Flushed out the well pipe yesterday. Ready to finally install the pump.

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My wife and I finally got the well blown out yesterday. Two days ago, I tried it with my pancake compressor, which was a joke. I was going to hook up my Speedaire 30gal compressor, then realized the dryer plug the previous owner put on it wouldn't match the 50a 240v plug that was needed for my Miller welder's outlet. So I rented a wheelbarrel type compressor and gave that a shot, but it didn't have enough butt to push anything out at 180' of a 4" hole. It would push out fine at the top (our static water line is at or above ground level at all times), but the deeper I lowered it, the less water/bubbles came up, and by 60-80', there were no bubbles rising at all(??) Compressor tanks at 120, work pressure at 80#'s, but it couldn't push it past that point. And when I would bring up the hose, which had my 6' x 1" pipe from my T handle for the pitless connected to the bottom end for weight, the hose was full of water. It was pushing back harder than the compressor could push out. That was interesting.

So back to the rental place to get a pull behind (real) compressor that was diesel driven and made for real work. That did the trick. I'd seen a half dozen youtube videos of guys doing this, some with small compressors, but I guess those were shallower wells. Anyway, the Airman compressor reset at 120psi everytime it's fired up, so we lowered it to 70psi, the lowest setting, and proceeded to drop the 1" hose to the bottom and turned it on. I had my wife crack the valve slowly until it started blowing water about a foot high over the casing.

I had plumbed the well to check the depth of the drilling initially. I felt bottom, but it felt soft and maybe 6-8" deep. I'm using a Grundfoss SQFlex 6 pump with solar until we get our house built, and after paying a couple thousand for that, I wanted to make sure any extra sand was out of the well that I could get. The driller went through 65' of sandstone before hitting granite and some flint, so I didn't know exactly what I was hitting on the bottom, but better safe than sorry.

One thing we found that made us really happy is that even after blowing hundreds, maybe thousands of gallons of water out of the well, it would immediately refill to ground level. The water level never got below site line (10-20'), and rose back to it's ground level position. I'm now convinced of what some others have said about this being an artesian running well.

We kept going for about 30-40 minutes on and off, though it ran for a good 20 minutes on one run. We had a 5 gal bucket we were checking the outcoming water with and it was a little sandy, but the particles were so fine, it just looked like pinkish water. The water overflowing was really pretty clear, cold and sweet. No sulphur smells. When we started getting the granite chips floating out with the mix, I started wondering if the sediment on the bottom may be granite and flint grindings instead of sand, and were heavy enough to not be a problem. We flushed it till we thought we'd done what we needed, and capped it back up.

In conclusion, ours wasn't half as bad as some of the videos I'd seen. The biggest hassle was multiple tries and trips to the rental shop (30 miles away from the site). But at least now I know I tried and whatever may have been down there, there's a lot less now than before. Here are a couple of videos I watched beforehand.



 

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Good going. Would have been nice if you shot a video.

How many CFM was that diesel driven compressor rated?

Going to put a flow inducer on that SQFlex pump?
 

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Yeah, I''d have liked to at least gotten some pics, but I was busy lowering the hose and checking the water level and my wife was 30' away tending the compressor outlet valve, which she thought was a two-handed, all-out job, so she didn't get any. I don't carry my phone out of the truck, and it's a dumb phone (not a smart phone) anyway.

The compressor was an Airman PDS185S, rated at 185cfm @ 100psi. A really nice machine! One of the quietest diesels I've seen. https://anacorp.com/products-compressor-PDS185S-6E1.php $85 a day, but I think they only charged me 60 since I brought it back about 4 hours later. And probably felt sorry for me that I drove so far and their wheel barrel comp couldn't get the job done. (they were stunned at the idea that a column of water could have so much psi that it would push back that hard, just like I was).

Per the flow filter, I just finished making/installing it on the pump today. (I just posted a question about pump to sleeve clearance and have a couple of pics there.) I bought a Campbell pre-made sleeve that was listed as 4" diameter, but it was over 4 1/4" and wouldn't fit in the bore, so I made one out of thin wall pvc. Sent the $137 Campbell back and spent 21 bucks on a piece of pipe, $5 on a SS clamp and $15 on a roll of gorilla water proof tape that's more like caulk tape, but it stretches and is 4" wide. Plan on installing the pump in the well tomorrow, if all goes as planned.
 
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