SAND POINT SHALLOW WELL ?'s

[greg hornung]

In Sept. of 2015 my sons and I drove an 1.25"x 36" sand point to a depth of appx. 22'. I have water at 14' and 8' of water in the well pipe, I thought I was doing pretty good for Northwestern Wisconsin. I installed a 1/2 hp shallow well pump with a 7 gal pressure tank there is also a 27 gal electric water heater.Now my situation is this, I primed the pump and ran it, it pulls up water and I'm getting air bubbles (big ones) and I can feel the check valve snapping shut. Now my questions, is my pump trying to pull up more water than the well can supply, and should I run the pump until the system is fully
"charged" and see if the pump loses prime and because the well can't produce enough water is it possible to pull in air at the point?

When we drove the well I used 5' sections of 1.25" galv pipe with drive couplings because of the height limit of the cieling in the garage of my hunting cabin. I noticed when we were driving the pipe the pipe nipple with the drive cap would loosen. Is it possible that one of the drive couplings loosend below ground level even though we re-tightend prior section of pipe and couplings?I also used teflon tape instead of pipe dope, will that make a difference? It seems odd that I have 8' of water in the well pipe and I have a 3' sand point and 5' section of pipe= 8', could it be leaking at the 2nd coupling?

Last question, i understand that a shallow well pump will only work to 25' now is that depth refering to the total depth of the well pipe or to the water level depth? If I drive the point down another 5' and I get 13' of water in the well pipe and the total depth of the well is 27' will my 1/2 hp pump be able to draw up that amount of water?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, I REALLY DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO PULL MY WELL IF POSSIBLE!

 

[Reach4]

Last question, i understand that a shallow well pump will only work to 25' now is that depth refering to the total depth of the well pipe or to the water level depth?

Water level depth to the pump or highest point in the piping, whichever is higher. That number has a little margin. Partly that is because you can draw from a little deeper when the barometer is higher.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[ACWxRADR]

Greg,

To re-iterate what Reach stated, with wording of my own, the water level that you measure in the well pipe below grade is the static well depth or natural water table height. This is the depth you need to be concerned with regarding whether the pump can draw it up. The actual well screen could be set many feet below this level, which would be fine as long as it is still within the same water bearing formation and the static water level is much higher than the bottom of the well screen.

To explain my statement about having the well point in the same formation, think of it this way, for an easy presentation... Stack several plastic drink cups vertically, fill the center one with water. Poke a long drinking straw through each cup to the bottom one. There would be no water in the bottom cup for you to suck up through the straw until the water from the center cup drips and leaks down around the straw to fill the bottom cup. If the bottom cup does fill up and you pump it out, it will be empty again until the water recharges it from the cup above.

Now think of a single, really TALL drink cup and place the straw all the way to the bottom, to the same depth as you did with the stack of cups. Fill the TALL cup up to the 3/4 level with water and sip on the straw. It will be easy to pull the water out of the cup.

But, if you only fill the cup up to the 1/4 level, it will require you to suck harder to pull the water up the straw.

This is because the pressure of the atmosphere (air) above the surface of the water is helping to force the water up the straw (or the well pipe). The deeper the water level is from the top of the straw, or the pump head, the less help you get from the pressure of the atmosphere, because the weight of the water in the pipe increases dramatically with the distance.

Eventually, you reach an equilibrium point where the weight of the water in the pipe is too great for any vacuum to overcome because you cannot create a vacuum greater than the lack of all atmospheric pressure. At this point, you have to use a "jack" to raise the water level. This is where you install an injector pump or a submersible pump which pushes or "jacks" the water up the pipe rather than trying to suck it up the pipe from the top.

RADAR

 

[ACWxRADR]

Greg,

Back to your initial question and description... What is going on here is obviously a two sided problem. First, your well screen is plugged to some extent for some reason and second, you have a seal leak between the intake of the pump and the well screen or static water level.

If you simply had an air leak alone the poppit of the check valve would not "snap" back hard enough for you to notice it.
You would simply lose prime or never be able to get a prime. Therefore, the air leak is less of a factor than the occlusion or blockage of water from or at the well screen.

If you had a pitcher pump installed at the top of the well, you would feel a great restriction when pushing the handle down to pump it. When you released the handle, it would SNAP back up violently. The air you detect is due to a leak, but you might not ever have observed this if not for the restriction of the water. The pump is building a great enough vacuum that air is being drawn in from a threaded joint or somewhere and when the vacuum collapses, the poppit snaps back into its seat with force that you can feel.

RADAR