Well maintenance question

[spiral_72]

Hello, I've been referencing these forums for some time

My well is drilled, 6in casing with a 3/4hp pump at 220ft depth in South Carolina. 10 yrs ago I calculated/estimated 500gal of output before running the well dry in ~45 minutes. That give me the impression I had great flow into the well. The past six months we've been running out of water on a regular basis, even after conserving and dividing the wash days, etc. The local well guy determined we have less than 0.5gpm flow into the well now. He claims I need a new well, which I very well may, however in the interest of saving or postponing the $7000 expense I've been trying to come up with alternatives.

I have an idea and have searched for hours trying to see if it's a good one. The closest I've found to my idea is hydo fracking:

If I dump ~200-300 gallons of water on top of the well, then pressurize well under the cap with air to ~100psi, wouldn't this "back flush" the well? Can you think of any major problems with the idea or would it be a waste of time?

I'm not gonna spend the money without a fight

 

[Craigpump]

Hydrofraking is certainly an option, up here we like the well to be at least 300' deep so there is enough well to properly develope. We typically use at least 3000 gallons of water pumped through an inflatible packer, usually pumped into 2-3 different zones in the well. The pump we use is capable of 2800psi, but most of the time the water begins to invade the structure at 2000psi give or take.

The problems you are going to have are:
1) a few hundred gallons of water probably wont do much
2) a hundred pounds of air pressure wont do anything
3) you have no way to contain the pressure in the well
4) if you try to pressure up on the casing, you may ruin the seal between the casing and the rock socket it sits in which would then allow surface contaminants to get into the water

 

[Sponsor]

 

[spiral_72]

So not only no, but .......

#3 - I was planning to cap the pump output pipe so the water didn't push into my house plumbing and seal with the well cap.

Regardless it sounds like it won't work. Thank you for the response even though that's not what I wanted to hear. The air would develop 2800# force with maybe 1000# of water. I thought surely that would do it. Oh well.

 

[Valveman]

You didn't say if the casing is steel or PVC, but never air up PVC. It makes really good shrapnel.

 

[spiral_72]

It's a PVC casing. I'd read about air in PVC, but I figured the pressure of the ground on the pipe would offset any pressure I could put in.

I'm going to do some more research in the off chance I find something I find a fix I don't have to borrow money for. It sounds like they used to use a stick of TNT I'm fresh out of that though.

 

[Valveman]

You might try Cotey Chemical. They make things to clean up and rehab wells.