/4" screen out the bottom with only 1' of pipe up in the casing. Then we would drop a Bremer check down the well. It had a leather ring on the bottom that sat on the coupling on top of the 1-1/4" pipe. It had a big rubber above the leather and a brass ring. The body was tapered and barbed. We then went back down with a plunger, smacked the Bremer on top to seat it, then went to pumping. The Bremer also had a poppit (check valve) built in. Kick the walking beam in gear and the up down motion of the walking beam pumped the well. Kind of like a deep well hand pump.

bob...

 

[sucker dave]

Sounds like a great idea. However I don't have the equipment here to move the plunger. I'd have to do it by hand seems like a lot of work. I'm learning a ton by listening to all these ideas. I'm going to try Sam's air method first. Question, How big of a compressor do I need to lift the water 30'?

 

[Mariner]

Sounds like a great idea. However I don't have the equipment here to move the plunger. I'd have to do it by hand seems like a lot of work. I'm learning a ton by listening to all these ideas. I'm going to try Sam's air method first. Question, How big of a compressor do I need to lift the water 30'?

Dave,

There is some good information being put forward here - I am learning all the time.

The static head of the water would be about 14psi and allowing for pipe resistance lets make it 20 psi. That is the pressure that should make water come out of the top of the pipe. What you need is volume and pressure in the range of say 120 psi, that can be regulated down. If you put air in the well you then regulate the pressure needed to give the required flow - that would be with a fairly large cfpm compressor. I have worked on ice breakers where they had a bubbler system to assist with moving through ice. These compressors were veyr large cubic copacity but if my memory servd, used air at around 30 psi.

Anyway, to make it brief, the pressure requirement wouldn't be very high, probably the more important consideration would be volume (cubic feet per minute) of air.

HTH

mariner

 

[Sammyhydro11]

What size compressor were you using the last time?The smallest that i have used to develop a well was a 100 cfm.

SAM

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Dave,
that j tube setup that i was talking about is the way to go when developing with air.

SAM

 

[sucker dave]

update. I pondered how this air thing was going to work all day. On the way home I stopped at the local hardware store and bought a piece of 1/4 id plastic tubing and a threaded pressure fitting for plastic pipe. I attached the plastic pipe to the fitting and the fitting to a compressor fitting. I had some small id copper laying around so I slipped that over the plastic tubing and bent a 180. That was the hardest part. Making a small enough bend to fit in the 2 inch pipe and not kinking the copper. dropped my air hose down the well to mark my well depth. Attached a piece of string to the bent copper in the event it came off and I had to retrieve it out of the well. I have a sears 5 hp 22 gallon compressor. I dropped the line down with the j tube and rope attached until it hit the bottom. Then I plugged the airline into the compressor. Because I didn't think anything was going to happen, I was bent over the well pipe scratching my head when I was blasted with about 2 gallons of brown water. It worked!!
I played with the pressure and found I only needed around 70 psi to shoot water about 1' in the air. I left the air line attached until i could almost see water than unplugged it as suggested sending the column of water back down the pipe. I did that 3-4 times than expelled water out of the hole. I'm going to continue doing this until the expelled water is clear. It’s actually kind of fun!
Sam, THANKS!!!

Dave

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Dave,
its way fun! The same thing happened to me a while back developing a 6" screened well. I was about a foot away from the well when i got blasted with 20 gallons per minute. Didn't mind very much seeing that it was close to 100 degrees that day.

Another thing,if you could somehow get an elbow on top of that well with a hole in it slightly larger than your compressor line,you can direct the water outward from the well so the water you're removing doesn't shoot straight in the air. That way you could actualy regulate your air compressor to give you a steady flow of water and this will tell you how much water the well is producing. It will save the headache of having to put your jet assembly back down the well to test it.

So if the top of your casing is threaded get a 90 degree elbow ,drill a hole in the top of it slightly larger than your compressor line so it will fit in the hole. Insert your j tube and compressor line down the hole,make sure that j tube doesn't kink in any way.Run the line up throught the bottom of the elbow,then thread the elbow on your casing. Put a discharge pipe off of the elbow.That will chanel the water so you can create a steady stream that you can measure. You will want to tie the compressor line down to the casing because its going to want to shoot out of the hole. After getting all the fines out you should be able to regulate your compressor down to a point where you can get a steady straem of water from the well. Take a 5 gallon bucket and time how long it takes to fill it. Take that time and divide it by 60 then mutiply it by 5 and that will give you a flow rate in gpm.

Have Fun,

SAM

 

[Speedbump]

I think if you were to increase the tubing size from the compressor to say 1/2" or 3/4", you might be lifting more water and fines. Like Mariner said, it's the volume that will lift the water not the pressure. That air wants to float and it's going to be headed up in a hurry. I don't see what the j-tube does, maybe I missed something, but since the air wants to go up, the direction of the end of the pipe shouldn't matter.

bob...

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Speedbump,
the J Tube actually creates more of a vacuum because the air is constantly moving upward instead of just blowing down the hole where alot of the air is being blown through the screen.Its the same principal involved in circulating the water through a jet assembly where the jetting action creates a vacuum on the foot valve. You're right, if he could get a larger pipe size down the hole he would have better results but the space is limited with the J Tube assembly.

SAM

 

[Speedbump]

Makes sense but it wouldn't hurt to try some 1/2 or 3/4 right down into the screen just off the bottom. It may lift more water that way.

bob..

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Yeah i would say make the J Tube out of 3/4" copper with a street 90 coming of a regular elbow on the bottom. Should fit down the hole.

SAM

 

[sucker dave]

I doubt I'll be able to bend 3/4 copper tight enough to fit in the
2" pipe. Mabey I'll try some 3/8-1/2 gas line i should be able to almost bend that back on it's self and zip it together. i think my compressor will now become the week link.

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Dave,
i would try to make that J Tube with 3/4" or 1/2" copper fittings.

SAM

 

[sucker dave]

I think I've got my well fairly well developed. I no longer get fines in the water when it comes out of the casing so I'm thinking it's time to add the pump. I was unable to get a steady stream out of the well to calculate my max flow so I have a couple of questions.
I was using a goulds 3/4 hp deep well jet pump with a packer rated at 13.1 gpm from what I understand that was way over pumping my screen. I also have a 1/2 hp Goulds J5 pump that may be better suited for my well at 9.5 GPM with a FP2-31 packer. If that still over pumps my screen, is there a way to "de-tune" the system to lower the GPM untill a balance is reached?