Pot8ohead
New Member
Hi all,
Posting this on behalf of my brother, who's experiencing serious problems with his sandpoint well.
This past January, he ran out of water & thought that perhaps frost had been driven into the ground and caused his pipe to freeze. He tried pumping hot water into the pipe, hoping to melt any ice build-up, but that didn't work. Occasionally, as the weather warmed, he'd try again to get the pump to draw water, but never did have any luck.
He eventually decided to wait until now (yesterday, to be precise) to put in a new sandpoint, since the quality of water from the old wasn't that great anyway and because he thought the problem might be that his old well had possibly just run dry (the water table has been a lot lower where he lives these past few years).
After witching for water, driving 14' of pipe into the ground (the old well was only 13' in), hooking up all the necessary components for a new well head and splicing into the old 1 1/4" pipe that leads to the pump, he's having the exact same problem as before.
We know there's water down there, but it's just not being drawn up and he can't figure out what the problem is. When he primes the pump, he can only pour approximately 1/2 a gallon of water in before it starts coming back up the prime hole (not sure what that's called). Before connecting the new well head to the old line leading to the pump, he poured water in from the pump end and it came out the other end, so we know there's no obstruction, but since there's roughly 46' of pipe between the pump and the new well head, it seems like he should be able to pour much more than 1/2 a gallon in before having it come back up through that hole.
The majority of the pipe running between the pump and where it was spliced into a new section leading to the well head is above ground, so we can tell that there are no leaks.
Shortly after the pump stopped drawing water and before thinking the pipe had frozen somewhere, he thought the issue may have been with the pump itself, so he replaced it with a brand new one (1/3hp jet pump). He also replaced all fittings between the pump and the line.
Does anyone know what the problem might be? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Posting this on behalf of my brother, who's experiencing serious problems with his sandpoint well.
This past January, he ran out of water & thought that perhaps frost had been driven into the ground and caused his pipe to freeze. He tried pumping hot water into the pipe, hoping to melt any ice build-up, but that didn't work. Occasionally, as the weather warmed, he'd try again to get the pump to draw water, but never did have any luck.
He eventually decided to wait until now (yesterday, to be precise) to put in a new sandpoint, since the quality of water from the old wasn't that great anyway and because he thought the problem might be that his old well had possibly just run dry (the water table has been a lot lower where he lives these past few years).
After witching for water, driving 14' of pipe into the ground (the old well was only 13' in), hooking up all the necessary components for a new well head and splicing into the old 1 1/4" pipe that leads to the pump, he's having the exact same problem as before.
We know there's water down there, but it's just not being drawn up and he can't figure out what the problem is. When he primes the pump, he can only pour approximately 1/2 a gallon of water in before it starts coming back up the prime hole (not sure what that's called). Before connecting the new well head to the old line leading to the pump, he poured water in from the pump end and it came out the other end, so we know there's no obstruction, but since there's roughly 46' of pipe between the pump and the new well head, it seems like he should be able to pour much more than 1/2 a gallon in before having it come back up through that hole.
The majority of the pipe running between the pump and where it was spliced into a new section leading to the well head is above ground, so we can tell that there are no leaks.
Shortly after the pump stopped drawing water and before thinking the pipe had frozen somewhere, he thought the issue may have been with the pump itself, so he replaced it with a brand new one (1/3hp jet pump). He also replaced all fittings between the pump and the line.
Does anyone know what the problem might be? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
