Wade Henderson
New Member
My house is in the mountains near Boulder, Co and was built in the 20s and was only used as a vacation home for most of it's life. When I bought the house 4 years ago and attempted to get the water system working it was essentially a big 4' long 24" wide clay pipe jammed straight into the ground about 4 feet. I had a well company get the system running at that time (essentially a sump pump in the well pumps into a cistern in the basement) but have had an increasingly impossible issue with sediment whenever it rains. At some point I added a standard house filter and a spin down filter to keep the cistern from just filling with mud but even with those it gets clogged to the point of uselessness in as little as an hour during the rainy season. This morning the sump pump in the well was barely even moving water so I finally managed to get the lid off the well and drain itwith a sump pump and I'm realizing the clay pipe that makes the well has an inch or two of clearance at the bottom where it meets the outside soil and that just let's in an endless supply of mud (I'm a small time contractor so not completely clueless with water systems). At this point I'm thinking of a few different options to help remedy the issue to where it's at least tolerable as I'm sure it's wreaking havoc on my on demand boiler/water heater and fixtures.
Option 1. Add bentonite or some form of hydraulic cement around the inside perimeter of the well to stop the inundation of sediment. The bottom of the well is just bedrock so I'm hoping the well would still allow water in and seep up through the rock rather than the surrounding soil. I'm thinking this would help against ground level contamination as well? The question here would be the correct product to use as I am just trying to seal the perimeter where the sediment sneaks under the well casing and into the well and not render the well useless or completely seal it off.
Option 2. Somehow add a filter to the sump pump either in the well (filter bag if sorts) or somehow increase the effectiveness/use different filters/ or somehow make it so the more standard style 10"x4.5" cylindrical filter is not just needing to filter pure mud?
I'm thinking that both options are viable and probably likely (as well as cleaning more frequently now that I've refamiliarized myself with the well itself). Opinions, thoughts?
Option 1. Add bentonite or some form of hydraulic cement around the inside perimeter of the well to stop the inundation of sediment. The bottom of the well is just bedrock so I'm hoping the well would still allow water in and seep up through the rock rather than the surrounding soil. I'm thinking this would help against ground level contamination as well? The question here would be the correct product to use as I am just trying to seal the perimeter where the sediment sneaks under the well casing and into the well and not render the well useless or completely seal it off.
Option 2. Somehow add a filter to the sump pump either in the well (filter bag if sorts) or somehow increase the effectiveness/use different filters/ or somehow make it so the more standard style 10"x4.5" cylindrical filter is not just needing to filter pure mud?
I'm thinking that both options are viable and probably likely (as well as cleaning more frequently now that I've refamiliarized myself with the well itself). Opinions, thoughts?
