sucking sand

[fitzy211]

I recently boughtme a house and land at an auction, the well for the house is 500 feet deep and suck sand. What is a reletively inexpensive fix? I have been told you can let it suck sand and start dumping pea gravil in the well and eventually it will stop sucking sand. I imagine that would kill your pump. any suggestion would help. I a novice at tis well business.

Thanks

Shane

 

[Alternety]

How deep is the pump set? If it is right at the bottom, raising it may help the sand thing. Is there a screen on the pump end? If not, one may be needed.

Sand can be filtered above ground, but sucking it through the pump is not a good thing.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Sammyhydro11]

Pumps are not set to the bottom of wells and even if that was the case, raising the pump in most every case, doesn't solve anything. Sand issues in a deep well like yours is either coming from a dormant seam that has started producing water or a bad seal where the casing is placed in the bedrock. What i do for most of my customers experiencing sand issues with deep rock bored wells, is a camera inspection to pin point the issue. From there we come up with a game plan. A lot of times a simple cartridge filter will resolve the problem depending on how fine the sand is and how much there is. If the sand is fairly coarse, a spin down filter works real good. Sometimes correcting other issues with the water quality will resolve the sand issue. Like using a down flow acid neutralizer to correct low ph and at the same time the calcite media filters the sand and gets rid of it during the backwash cycle. A good potability test is a good start to see if there are any other issues besides the sand.

But that's just a hole drillers thoughts.

sammy

www.tylerwellandpump.com

 

[Gary Slusser]

A backwashing acid neutralizing filter should not be used if there is sand in the water.

The filter mineral is too heavy to be lifted as much as it would need to be to allow back washing sand out of the mineral bed.

Remove the sand before any filter or softener.

 

[Sammyhydro11]

It shouldn't be assumed that the customer doesn't have a system adequate enough to properly lift the bed. That's why it takes a professional to look over the system to make sure that the well pump puts out enough volume and pressure to lift the bed to properly clean it. It all comes down to how much sand is in the water and the size of of it. I would agree that if the sand was too heavy and there was a lot of it, an acid neutralizer should not be used. But not knowing any of the correct information to determine that and just saying an acid neutralizer should not be used is misleading.

sammy

www.tylerwellandpump.com

 

[Gary Slusser]

No it's true, an acid neutralizing filter should not be used if there is sand in the water. No AN filter that's large enough to buffer the acidity to bring the pH up to 7.0 is going to be able to backwash sand out of the tank.