Well-head pipe froze and broke on new retirement house under construction

[Stan Rose]

HELP NEEDED PLEASE? Need info on how to handle situation, please. My wife and I are building a retirement home in foothills of the Sierras at about 4000 feet of elevation. We are in heavily treed area and one of the first things our builder did last Dec(2015) was to trench for the supply lines which run about 250 ft. from the well head going about 20 ft up hill(via pump) to a 5000 gal. storage tank near the house (required by CA. for fire mitigation because of our distance from a hydrant.) OK, that said, the last few nights got below 32 degrees and this afternoon we received a phone call from our foothills retirement home next-door-neighbors-to-be, telling us we had a water fountain leak and asked for our permission to shut-off the pump? So, after I thanked him for his call, I of course gave him permission to shut off the electricity to the pump. OK, so from what I have learned, a frozen well head pipe can damage or possibly destroy a well pump if left running post freeze. My questions are;

How do I now determine if the brand new pump is damaged? If so, what should I expect my builder (General Contractor) to do on my behalf and what all needs to be done ? We still have most of the interior work left to be done on the home. Assuming this is not the last hard freeze of the season, how quickly do things need to be taken care of to prevent more damage in the next several weeks of possible snow and freezing night-time temps?

 

[Reach4]

You should get a pitless adapter for your well, and you should get your pipes buried below the frost line.

Before things are fixed right, I guess you could add heat and/or insulation to prevent freezing. Insulation could be bales of hay, or regular insulation. It seems to me that heat could be from heating strips that are used in cold places to thaw roofs, gutters, etc.

I don't know about pump testing, but if water was shooting out somewhere, I expect the pump to be OK. I did not understand the reference to a fountain, but I was wondering if you were referring to unwanted water flow rather than a decorative fountain. I am not a pro.

 

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[Texas Wellman]

It depends on where it was leaking at. What kills pumps (and unfortunately sometimes the well) is when the line from the well to the tank freezes and then the pump comes on. It essentially dead-heads the pump, and when the water cannot go anywhere the pump runs and runs until the motor overheats and then it can melt the PVC casing if you have it. The motor SHOULD have a thermal overload. 1.5Hp and below have the thermal overload in the motor. 2Hp and above the T.O. is in the control box (little red reset button on bottom). Since you'rs was leaking somewhere if it was coming out of the pressure relief valve (PRV) you're probably OK. As long as the water was getting out and the motor didn't overheat.

Reach before you go spouting on and on about pitless adapters know that in a lot of cases they are way overkill in some areas. In my area we rarely freeze and when we do it's a 29 1/2 *F ordeal for 3-4 hours overnight. Since our water comes out of the ground at 67-72*F year round a little trickle of water is sufficient to keep anything from freezing with perhaps a tarp thrown over and a good old fashioned lightbulb (100W if you can find it).

I don't know anything about the OP climate. If it is expected to freeze often it may be a good idea to switch to a pitless unit but the question is will there be a well house or similar structure in the future? A lot of our wells here are setup with air maker bleeder type valves that actually keep the line between the pump and tank drained so there is no water to freeze past the check valve.

Good rule of thumb is that if the well is now functioning normally and putting out good pressure/volume it's probably OK.

I would look around at neighbors wells and water setups and see how theirs is done. Whatever steps they have taken to prevent freezing I would follow suit. Your GC should have been knowledgeable about this from the start. Perhaps it is on the list but they were unprepared or behind schedule and did not get it done. I would leave the breaker off when the site is vacant and during hard freezes.