I had my well pump and bladder tank replaced yesterday after a well pump man told me it was bad. So I had another company come out and replace both components, and discovered that the well itself has gone bad somehow.

I don't know about wells, but I was told is was a clogged well point screen, broken line, tree root damage, or something else but I have no idea. So for now we have zero house water now for over 48 hours. Fortunately my neighbor is back feeding my pump with a garden hose, but I need to get this fixed real quick. My water filtration contractor who installed the pump and tank doesn't drill, understandable I suppose, drilling being a heavy equip specialty.

Any advice on how to handle this much appreciated. The last thing I need is a well driller with rip-off artistry skills.

A well point to me indicates it is a shallow, driven well. Maybe 1-1/4 to 2"?

We need a lot more info. Is it an actual drilled well. How deep and what size. 4-1/2" or 6".

What type of a pump do you have. A jet or submersible.

Based on what you have said. Replacing the well pump and pressure tank was premature and what hook and crook or just plain incompetent contractors would tell you with out actually troubleshooting it thoroughly.

I'm assuming the original complaint was no water?

So you had a well guy come out and condemn the pump and tank?
(A bad bladder tank wouldn't cause a no water issue)

Then someone else come out and changed them(?)
Why didn't the well guy do the repair? And did the new company do any diagnosing before replacing equipment?

So many questions, so little time....
What was the original complaint?
And has that changed with the work which was completed?
Single or two line pump?

You need a competent well guy.

A broken line will lead to priming issues.
A plugged screen can be found by feeding water to the well. It's either going to flow or fill up. But, of coarse, this will depend on the location of the check valve.

quote:

Originally posted by Excam_Man:
I'm assuming the original complaint was no water?

So you had a well guy come out and condemn the pump and tank?
(A bad bladder tank wouldn't cause a no water issue)

Then someone else come out and changed them(?)
Why didn't the well guy do the repair? And did the new company do any diagnosing before replacing equipment?

So many questions, so little time....
What was the original complaint?
And has that changed with the work which was completed?
Single or two line pump?

You need a competent well guy.

A broken line will lead to priming issues.
A plugged screen can be found by feeding water to the well. It's either going to flow or fill up. But, of coarse, this will depend on the location of the check valve.

Bad check valve alone can cause this because unless the line can fill up, the pump won't prime. Been there not with a well, but with a cistern running off a shallow well pump in the house. If the pipe won't hold water because of a leak, or bad check valve, the pump will lose prime, and ain't going to be reprimed so long as the water you're priming the pump with keeps running out, either through the leak, or back into the well/cistern.

Sounds like you’re looking for a referral to a competent well guy.
Call a local builder or realtor you trust and ask who they’d recommend.

A new well is expensive my friend. Go around to several neighbors and see if they remember how deep they had to drill for theirs. Newer wells have a metal tape attached to the casing with the depth & gal/min stamped on them. Very good info.

Your local well driller will know about how far he will need to drill. And he can give you a ball park price.

And it sounds like the first guy who said the tank and pump were bad screwed you. Whoever pulled the pump should have tested it before replacing it.

And, it could be a bad check valve in the pipe that is keeping the pump from being primed. Which is much cheaper than a new well.

Tell us more about your well (size, depth), pump, and what symptoms started this whole thing.

The screen pipe on my irrigation well clogs with what looks to be iron in the water.

The symptoms are sprinkler stations start off strong, then go to a dab of water petering out, then the sprinkler heads drop back into the ground until the water supply catches up. Obvious that the pump is out pumping the water supply getting into the casing.

Well guy has used

https://www.boresaver.com/

to clear the slits in the pipe. Seems to last about three years before needing it again.

It is a powder that mixes with water and is then fed into the well casing. Let sit for 48 hours then run well outside for about an hour to clean out the gunk and orange water.

I think you have to be a professional to buy the product but not sure of that.

^^ Big, you could also pour some bleach in the well(be sure to follow up with a 30sexond of water to flush it off the wiring) the bleach does some crazy science thing and the iron releases out of suspension and drops to the bottom of the well.

You guys are right now that I read thru your analysis. Here's the chronology:

1. Shallow well jet pump, mounted on top of bladder thank in my garage, is making funny sounds for about a week. Water pressure varying between trickle and full blast, unpredictable.

2. I call various plumbers, didn't realize most plumbers don't replace pumps and bladder tanks. One of them recommended a retired well pump man who still makes house calls. That was prob my first mistake. He replaces some pipes and seals things back up, pumps the air bladder from 0 psi to 30 psi, and starts testing things. The pump brings water pressure up to normal, for a few seconds, then drops about half and makes funny noises with the pressure gauge jumping around wildly. After quite a bit of time messing with it I told him to quit since he wasn't making progress, and he said the pump was prob bad. The pump was only 35 mos old and was good quality, but I didn't know at that time that those kinds of pumps normally last much longer.

3. I call my water filtration company whose given me good trustworthy service for 15 years, discover that he also replaces pumps and bladder tanks. He comes out immediately and replaces both pump and bladder tank after I told him everything the previous guy said. When it was finished he primed everything and the exact same problem happened again as with the old pump and tank. Came up to normal pressure, then started jumping around. He said the pump was cavitating (you could hear the cavitation), because the well could not provide the normal amount of water the pump was asking for. The new pump had the same specs as the old pump, and he said something was wrong with the well itself - either the screen at the bottom, a possible check valve at the top of the well pipe underground in my back yard, or the well pipe from the well head to the house might be broken with tree roots.

So that's where I am right now. A have a well driller coming on Saturday.

If I were doing it again I'd look for a company that does well drilling AND well pumps, that way they might have saved a good pump and possibly a good bladder tank as well, since you guys figured it out before I did that my old pump and bladder tank may still have been good. BUT, I don't know why the old bladder thank had zero air pressure, I don't get that. Maybe you have to top them off like car tires, but I never new that, or maybe that's not true at all.

wrightd^^^^^ Your description above is exactly what happens to my well when the screens are stopped up. Ask the guy coming to try boresaver. My well guy said he has never used it and had it fail to work. About $350 or so for the service call and product.

My backyard neighbor had the same symptoms as well and boresaver cured his problem.

And yes the bladder tank will lose air over time, or a least mine does. It was low at the time of service, aired it up to 36lbs I think, and it worked just fine.

That is very informative. Do you recall how long your Boresaver chemical cleaning job worked before you had to do it again ?

Thanks for informing me about the bladder, keeping it topped off. So now I know, though I shudda known. Not sure why it didn't occur to me to check it from time to time. I check my vechicle tires, and pump up my carts and lawn tractor tires, and my dolly tires etc. Should have thought that bladder tanks don't hold all their air over time either. Nothing does.

The way you described it, it doesn't sound like a check valve. Usually in that case, the pump won't even prime because the water in the pipe runs straight back into the well. Sounds to me like a restricted screen, a pinhole in the pipe from the well to the house allowing the pump to suck air, but still being able to maintain prime, or there just isn't enough water in the well to meet demand.

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
That is very informative. Do you recall how long your Boresaver chemical cleaning job worked before you had to do it again ?

Seems to last about three years before needing it again.

Grandma,and grandpa had a driven well that they used to water their small garden. Since it was only used a couple months a year, the sand point would plug up. Every couple years dad would have to take off the check valve and shoot it with a .22. Fixed the problem until the next time.

quote:

Originally posted by DougE:
The way you described it, it doesn't sound like a check valve. Usually in that case, the pump won't even prime because the water in the pipe runs straight back into the well.

From what I've read, a defective foot valve (that's what they're called in a jet well, because they sit below the jet head) can cause one of three problems:

Stuck open or partially open: Pump continuously cycles. System charges up, water drains back, pressure drops, system charges up, water drains back, ... Or the system loses prime and stops pumping entirely.

Stuck closed: The symptoms the OP describes.

quote:

Originally posted by DougE:
Sounds to me like a restricted screen, a pinhole in the pipe from the well to the house allowing the pump to suck air, but still being able to maintain prime, or there just isn't enough water in the well to meet demand.

If he's got modern piping, what my well guy called "dual concentric piping," that can't happen, but the system can become inefficient.

If he's got separate pipes and there's a hole in the intake pipe he has another problem: He'll be sucking ground water into his house water supply and pushing it back down into the aquifer from which he's drawing his water, thus polluting the aquifer.

What he's describing sounds, to me, like either a stuck (closed) foot valve, a plugged well point, or his aquifer has run dry.

wrightd, you don't happen to know of any major dewatering going on nearby, such as is often done as part of major construction, or a major water consumer beginning operations nearby, do you?

It could be as much as miles away and still affect your aquifer.

Negative, no dewatering ops I'm aware of. But if it makes any difference, I secured the original city plan that shows my well as 122 feet deep. I spoke to my neighbor and he said his was 130 something feet deep. So, I must have misunderstood my contractor when he said the new pump was a shallow well jet pump. I never heard of a 122 foot deep "shallow" well. I don't have the whole story obviously. He said the max depth for a shallow well was 24 feet, so I don't know why I have a shallow well jet pump for a much deeper well. I don't know much about static fluid physics.

Years ago, I lost my well, after verifying that the issue wasn't above ground. I had to get a well digging company pull the pipe. We found that the electrical wires going to the pump had abraded due to the torque of the pump starting up and eventually shorted.

quote:

Originally posted by wrightd:
the original city plan that shows my well as 122 feet deep

the new pump was a shallow well jet pump

From the second post (with details) it sounds like you think you originally had a shallow well pump - how did you make that determination?

It sounds like you found out the depth of your well after the pump had been replaced. Hopefully your contractor left the product docs for the new pump. Check there and see if the specs for that pump will handle a 122-ft well. If there is a mismatch, or if you didn't get documentation, you may want call that pump guy and let him know the well depth and see what he says.

If it turns out other than a pump size isssue, my recommendation would to find one contractor who does the whole thing and make them responsible. It seems you are putting yourself as a link between contractors who can point fingers at one another, and unless one knows well what one needs them to do, that is a tough place to be.

I have had to replace two wells due to lightning strikes, one at the house and most recently this spring one at the barn. Both of those wells are about 185 ft. deep. Lightning will travel down the casing to get to ground and when it does it blows the casing and screen. You know that's what you have when the well starts pumping sand and dirt, which will wreck your pump. The solution is to drill a new well. We had to drill a new well and replace all the equipment. This last one cost $8500.
Fortunately Farm Bureau paid for both well replacements.