OT - Water Well Problems

first things first. have you run the pipe full open before it enters the pressure tank/house. do that, full flow and see if it turns clear.

it could take awhile, depending, hours maybe. --Loren

I been where you're at more than once.

Try to pump the hell out of it for a while and then flush everything in the house. May fix it, probably just for a while. I had to do this once per year. Then I added a filter right after the pressure tanks. When it got to where I was changing filters once/week and drinking bottled water, I called the well man. This took a period of five years.

My well screen had corroded away. This is in the bottom of the well casing and lets water in but keeps dirt/silt away. Way less common but possible is a crack or hole in your well casing or pitless unit letting silt in the well.

-- An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Two apples a day gets the doctor's OK. Five apples a day makes you a fruit grower, like me.

Karl Townsend in beautiful Dassel,MN

Gary, thanks for the input. See my responses below.......

Yes, large draw, been trying to keep the lawn green for a wedding reception that was yesterday, same day all the problems started. I guess no more green grass during long warm summer months while on a well.

All I know is that the paperwork says that it is a F&W submersable pump, 1 HP, 10 GPM. I'd have to undo 4 bolt on a round cap on the pipe to look down in there. Should I do that?

This morning, it is better, still gray, and a little bit of silt. Nothing like yesterday. Maybe this will clear up on its own I hope.

Thanks to all for the help.

Lane

Sounds like you over pumped the well during a dry period where the water table had dropped a bit. Once you draw it down too low, you get the silt at the bottom. Doesn't do the submersible pump any good either.

If you did a lot of pumping (another post says you did) then you may be ok. If it was normal pumping, I'd say you had a failed well, time for a new and deeper one. As in $$$$$$ In the mean time, you should be able to get back to normal by running a small flow on a sprinkler. After a day or so it should have cleared enough for you to flush all the lines in the house.

Cheers.

Lane wrote:

Sounds like some of the clay on the side of the hole fell to the bottom. In my case when that happened, my pump motor developed a leak and water got to the windings. The current flow to the pipe caused corrosion of the pipe and eventually a leak in the pipe. Water from the leak washed dirt down from the side of the well Replaced pump and pipe and after some pumping all is well..

Hope you find that just pumping the dirty water out will clear things up.

Bill K7NOM

Whole lots of possibilities... BUT:

If you don't have a water tank that has an *air bladder* then you could have just filled up the bottom of the tank with all sorts of crap... now it is coming through the pipes finally.

Unless of course, your tank exits on the bottom... most don't.

This happened over years here on the shore of the Hudson river, where the well goes 200 feet through limestone, and is below the level of the river (!!) but still can go dry! This less than 150' from the shoreline.

All sorts of nasty grit comes up the pipe.

But 99% of it stopped when I switched to a WellMate brand air bladder fiberglass tank... I don't endorse that brand, btw... '- )

But since it was a rented house, the aholes who owned the horrific but nice looking thing got to keep it. They didn't deserve it...

Ymmv.

_-_-bear

Lane wrote:

I think that's it then. Give it a couple days rest, and the muck should settle out to the bottom of the well. Realize that a 10 GPM well can't supply 10 GPM

*all day*. That's only its surge capacity (for something like 20 minutes, then you need to let it recover for a couple of hours). If you don't let it recover, you start pulling in muck.

There is some stuff you can throw down the well to speed up the settling out of the muck (beermakers use it), but I wouldn't do that until I saw if it would recover on its own with a couple days rest.

Gary