Losing Pressure with my jet pump and don't know where the heck is the well.

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lbabekb21

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I cut off all water source going in my house leaving my jet pump on.. It loses pressure and starts every 2 to 3 minutes to regain pressure.. We had a long heat period this summer with no rain.. My wild guess is that I may have ran out of water, sucked the bottom..jammed possibly the foot valve or worst?? ..

I got 2 plumbers to swing by to help me out and what I was not aware how the well was set for my house.. They told me that pipes goes out to the actual well somewhere on my land and we can't locate where the heck it is??... How can I fix the foot valve when we can't find the cap of the well?
I need good pointers.. Right now I'm shutting off my pump after leaving for work in the morning and in the evening when we're done using water. I have to recharge it in the morning so we can get ready to go to work and after work when we're back....Got a 2 yrs old and 5 yrs old.. This situation is insane..
 

Texas Wellman

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You don't need plumbers, you need a wellman. I would guess that the well would be somewhere in line with where the suction/drive pipe exit the home, the fewer the bends the better. Probably a good metal detector would work. I only encountered a few buried wells and it was a PITA to locate. You just grab a shovel and start digging, hope you are close.

This is probably not a DIY job, and as much trouble as you are going through I can't imagine why you have not called the experts in to fix it.
 

Justwater

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does the pump have one pipe going outside to the well or 2?

if its 1 pipe.. sounds like the foot/check valve could be leaking back. you might install another check valve inside on the suction line of the pump, it could buy you some time, but beware it is a patch and can make for other problems in the long run if you dont find the well and replace the foot valve (and take out the temp check valve).

if its 2 pipes.. it could be a couple things.. check valve leaking back, hole in the well casing, etc.

theres really no way to sugar coat finding a buried well. start at the wall where the pipe comes into the house.. dig along side the house until you find that pipe, then follow the pipe to the well.. i have found and dug up my fair share.. and they were all a PITA. why someone would bury a well in Fl is beyond me.
 
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jimtum

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Here's a thought, take two wire coat hangers straighten them out and then at about 4 inches from the end bend them so as to have handles. Get the idea, water sticks or whatever you want to call them. Walk across your pipes that you know are there just to get the feel of it as they cross one another. Then start walking down the line crossing over the water line and when they stop crossing then you are close to your well, then do as the Texas Wellman said, grab a shovel and go to town. Hope it works, though it sounds far fetched, but thinking outside the box never hurt anyone, don't get hurt. LOL
 

Justwater

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dont built little divining rods with coat hangers, you will waste your whole day walking around with those things.

divining rods can sometimes get close, ... when you have an idea of where the water is. lol. just start digging.
 

Masterpumpman

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As Justwater said, you might get by by inserting another check valve in the suction line (if it's a single pipe).

Diving rods do work. . . for some people. When using them "think well line", honestly! It doesn't work for me but my wife is a professional Dowser and she's great at it. Not being a Dowser/Diviner I usually run a fish tape inside the plastic (or PVC) lines and locate the fish tape with a metal locator. Then get a shovel and start digging.
 

jimtum

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They don't work for me but the other guy on our team uses them just fine. The idea of a fish tape is great out of the box thinking.
 

Dean0

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The Coat hangers really do work. I've used them many times for this reason...
Here's a thought, take two wire coat hangers straighten them out and then at about 4 inches from the end bend them so as to have handles. Get the idea, water sticks or whatever you want to call them. Walk across your pipes that you know are there just to get the feel of it as they cross one another. Then start walking down the line crossing over the water line and when they stop crossing then you are close to your well, then do as the Texas Wellman said, grab a shovel and go to town. Hope it works, though it sounds far fetched, but thinking outside the box never hurt anyone, don't get hurt. LOL
 

NHmaster3015

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Wiki says..... and I copied this because it was the easiest too, but there are thousands of articles about dowsing out there and the vast majority of them read like this one does. The problem is it that dowsing is a lot like believing in ghosts and aliens (Mars ones, not hispanic ones) There is a preponderance of evidence that dowsing is little more than chance and yet, believers will always believe no matter how many studies are done nor how strong the evidence is. Lots of folks dowse around here with pretty good results. I asked a geologist about that many years back and he replied " you can pretty much drill anywhere in the northeast and you are going to hit water" A customer of ours had a burried well head and called in a buddy of his to dowse for it. 20 to 30 hand dug holes later and finally getting a back hoe in to start at the foundation and follow the pipe.... he found the well head. good thing it was him doing the digging.

A 1948 study tested 58 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance A 1979 review examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.In a study in Munich 1987-1988 by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for their "skill" and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a two-story barn. Before each test the pipe was moved in a direction perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor each dowser was asked to determine the position of the pipe. Over two years the dowsers performed 843 such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates at least 37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."

Five years after the Munich study was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology and a leading skeptic who emphasised correct data analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what they claim," stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and customized." Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses," he noted that the best dowser was on average 4 millimeters out of 10 meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004%. The study's authors responded, saying "on what grounds could Enright come to entirely different conclusions? Apparently his data analysis was too crude, even illegitimate." The findings of the Munich study were also confirmed in a paper by Dr. S. Ertel, a German psychologist who had previously intervened in the statistical controversy surrounding the "Mars effect", but Enright remained unconvinced.

More recently a study was undertaken in Kassel, Germany under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften (GWUP) [Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and that they expected a 100 percent success rate, however the results were no better than chance.Some researchers have investigated possible physical or geophysical explanations for alleged dowsing abilities. One study concluded that dowsers "respond" to a 60 Hz electromagnetic field, but this response does not occur if the kidney area or head are shielded.
 

Justwater

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The people that believe this stuff are the same people running around with those rubber "strength and balance" bracelets on. Absolutely no scientific proof that they work, but it doesn't stop people from convincing theirself that the 20$ rubber band really helps. I truly believe it's all in your head. Like I said, the coat hangers can get close (when u have an idea of where the water is).
 

Thatguy

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It loses pressure and starts every 2 to 3 minutes to regain pressure
With my pinhole leak in a copper pipe under the house slab we lost a gallon in 3 minutes.
How many GPM does this pressure loss correspond to? It might give you a clue to what kind of leak you're looking for.
 

Justwater

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Probably just his foot valve leaking back.. He never answered anyone so I'm assuming he took care of it.
 
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Ballvalve

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Or he used a willow wand with coathangers wrapped around them and a big copper kitchen pot on his head, Quartz crystals in his pockets, and ran around the yard until he got pulled down into the well.

Or until the neighbors called the cops, which explains his absence.
 

NHmaster3015

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It's a touchy subject because those that believe they have the talent, really believe they do and no amount of proof is going to sway them and I don't think it's fair to call the wack jobs. People believe in all sorts of things that can not be proved. Anybody that believes in God would be on the short list.
 

Justwater

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Can u not delete posts in this forum? ...... sorry bout this one.
 
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Justwater

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Or he used a willow wand with coathangers wrapped around them and a big copper kitchen pot on his head, Quartz crystals in his pockets, and ran around the yard until he got pulled down into the well.

Or until the neighbors called the cops, which explains his absence.

Lolol!! thats funny
 

Thatguy

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This ability can be proven or not in a statistical sense, that is, to a 95% or 99% confidence level that it is real or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
I'm surprised someone hasn't already tried this experiment.

The PSI lab at Duke University might be interested in this.
 
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