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deep well jet pumps

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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-24          40629


Well dang, two days ago our neighbour's well stopped after spending some time frequently turning on and off while a washing machine was going. Yesterday the neighbours had to go to hospital and now they can't find a well service company that will take the job soon. It's double drop jet pump that lifts water maybe 90'.

Two days ago we fooled around with the pump. The pump was primed through a port on the pump numerous times. The suction line was taken apart and filled with water. The water level in the suction line drops fairly quickly. No attempt was made to fill the drive-line with water.

The pump shows no sign of drawing water when primed in this manner. I know that if an ordinary suction pump line won't hold water, it's almost a sure sign of that the foot valve is bad or the line is broken. I'm not sure if that is true for double drop jet pumps as well. We have a submersible pump one place, and a hand pump at another and shallow well suction pumps other times. I don't know much about jet pumps.


After returning from hospital last evening my 70-year old neighbour and an 80-year old friend concluded that the foot valve is the problem and started probing and digging to find the well head last night. My neighbour wants me to uncover the well head with my backhoe. The well head is supposed to be protected by cedar slabs, and I suppose I could get a much better idea of the exact location and depth. I still wouldn't be too happy about the idea of digging where I don't know exactly what's down there. Wouldn't be good at all doing major damage while trying to help. It also wouldn't be very good to dig a big hole and then find that the pump was the problem. I sure hope somebody shows up who's actually worked on a jet pump before, but any guidance from here is appreciated.




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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2002-07-24          40630


I am not sure what a double drop pump is. You definately need to prime the pump and repair the foot valve. At 90 feet you would need nearly 90 lb of suction to draw up the water.
The submersibles are less money now in the states. We can get one for that well for less that $300 now. I might be inclined to get a new pump.
Peters ....


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DRankin
Join Date: Jan 2000
Posts: 5116 Northern Nevada
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2002-07-24          40634


Tom, I was rooting around in the overgrown brush in front of my house a couple of weeks ago. I stepped on what appeared to be a pile of old leaves that didn’t sound or feel right. I jumped back and found I had nearly broken through a sheet of rotted plywood, which was covering a 3-foot deep hole over my septic tank. Turns out the former owner (also an old duffer) thought it best to leave the top of the septic exposed and stacked three large car tires in the hole and threw a piece of scrap plywood over the top. I shudder to think what might have occurred if I had driven the tractor over this booby trap before I found it. Be careful looking for that buried wellhead! ....


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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2002-07-24          40635


Tom;
Is the well casing metal? If so it might be best to see if you can find it with the metal detector before you dig. I would spray the position on the grass with a can of paint and then dig gingerly.
Peters ....


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Murf
Join Date: Dec 1999
Posts: 7249 Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada
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2002-07-24          40640


Tom, around here the well guys carry a piece of re-bar about 8' long. This is used to probe for the well-head and when it is found it is left in place as a marker so that the backhoe operator knows where it is too. Once the well is located I strongly recommend setting a conventional well tile over it, resting on a base of gravel. This will make any future access much easier. Tip of the week time, if you hang a compass vertically by a piece of string it will go crazy when you get near the well, this is because of the magnetic flux emanating from the steel casing stuck down into the earth acting like a 'magnetic antenae'. Best of luck. ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-25          40657


Good tips. Thanks.

After I posted here I did a quick search and quickly found a description of jet pump workings. Basically, a double drop jet pump is for deep wells. There is a suction line and a drive line to the well. The drive line carries water from the pump under pressure to a Ventura unit in the well. The Ventura develops pressure that gives water a push up the suction line. Apparently jet pumps can work to 200' but not very efficiently. If there was any doubt about the prime, filling the suction line with water should have done the trick and a bad foot valve likely is the reason water won't stay in the line.

As it turns out my neighbour's friend (ours too) has worked on jet pumps many times so at least there was some real experience available and I was happier. He even mentioned the compass trick. I have a 6' piece of rebar but the ground in the area was way too hard to probe. We lucked out and found the head without too much difficulty. It is 5' down, and I don't know if the compass trick or a cheap metal detector would have worked.

We lucked out and found the edge of protection for the line, and that gave us an angle to follow. We trenched along the angle beside the line protection (I'm still not sure exactly what it is but it's covered with vapour barrier. We undercut the trench side with hand shovels and followed the plastic and hit a cement block with some rotted cedar nearby. The block turned out to be the corner of a 3' x 3' x 3' cube of cedar covered cement blocks that contained the well head. The blocks are a substitute for a well tile.

We’ll likely finish today and the neighbours might even have water when they return from their second 6-hour round trip drive to hospital. I did learn a tip in doing this work. When we realized that we'd have to 'fish' for the lines and head, my inclination was to trench across where the lines had to run. The friend's inclination was to trench three buckets wide in the direction the lines run. 'Less chance of hooking a line if they're not protected' he said. The value of listening closely to people who have been around these sorts of projects for decades was reaffirmed--even if they don't know how to operate a hoe. That's a tip to remember I think.
....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-25          40663


I wonder if anybody has an idea of how large a volume of air a casing breather has to vent into?

The cube of cement blocks wasn't filled, and a pipe nipple for the vent comes out of the casing cover. It was just covered with a glass fruit jar (amazing that we probed all around looking for the well head and never moved or broke the glass jar.

Our inclination is to fill the cavity with sand, cover the top with plywood and top with foam insulation and then cover the whole thing with vapour barrier. Now I'm wondering if the idea might cause inadequate venting. Sure would be unpleasant to go through all work fixing the foot-valve and then have a pump that stops working every time there's heavy use.
....


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Kevin B
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2002-07-25          40677


If the pump is pumping the water into the tank to fast the pump will loose its prime...
A valve between the tank and the pump will slow the water down untill the pump can get started...
I close the valve all the way and turn on the pump... When the pump stalls I open the valve slowley... After 40 lbs of tank pressure I open it up all the way... ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-26          40682


Kevin: Thanks for the comment. I think that gives me an explanation for the priming procedure in the pump manual. I suppose the pressure valve could be bad but the pump is only 6-years old even if the well is 30 years.

We took off the suction line, filled it with water, and it wouldn't hold the water. That seemed to point toward a bad foot valve. Yesterday we pulled up the well line, and the foot valve was definitely stuck open. The injector unit (about 60' down the well) is caked with rust and deposit. The manual says a clogged injector can prevent the pump from working, and the injector should be cleaned. Of course, the manual doesn't say how. There always can be more than one problem, but I hope the foot valve is the explanation. Of course, we need a new cover since I managed to drop part of a cover bracket down the casing--part stupid on my part and part stupid in the original installation. It might not have been such a bad thing since the rubber gasket probably should be replaced on principal.

After 30-years, I'd be inclined to put new everything down the well but I doubt my neighbour will spring for the costs. Don't know how happy I'd be digging up the well head again in a couple years and maybe in the middle of winter.
....


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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2002-07-26          40685


Rebuilt the contacts on a submersible pump the other day. Could not find any parts as the submersible was more than 25 years old. ....


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DRankin
Join Date: Jan 2000
Posts: 5116 Northern Nevada
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2002-07-26          40689


I am having that problem with nearly everything around here, also 25-30 years old. Doorknobs, faucets, shower valves and track lighting. Good thing the cars are new and our personal parts are holding up.
Tom, ain't it amazing what people try to "save" money on? Kind of like rebuilding an engine and using the old gaskets? ....


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Frank R Taylor
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2002-07-26          40693


Mark has my sympathy. Our house is 45 years old and it is a full time job repairing, rebuilding and replacing things, especially toilets. They haven't been manufactured for 40 years and finding spares is getting tougher and tougher. Thank goodness for the Internet but it all detracts from tractor time. I've been looking for a water leak for the past 3 months and haven't found it yet. Just about to the point of trenching and laying a new one but I'd have to cut across sprinkler lines to do it. I'll keep looking for a little while longer unless someone out there has a bright idea on how to find it. Tell me, why do they bury wellheads 5' deep where you are? Is it because of the weather? Here in east Texas the wellhead and tanks are always right on surface, usually protected by a wellhouse of some kind with a light or small plug in heater to prevent freezing during the winter. ....


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Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2002-07-26          40695


Water leaks can be a problem. Doing things the cheap way can be costly.
The guy a few doors up has and old house. He had a large water bill for the size of the house when he bought it, but as he had nothing to compare it too, he never realized it. One month he got a bill for 300$. As water is not expensive here, this means he had used enough water to fill my 40,000 gallon pool 5 times.
He could not imagine where the water had gone. After a couple of days of checking he realized that they had connected up the city water without stubbing of the old well. The valve had rusted through after leaking for a number of years and poured the water down the well.
Thousands of dollars lost for a 8$ valve or a 50 cent cap. ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-27          40714


My neighbour surprised me and went for a professionally installed submersible. Now all we have to do is fill the pit and holes. They must have gotten tired of used gaskets.

An extension casing will be welded on to bring it above ground and I believe a pitless adapter installed. I'm not 100% on exactly what a pitless adapter is but I believe it takes the feed line out the side of the casing below ground rather than over the top and back down below frost. Yes, frost is the reason why well heads and feed lines are buried here. Four-foot is fairly safe but 5' starts getting a bit excessive. Surface pumps and pressure tanks have to be kept warm, but basements around here are heated of frost heave cracks foundations. There are a few pumps and tanks that are in small insulated spaces and use the light-bulb trick. I'd use baseboard heaters myself because they don't burn out.

If there's little snow cover early in a winter, there's a run on straw bales. People stack them on top of septic tanks and leech fields to keep them from freezing. If one freezes up, you're sort of done till spring. Steam can be used to thaw out a tank but it tends to just freeze up again. Freezing's a problem because tanks and fields can't be installed very deep or they don't work.

I think pros look for leaks using air pressure. Feed lines are disconnected at the pressure tanks and at well heads to see which segment looses pressure. My father-in-law found a leak at his cottage in an elbow at the top of a dug well. He swears that lines and fittings of the same size must be different. Well, it's fixed anyway. If I dug up a feed line I’d relay it in drainpipe so it could be changed in the future without digging up the whole trench. Got to be careful that the drainpipe can’t channel water back toward the house though.
....


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cutter
Join Date: Feb 2000
Posts: 1307 The South Shore of Lake Ontario, New York
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2002-07-27          40717


Peters,

That may be why the neighbor down the street with the well had such a great water supply that quarter? I have the same setup, town water with a split system using one well for drinking and the other seperated from the town system with a valve (it used to do the same job as the town water now does, toilets, washer and such). As soon as I have the line installed to the barn, I am moving the tank there and capping the line to the house. I don't know why I keep using the well other than the water tastes a whole lot better than the municipal brand. I had thought of the bad valve scenerio when I made the change over but figured it would be done long before the valve gives way and besides, it gives me a backup if I need one. My wife thinks I am excessive-compulsive, back up water, back up electric, back up snow plow, back up back up. Ohhhh..country living. I have been extremely pleased with the performance of these deep well submersable pumps. One of my previous homes has a jet pump and it caused me constant headaches. My wells are both around 130' deep and in fact, one pump then pushes up a hill 200' to the house without a problem! I know how your neighbor feels Tom, nothing worse than no water. ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-27          40721


A couple stories about disappearing water: We figure that we had to demolish the house at our camp because a previous owner did install the well feed inside clay tile. The feed cut into a dug well tile about 4' down, and the well didn't have a tile raised above ground. Spring runoff filled up the well and water ran down the clay tile into his cellar. That combined with moisture from a high water table that was almost at the cellar floor anyway rotted the house from the bottom. It was built before vapour barrier.

I visited a school chum who took a job in Pittsburgh once. We went to a party at his boss's new house in the burbs. The builder had done some remedial work on the new house already. According to the story, the boss looked out a window one morning and there was no water in the swimming pool. 'Yikes I must be going nuts.'

The builder had built near an old uncharted coal mine shaft. The earth settled, cracking the liner and water ran down the old mine shaft. Further inspection revealed that the house foundation also was in trouble. Apparently that sort of thing is a problem in Pittsburgh because there are many mineshafts that nobody knows about. Builders are responsible for site surveys and have to correct any resulting problems.
....


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pbenven
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 38 Southwestern Quebec, Canada
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2002-07-29          40799


Getting in a little late on this one...

My old jet pump let go last February - while I was nicely lathered up in the shower. I towelled off as best I could and headed out to the pump store. Bought a 3/4 hp Burk. I noticed when I was removing the old one that there was this weird looking piece on the end of the pipe right before the pump. It was kind of bulb-shaped and it said Jacuzzi on it. Anyways, it was old and corroded so I didn't bother putting it back. I guess some of you realize that this thing was a check valve. When foot valves go, you can temporarily get around the problem by putting a check valve in at the pump end to keep the water from leaking down out of the pipe. I went back to the pump store and bought one of those too.

I can identify with those who own older homes - ours was built in 1890. In the five years I've been here, I've already delt with my fair share of headaches. ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-30          40809


Jacuzzi seems to get around wells a lot. I think the relay box for my submersible pump says 'Jacuzzi' on it.

I still don't know a whole bunch about jet pumps but I'd think that something on the end of the pump is a venturi. A venturi (my spell checker changed it to a city in CA my first post) is on a jet pump for shallow wells and down the well for deeper pumping. If I've got it right, the venturi is what distinguishes a jet pump from an ordinary suction pump. The foot valve certainly was the main problem. It was stuck open, and not just leaking. From the looks of things, it was a race between the foot valve and the venturi to see which was would shut off the water first.

My neighbour surprised me and went for a pitless adapter and conversion to a submersible. That would have been my choice as well, but I probably would have used the main well drilling company in the area. Of course, they're probably not too available right now. A crew is a few hundred yards down the highway in the other direction. They drilled a 400'+ hole and then used some dynamite. The blast shifted a rock and trapped their $4000 rotary bit in the hole and now they're trying to salvage the hole and get their bit back.

The job probably would have been more organized if the well company had done it. As it was, I was greeted mid-morning yesterday with a request for my backhoe. The welder who came to extend the casing above ground says the hole was too small to weld in I did wonder about that on Friday, but oh well, it's somebody else's job and I'm just helping out. They also made about four trips back to town but managed to get the water on around 7:00 last night. Now I have to fill in the hole this morning before going to town. Somebody else's job has been quite a of work for me but that's just living in the country.
....


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DRankin
Join Date: Jan 2000
Posts: 5116 Northern Nevada
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2002-07-30          40814


I think I have a submersible pump in my well. No one can tell me for sure as the hole is almost three hundred feet deep and the pump has been down that hole for thirty years. Maybe it is time to plan a replacement before my shower becomes a dry cleaning operation too. ....


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TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2002-07-31          40852


If the pump isn't in the basement then it's almost certainly a submersible. The water table might be low enough that a jet pump wouldn't work very efficiently and a submersible is about the only alternative. I suppose it’s possible to put a jet pump inside a casing above the high water table but I haven’t heard of it.

I heard somewhere that good quality submersibles tend to be reliable to at least 25 years. I'm not sure how old ours is either but I've also been thinking of replacing it on general principal. Well, I guess I don't know how old the water heater is either so maybe I'll just get carried away. Canadians and beaver share a common characteristic of being obsessed with water management.

At least to replace our pump, the casing is already above ground so I don't have to find the well head and dig a sizable hole like at my neighbour's. It's a little hard to dig holes around here if a pump fails during the winter. For do it yourself replacement ideas. It's good to know that 800' of feed line filled with water and the pump gets pretty heavy. Sometimes you hear of people pulling their pumps by running the line over large diameter wheels and pulling with a tractor idling away in low gear. There are probably other 'how to's' that I don't know about.
....


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cutter
Join Date: Feb 2000
Posts: 1307 The South Shore of Lake Ontario, New York
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2002-07-31          40861


A store that sells/installs Gould pumps in this area has a tripod rig with a hand winch mounted on it. He simply sets up over the well head and cranks away. ....


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