First I want to say Thanks!! This forum helped me get through a recent well problem. Through various threads I found enough information to help let me know what was going on and to be patient. So I wanted to post my situation in case someone else can learn from my experience. I do have one follow up question as well.
My situation:
We live in NW Virginia, we just bought our first house and this is our first time living with a well. We moved in 3 months ago and the house was vacant for about a year before us. We have a 340’ well that is almost 5 years old with a submersible pump about 330’. The water table is at 50’.
One morning we woke up and had no water - no hint of problems before. Long story short, we pulled the pump and found that the torque arrestor was about 10-12’ above the pump (my neighbor, a plumber who had helped work on the pump before knew that it was originally installed just above the pump). The problem was the wiring just above the pump had worn through and disconnected – believed to be caused because the arrestor was too high. We cut out the bad wiring and rewired the pump. We then put the pump back in the well and it worked.
Afterward we got quite a bit of silt (very fine clay) in the water which was expected since I knew we disturbed the well. My neighbor said the prior owners had a bad sediment problem that he helped fix by raising the pump 10' and putting in a whole house filter. He suggested letting the well settle, that’s also what the prior owners did when the sediment problem would come back. That worked for them.
After waiting about 20 hours we still had silt coming out of the well and orange/brown water getting through our filtration. My neighbor said I could try flushing it a bit which I did. I ran a garden hose from the pressure tank for quite a while and then turning it off. The next day I did the same thing and the water was getting clearer. Then instantly the water turned to mud. My neighbor said this was much more than the prior owners problems.
That is when I started looking for help from professionals and online, finding this forum. I called the guy that drilled the well and another that maintains systems in our area and they both said to pull the pump up to above 265’ (where the well drilling report says our water source comes in) and FLUSH. I did that and on the fourth morning the water started getting clearer. I then dropped the pump back down to 330’ and flushed mud again but only for another day until the water got clear enough to run through the house. Two more days of flushing through the house and things are starting to look good.
So in case someone else is in a similar situation, I think flushing is better than letting it settle.
*remember though I only have 10 days experience with well problems and its only on MY well.
The question I have is why did the water turn so muddy all at once after I had been flushing for two days? My two thoughts are 1) that I flushed the well water down to the pump level which caused increased disturbance in the bottom 10’ of the well or 2) that I opened a new seam that brought in more sediment.
I think with the prior owners ‘letting things settle’ instead of flushing they had allowed a lot of sediment to build up at the bottom. Although it would seem to me though that it wouldn’t take 5 full days to flush out 10’ worth of sediment in a 340’ well. Also, when I was flushing at 265’ I would listen in the well and hear the water trickling in. But when I was flushing at 330’ I started hearing it GUSHING in. The guy who drilled the well didn’t think there was a chance of a new seam but he also said there wasn’t another water source below 265’ which I think is the difference in how much water I heard coming into the well.
What do you think?
My situation:
We live in NW Virginia, we just bought our first house and this is our first time living with a well. We moved in 3 months ago and the house was vacant for about a year before us. We have a 340’ well that is almost 5 years old with a submersible pump about 330’. The water table is at 50’.
One morning we woke up and had no water - no hint of problems before. Long story short, we pulled the pump and found that the torque arrestor was about 10-12’ above the pump (my neighbor, a plumber who had helped work on the pump before knew that it was originally installed just above the pump). The problem was the wiring just above the pump had worn through and disconnected – believed to be caused because the arrestor was too high. We cut out the bad wiring and rewired the pump. We then put the pump back in the well and it worked.
Afterward we got quite a bit of silt (very fine clay) in the water which was expected since I knew we disturbed the well. My neighbor said the prior owners had a bad sediment problem that he helped fix by raising the pump 10' and putting in a whole house filter. He suggested letting the well settle, that’s also what the prior owners did when the sediment problem would come back. That worked for them.
After waiting about 20 hours we still had silt coming out of the well and orange/brown water getting through our filtration. My neighbor said I could try flushing it a bit which I did. I ran a garden hose from the pressure tank for quite a while and then turning it off. The next day I did the same thing and the water was getting clearer. Then instantly the water turned to mud. My neighbor said this was much more than the prior owners problems.
That is when I started looking for help from professionals and online, finding this forum. I called the guy that drilled the well and another that maintains systems in our area and they both said to pull the pump up to above 265’ (where the well drilling report says our water source comes in) and FLUSH. I did that and on the fourth morning the water started getting clearer. I then dropped the pump back down to 330’ and flushed mud again but only for another day until the water got clear enough to run through the house. Two more days of flushing through the house and things are starting to look good.
So in case someone else is in a similar situation, I think flushing is better than letting it settle.
*remember though I only have 10 days experience with well problems and its only on MY well.
The question I have is why did the water turn so muddy all at once after I had been flushing for two days? My two thoughts are 1) that I flushed the well water down to the pump level which caused increased disturbance in the bottom 10’ of the well or 2) that I opened a new seam that brought in more sediment.
I think with the prior owners ‘letting things settle’ instead of flushing they had allowed a lot of sediment to build up at the bottom. Although it would seem to me though that it wouldn’t take 5 full days to flush out 10’ worth of sediment in a 340’ well. Also, when I was flushing at 265’ I would listen in the well and hear the water trickling in. But when I was flushing at 330’ I started hearing it GUSHING in. The guy who drilled the well didn’t think there was a chance of a new seam but he also said there wasn’t another water source below 265’ which I think is the difference in how much water I heard coming into the well.
What do you think?
