Maxwelhse,
Without knowing what equipment is truly down in the well casing, how viable the well casing is, how deep it is or how deep the static water level is, it is difficult to recommend what could be done to "make do" until the time when city or county water can be provided. Your current situation and desire to not throw money down a hole in the ground is certainly understood.
The success of my recommendation would depend greatly upon the condition of the well screen and the static water level.
My notion would be to excavate the top of the well, open it and remove all of the well string pipes and foot valves, etc. from the well screen itself. Then, supply yourself with lengths of 1-1/4" PVC pipe, a 1-1/4" PVC sand point, a PVC check valve and INTERNAL PVC couplings (as opposed to the standard external PVC couplings). The internal couplings slide inside of the PVC pipe instead of over the outside so that they do not increase the outside diameter of the pipe or sand point.
This PVC pipe string, after assembly and gluing together, should be able to slip down into the 2" well screen pipe, all except the PVC check valve as that would be of larger diameter. You should be able to purchase all of this PVC plumbing parts and fittings for something between $50 and $125 total.
You could take your existing pump and convert it back (possibly) to a simple shallow well jet pump by plugging off the ejector port, so you may not need a different pump to try this - therefore no additional expense.
You would have to excavate the plumbing lines between the well and the entry at the house wall so that you can lay the new PVC pipe in the trench and ensure that you have no "air traps" between the well and the pump. The path of the pipe and all fittings between the well entry and the pump should be level or slope up to the pump in a straight line, even if it is a straight vertical path. Main point is that there should be no "jogs" in this plumbing that go up and back down and up again.
You will also want to install a tee with a removable (sealable) fitting or a cheap PVC ball valve somewhere near the pump inlet and between the inlet and the check valve so that you can open it and fill it with priming water.
This configuration may possibly get you by with very little expense and without too much excavating. It won't be perfect, but it may certainly be a great improvement upon what you have now. If it is possible to begin with.
Otherwise, I would investigate driving a 1-1/4" shallow well sandpoint in a new location until you can get on city water. That is, if your static water table is less than 28 feet. That is, 28 feet from water table to pump height. The theoretical limit is something like 32.14 feet, but that is not achievable - it is just academic. In real world situations, you probably won't be able to manage it if the depth is greater than 28 feet.
Good luck!
Gordy
Thanks a ton for the input. That's exactly what I was looking for and also sort of what I had in my mind. Basically just sticking a chunk of pipe in the casing and seeing if I can pump water from it (in a very round about sense). My main fear is that once I start pulling on stuff, it won't go back in the hole if things don't go well. Is it common to have all of this stuff just break or get stuck in a well casing once you start pulling on it? My "plan" for conversion would be a last ditch effort so I just want to know what I could be getting into.
Right now the plan is that my neighbor has very graciously let me straight up borrow (for free! In a hilarious stroke of irony, when her well failed and my house was sitting empty on the market before I bought it, she was stealing water from it via the spigots until she could get a new well herself. So she knows my pain ) her 10 year old, but brand new, pump and booster to give them a try in the hope that my pump itself is just roasted from years and years of debris being fed through it and cavitation from the problems the well itself no doubt has. Right now, every time the pump stops (which is all manual, btw... I have to manually start and stop it every time I want to pump water) it sounds like the pump itself is full of marbles and sand.
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So... Now that I understand the hail Mary approach, see if you folks can follow this plan:
Any time my current pump gets under about 15psi, it simply refuses to build any pressure. My current way of "fixing" this is to pump some air into the bladder tank to get the pressure back up to around 20psi, then it will pump water again (but as I said before, weirdly the pump isn't losing prime when this happens. When I open the priming plug pressurized water shoots out at me) and I slowly let the air back out of the tank so more water can fill it (so when it happens again I can use the same trick again)... I've had to do this probably 6 or 8 times in the past week or so and it's consistently working, but is obviously a pain.
So... I'm terrified that I can make a bad situation worse by removing ALL of the pressure from the well by switching pumps and boosters and render my bad well completely inoperable. What I'm planning to do to hedge my bets is to put shut off valves and nipples on all of the connections of the "new" pump/booster assembly, release all of the air pressure from the bladder, and take the entire assembly to my father's business (which routinely gets about 80psi of city water), lay it on it's side to hopefully not trap much air in it (maybe even stand it on it's head and fill it like a bucket, then pressurize it), fill it up, close the valves, and install it full of pressurized water with an empty air bladder (that I can then add air pressure to if the city water pressure in the tank isn't enough), open the valves, and pray for the best. I've got to think that if I do that, even though it's convoluted and crazy, that it can't possibly make things worse than what I have now. I'm thinking I should be able to pull the same "trick" with the bladder tank and that volume of pressurized water stored and the pump pre-primed.
Also, for the record, the "new" booster tank is probably 1/2 again larger than what I currently have, so that should be 1/2 again more water volume to pressurize the "other side" of the well and it will be at 80psi (or whatever the gauge on the tank reports when this is all said and done) and not 10 or 15psi like what happens here when I have to get my air hose out... and again, I will still have the air hose option if that fails in and of itself.
Soo... In theory... that should "work"... right?