Making an old well sanitary

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Nofears67

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I would still try to get as much of the stuff out of that well as I could though. Just for the peace of mind it might allow you down the road.
bob...

This would mean pulling the pump, which we would like to avoid as it would only entail more costs to us. I may, however, attempt to flush the well to atmosphere some more.

I'll bring this up to the driller this coming Saturday and see what he thinks.

Thanks for all the great feedback guys!
 

Nofears67

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I will also flush the existing well this weekend and get an idea of what it acually produces using the old "how long does it take to fill a 5 gallon bucket" method...

This may not work very well as I know it will fill a bucket rather quickly but when it was flushing the other day the flow only filled the 4" discharge line about 50% full.

There is a good chnce that the existing 10hp motor is overkill for this pump. There may be a good possibility that I could indeed serve the orchard irrigation system from the new well/pump if it produces enough capacity and has a large enough outlet. Currently the orchard irrigation system and open reservoir refill line is 3" steel.
 
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Gary Slusser

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Here's another link about the cone of depression. I don't know of any aquifers other than confined or unconfined but there will be rock bore type wells in either type aquifer. More will have a cone of depression than not. And they don't have to be in fractured rock or in New England, they'll be all over North America, as the posters here are.

http://www.ngwa.org/public/gwbasics/confined_aquifers.aspx

Riverside, I didn't know you knew all about this stuff but, we don't know yet if there is a plume of this oil but we sure don't want to create one, which is fairly easy if your turbine pump draws the well down enough to let it out of this well. and the more the well is run, the more potential there is for that to happen.

I suggest someone to bail or air lift or otherwise purge the well and pull it down to where a detergent could be used to wash down the inside of the casing/well and then purging again to get the oil out. That might be money well spent if compared to oil contamination in a new well or negatively effecting the orchard later.
 

Nofears67

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Riverside, I didn't know you knew all about this stuff .

I know quite a bit about hydrology, but know very little about the operational intricacies of pumps and wells.

I suggest someone to bail or air lift or otherwise purge the well and pull it down to where a detergent could be used to wash down the inside of the casing/well and then purging again to get the oil out. That might be money well spent if compared to oil contamination in a new well or negatively effecting the orchard later.

So far the orchard has produced some awesome apples for like 40+ years being fed from this well. I don't think the trees mind what's coming out of the well.
 

Speedbump

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Sammy, the limerock in Florida is so pourous that it's easy for a cone to be formed by a large pump and well. A 4" well here drilled to an average depth of around 150 feet will produce a full 4" column of water as if it had no restriction at all. It's not like granite or some of the other types of rock that sometimes can't even produce a good supply of humidity.

bob...
 

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Where is Porky when you need him? I deal mostly with wells in the Ogallala aquifer, where there is always a cone of depression, and one well always affects other wells. However, I have a little experience with rock bore wells. The ones I am familiar with usually have more than one crack in the rock. It is more like a spider web of cracks extending out from the well. These wells are usually low producers and the cracks are where the water is stored. When you pull the water level down there is definitely a depression. It may not take the exact shape of a cone but, it is wider at the top and more narrow at the bottom. The depression takes the shape of the voids or cracks in the rock. The depression could be all around the well or off in one or more directions. The water level in other wells that are drawing from the same zone is certainly affected. The closer these other wells, the lower the water level, as one well is pumped down. This shows me that there is a cone, it just follows the path of the voids.

I guess if you had a well with only one crack, the depression would follow that crack as the water level drops. So you would have a crack of depression but, still a depression.

I have been doing this for 40 years and I still learn something everyday. This is not a profession where you can learn what you need to know out of books alone. Most of what a driller and pump installer knows is learned the hard way. All the books in the world can't compare to the knowledge that is learned over many years in the trenches. I would much more believe what I was told by someone with the kind of experience that Porky has, over engineers and geologist with a mountain of book learning.

That is why this forum is such a good thing. We can learn a lot from the experience of others. A few questions back and forth and we can see what professionals from other parts of the world would do. There is always more than one way to skin a cat. I can always read a book on how to do it but, I had much rather hear from someone who had actually skinned a few.
 

Nofears67

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One of the biggest reasons I plan to drill the new well within 50 feet of the existing is because there obvisouly exists a three phase power source and electric meter there for the existing well. I do not plan to have another electric service installed, therefore I will be pulling wire from the existing panel to power the new, smaller well as well as continue to serve the existing.

Of course, knowing there is a great aquifer in the area below the existing well has something to do with this too.

I am putting together an RFP to send to 4 local well drillers. I have asked for the per foot pricing to include the following components. Am I missing anything?

Per foot price to include (based on 300 foot depth):
-All drilling (both air and rotary)
-Test pumping
-Schedule 80 casing
-Gravel pack
-20 foot sanitary seal
-6'x6' concrete pump pad
-Mobilization
-All required permits

Should I specific diameter of casing (4" or 6")?
Once complete I will ask for bids on pump/motor components and installation.

As always, I appreciate your input.
 
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Nofears67

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I met with a driller who has extensive experience with wells in my area. He felt it would be best to dril a new well approx 50' away from the existing and he didn't feel that the existing would pose any risk of contamination to the new one considering that the oil is contained within the casing and column. The new well will not draw as much water as the existing well produces so the oil should never get low enough to begin to migrate towards the new well. At least these are his thoughts.

Of course he still thinks I'm ignorant about reasonable costs for drilling a small well and say that I'll be looking somewhere between $15-20K by the time it's all said and done. I told him to put some numbers together and let me know what he comes up with.

Meanwhile, Im going to send a request for proposals to three other local drillers with the tentative specs for the new well.

Once a driller is onsite I may have the existing pulled and filled with concrete if the new one can produce a gpm equivalent to the existing. BTW, I measured the existing well's flow today and it is somewhere between 80-100 gpm as it took about 3-4 secs to fill a 5 gal bucket.
 

Gary Slusser

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Sammy and others, I stated a caution about placing a new well too close to this existing well that is pumping at 75-100 gpm for irrigation and has an oil contamination problem of unknown quantity and time.

That is good advice and then we find out that in the poster's area there is a minimum distance of 20' called for. So there is some reason for that minimum distance. I don't think it has to do with a confined or unconfined aquifer.

We do not know where this well is. We don't know if the "aquifer" is confined or unconfined and it does not matter.

All the wells I've seen in PA are 6" rock bore with casing into bed rock and the static water level in the well is the water table in the yard. I don't know if that is a confined or unconfined aquifer but I know if you pump enough, the water table is pulled down. I've always thought that was a cone of depression as described in all the stuff I've studied about wells and the down hole camera videos I've seen.

Those wells are into/through numerous layers of rock, some are fractured some not. I didn't see any in sand. You can see evidence of that (in PA at least) anywhere a road has been cut into the side or through a mountain or hill. You can see the various folded layers of rock and in the spring through fall and into winter, water running out from on top and between the layers of rock and when cold enough, it forms huge icicles. Someone up on top with a well, that is the water they get from their wells.

The point is, the caution to keep these two wells apart was good advice for someone here to give the OP.

It doesn't matter what type of aquifer the well is in. That's because it's very rare that a geologist like Riverside, that knows all about cones of depression, posts a question like this here.
 

Nofears67

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I guess I should have added that the driller I met with (who has drilled many wells in my area) stated that he does NOT normally run into "rock formations" in this area. Instead he runs through highly fractured and decomposed formations and lots of highly compacted sandy alluvial material. He did not consider this area "rocky" in nature and figured that the well could be air drilled.

I would assume that cones form in the general area of our foothill community.

BTW...I'm not a geologist. I'm an environmental scientist with a focus on water, it's availability, it's quality and it's treatment. I know about cones, plumes and hydrology from not only my education but also my numerous water certs and years of experience working in the water industry. I just have never gotten too deeply into the "inner workings" of wells. That's why I'm here.
 

Gary Slusser

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Riverside, sorry for calling you a geologist.

Sammy, I agree with you, we did not know anything about the type of aquifer this well is in (until now) so we shouldn't have been repeatedly going on'n on about one type of aquifer or another.

I also agree the new well and old well will probably be "drawing on the same vanes" as you say, that's why I issued my cautionary advice to keep the new well as far away as possible.

But, and I hope you will forgive me and then forget about it, I don't agree with saying a new well only 20-50' away from the old one, that now we hear is probably a screened well in a confined aquifer, and the new one probably will be sucking water from the same vanes, will be okay.

And yet I hope I'm wrong because it looks as if the new one will be only that far away from the old oil contaminated one using 75-100 gallons per minute for hours on end in the type of no rock geology Riverside says he is in. We have no idea if the oil has a plume and has migrated or not. I'd hate to find out that it has after I drilled my new and expensive well.

I am very glad to see that unlike some drillers, you are not suggesting he drill some expensive exploratory holes to get water samples from.
 

Nofears67

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Keep in mind that the full water analysis I had done on the existing well water a year ago found no traces of any hydrocarbons.

I contacted the lab that performed the analysis and they said that the 44 constituents that comprise their "Organic Analytes - Volatile" section would have detected any sign of gas or motor oil contamination. None was found. All 44 were ND (not detected).

This again leads me to believe the following scenarios:
1. The oil has been contained within the pump column (floating on top and/or being pumped out on each run).
2. Along with #1, any oil along the pump shaft is pumped out when the well is activated. (i.e. why I saw an oil slick on the top of the flushed water - small amt of oil coming in contact with water as it rises in column).
3. There may be little, if any oil between the column and casing.
4. The water level has never been drawn down enough to create a "plume" scenario.

The oddity about #1 above is that we also use the existing well to "replenish" a 400K gal open reservoir on the property. We have never seen any oil slick on top of this reservoir before.

I will of course, drain all known motor oil from the pump bearing reservoir and convert to food grade oil.
- Where can I find this type of oil and what exactly is it called?

I am quite confident that the new well will be just fine, especially considering the small volumes that it will be used for.

Like I said before, I might just completely abandon the existing well after the new one is developed. This is, if the new one can match the 100 gpm flow rate of the old one.
 
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Gary Slusser

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I don't know of any food grade oils but, maybe you've mentioned it before but I can't remember, if there is nothing wrong with the old well, why drill another for the house? Or why not use this one for both?

As far as the water tests, you got oil in a bucket of water, how come the lab didn't find any in the sample?
 
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Nofears67

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I did not say there was nothing wrong, I said that whatever is wrong is hopefully "contained within" the column, and possibly casing.

I do not want to "risk" ruining the brand new lines to my home with an oil film, if there is always one present.

My main point is that I personally, from what I've gleaned, do not think that the existing well will influence the new well in a negative manner.

I'm drilling a new well so that my new home and brand new lines stay as pristine as possible.

I believe that no oil was found in the sample because when I took the sample the well had been running for about 24 solid hours (irrigating the orchard all night) and whatever oil remanants may have been present had been flushed out of the well by the time I had taken the sample.
 
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Nofears67

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First well proposal in (assuming ~300 feet deep).

$45/foot
includes:
-sanitary seal
-air lifting
-6'x6'x6' sanitary pad

Does NOT include (i.e. extras):
- 300' - 6" SDR17 Certa-Lock casing @ $15/ft = $4500
- gravel pack = $600
- permits = $600
- mobilization = $1200
- test pumping = 3350

Total = $23,750 !!!

Still waiting on other three prooposals to come in...
 

Speedbump

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I believe that no oil was found in the sample because when I took the sample the well had been running for about 24 solid hours (irrigating the orchard all night) and whatever oil remanants may have been present had been flushed out of the well by the time I had taken the sample.

The only way you could flush any oil out of the casing is if the water level happened to draw down to the inlet of the pump. Oil floats, so it's going to be on top of the water column all the time. If you irrigated for that long of a time, the well obviously gives more water than your irrigating with, so the oil could never be pumped out.

bob...
 
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