Cover for Dug Well

Cover it in Dykem. Technically, it's not paint and comes in multiple colors. Might be a bit costly...

Why not simply get a piece of Stainless Steel? A 5x5 square ought to be able to be found at the scrap yard or the salvage yard somewhere. Or make a Donut using 3/16 - 1/4 plate with a 3' hole in the middle , paint that..and then use a 3' disk in the middle. Having a 1/8" piece of sheetmetal 5' in diameter..broken into 4 parts with a simple cross underneith it..will ultimately sag like a sombitch in a very short period of time if you have dogs, kids or snow on it.

And mild steel, unless you live in the desert, will rust out in less than 5 yrs in this application...when only 1/8" thick

There is a reason such covers are usually made out of cast iron

On the third hand...you can get covers that will last many decades over wells..that are made of plastic

They are becoming more popular and easier to find

As someone in your local government utility division..you may be able to ..ah..."procure" one of the proper size for very little money.

I know of a gent who needed a well cover and put a $100 bill in an envelope stapled to the back side of a fence post and the very next day it was gone...and a 3' cast iron manhole cover and base ring, was laying at the base of the post. Odd how that happens. Shrug With the increased use of plastic covers...it should be fairly easy to do a conversion of this sort.

Just my opinion. shrug

Gunner

"The socialist movement takes great pains to circulate frequently new labels for its ideally constructed state. Each worn-out label is replaced by another which raises hopes of an ultimate solution of the insoluble basic problem of Socialism, until it becomes obvious that nothing has been changed but the name. The most recent slogan is "State Capitalism."[Fascism] It is not commonly realized that this covers nothing more than what used to be called Planned Economy and State Socialism, and that State Capitalism, Planned Economy, and State Socialism diverge only in non-essentials from the "classic" ideal of egalitarian Socialism. - Ludwig von Mises (1922)

Gretings Jerry, Your plan certainly is strong enough. But you also oughta have the water tested for anything you don't want on your garden. Some wells in Washington State have arsenic in them so that might be a bad choice for watering anything you might eat. And you should make sure that folks won't be drinking the water unless it has tested clean. But you probably already know that. Eric

If you turn the C channel by itself so the 2" dimension is vertical and the

1" legs are horizontal, simply support the ends of a 5' piece, and put a 600 lb load at the center to simulate a live load of a 200 lb person jumping up and down the deflection will be 0.34" at the center and the maximum stress will be 32.6 ksi which is in the ballpark of the yield strength of A36 steel. Weld that top 1" horizontal leg flat to the bottom of your 1/8" plate, add the cross piece of channel, and it should be plenty strong (safety margin at least 5x, I'm too lazy to calculate out the effect of the plate plus channel). Best would be two channels parallel to each other spaced apart some distance, with a third channel perpendicular to those across the center, but that's got to be serious overkill. If you turn the C channel so the 2" dim is horizontal and the 1" legs are vertical going up to touch the bottom of the plate and welded there the strength drops by a factor of 4-ish, so don't do that :-). Ymmv, worth what it cost, yadda yadda :-). You are on your own for how fast the strength drops with rust.

(I love engineering power tools,

for quickie stuff like this; just a satisfied customer.)

Hello,

A few years ago, I bought a house. Clearing the jungle in the yard, I discovered a ratty old shack. Under the ratty old shack was a dug well. I demolished the shack and made a temporary well cover out of plywood and

4x4's.

Now I want to make a real cover, drop down a solar well pump and actually use the thing. Irrigating my acre with city water is expensive.

The County well guy has a strange requirement: don't paint the cover! Huh? Whatever. Government says "jump", I ask "how high"?

I am planning to fabricate the real cover out of 1/8" steel. It's thick enough so I won't worry about surface rust, and easy to work. I have a decent MIG welder, TIG welder, a small plasma cutter, and a ring roller, and I know how to use them :). I am very comfortable cutting and welding 1/8" stock.

I have poured a substantial foundation around the well with embedded anchor bolts for the cover. It came out about an inch low when I ran out of concrete. I had calculated that the requirement was 25 bags, I had 41 bags on hand. Go figure.

The well diameter is about 5 feet.

So the current plan ( subject to change ) is:

• Fabricate a flange to drop down onto the foundation bolts. Make it out of segments of 6" wide 1/8" plate, cut to size with the plasma cutter. Lay the segments on bricks on the foundation and weld them together to form a 6-foot diameter ring.

• Use the ring roller to make a 5-foot diameter ring of 1" strap. Weld the strap to the big flange. That will make up for the short foundation.

• Lay some A-36 "C" channel ( 2 inches wide by 1" high by 1/8" stock ) across the mouth of the well. Maybe one piece, maybe two pieces side by side. Maybe put a stiffening piece of 4" steel strap between the two C-channels. Cut a couple more C-channels and weld them at right angles to the main ones, forming a large "X". Weld the X to the supporting ring.

• Cut pie-shaped slices of 1/8" thick plate. Cut pump and inspection ports into two of the slices. Stiffen the ports with steel rings rolled out of 1" or 3/4" strap.

Lay the slices on top of the "X" and weld them in place. Playing with a CAD drawing, I see that I can get two slices out of a 4'x4' sheet of steel with minimal waste.

When all the welding is done, pull out the bricks and drop the cover into place on the foundation bolts.

When the cover is complete, I will build a "wishing well" gazebo over it to protect it from the weather. I made enough space on the foundation for a cute curved brick wall.

Does this sound strong enough?

- Jerry Kaidor

Jerry, the paint thing probably has to do with an EPA limitation on substances that can leach out into the water, then contaminating the water table.

There are approved NSF 'coatings' (NOT "paint") that can be used with impunity.

Lloyd

*** Ick. I was afraid of that. Suppose I made the whole cover out of the channel stock? Just lay piece after piece next to each other and weld them together. That way, any particular piece would have the support of its neighbors. - Jerry

*** I like it! I sent an email to the guys with the fiberglass manhole covers. Stainless steel would also be OK, if I could afford it. And weld it. Probably require another addition to my collection of welding gases.

And nowadays - I risk a heart attack from sticker shock whenever I set foot in the gas store.

- Jerry Kaidor

*** Good to know. The cover is going to be protected in a roofed gazebo. I wonder if these NSF coatings can be purchased by mere mortals anywhere?

- Jerry Kaidor

*** Found it!

- I'm going to ask the County well guy about it.

*** Here in the SF Bay area, even the salvage yards are expensive :(. *** Excellent idea. I just sent an email to vpcfiberglass. They already answered me and have promised to send me a quote tomorrow.

- Jerry Kaidor

If you make the 1/8" a very flat cone shape you can probably eliminate support beams.

*** I was thinking about something similar. In order to eliminate support beams, I believe it would have to be a dome. Something I simply cannot mak e. But a cone shape would help. It would effectively halve the span. The tip of the con e would be loaded in compression.

I found a video on Youtube of digging a well and fabricating a cover in a 3rd world country:

For the cover, they basically made a domed pile of dirt, a wooden ring and dumped concrete on top, with some reinforcing steel wire inside. I am not confide nt of my ability to create something like this in concrete - light enough f or say four men to lift, and yet strong enough for kids to play.

- Jerry Kaidor

Standard approach around here is precast concrete, flat reinforced slab about 3-4 inches thick, available at the precast concrete supplier, no need for you to make (or engineer) it. 6 feet is a standard size - I don't know if you could get a 5 footer, but you should be able to get a

6 footer and have 6" of overhang.

Design goal is that it takes more than one man to slide it off, though usually a front end loader is used to pick them off in practice, when needed. Two guys with levers and rollers could probably manage it if they know how to use levers and rollers.

*** Wrong. The water flows through the "coarse drain rock" but nobody can fall in. The membrane over the top keeps dirt from plugging up the drain rock. It reduces the amount of "stored water" in the well, but that only matters if you are pumping faster than the well refills. It's actually a pretty good solution, assuming the water is usable. If the water tests bad, even for irrigation, omit the well point, and the hole is filled.

What's the depth to water/bottom? A string with a weight on the end can be handy. If it's shallow (pump no more than 27 feet) a simple well-point will do the job, and the pump can be on top, sucking.

If you'd like more options or it's deeper, buy enough 4" or 6" PVC pipe to reach the bottom, drill many small holes in the section that would be below water line, and set that in place before (carefully) adding the drain rock - then you can put a submersible well pump down the hole. Given that you wanted to solar-power this, that's probably your best bet, since most of the affordable solar powered well pumps are of the submersible type.

Filling the well with concrete (which is what the $10K solution sounds like) is massive overkill.

Got an email back from the fiberglass manhole cover guy. $1200 plus shipping. :(.

- Jerry Kaidor

I just got an email from the County well guy. He says that the NSF approved epoxy paint will be fine.

I've been trying to look up the mechanical properties of the steel channel stock. Nothing is jumping out at me. Plenty of sites tell me about the structural properties of A36 steel in general, but not finding the particular shape.

- Jerry Kaidor

Crikey! We're in the wrong business...