Well: A deep subject for shallow minds
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Well: A deep subject for shallow minds
Posted by HalfBuBBleOffPlumb on April 24, 2024 at 11:22 pmSo I’m not sure if I’m posting my question in the right area or not as I dont get on here as much as I’d like…
How would I go about finding how deep my sons well is? He bought the house about 5 years ago with the well already on the property servicing the house. I looked online for permits and the only one found was in ’21 for his roof. I didnt see any type of ID plate or info on the well to show who drilled it or when. We re trying to determine how deep the well is to know if a hand pump could be hooked up and /or if solar battery/generator would be needed to have water in grid down situation. Next question: is there a water filtration system that helps with sulphur/iron as a water softener system is not in his budget right now.
Thanks-
Half Bubble-
Hanidu-Acres replied 6 months ago 8 Members · 16 Replies -
16 Replies
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You should be able to contact the agency responsible for water conservation/water districts. The well driller would have had to pull a permit to drill the well and they should have the information on the well or be able to tell you who drilled the well and they will have records. Short of that, your could loosen the well cap and send a string with a steel weight on the end all the way to the bottom of the well. As you pull up the string, mark the string were it is first wet then finish pulling up the string. Measure how much string was lowered, then the length of the wet string. Now you know they depth of the well and how many feet of water is in the well. Now you can also figure how far down to static water level.
- This reply was modified 7 months ago by BigBoyinMo.
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Good evening HalfBuBBleOffPumb
I have some knowledge that I would like to go private with the information.
Gizmo
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I’m not too sure about checking the depth of the well, short of pulling out the well pump. I believe that there are some ways to check things like water depth using sonar, although I don’t know how well they work (no pun intended). After checking Amazon, it doesn’t look like there’s a DIY solution for that, so you may need to call a well service company for that.
Otherwise, you might be able to check the depth with a long string. After tying a weight to it, you could lower it down until you hear the weight hit the water. After that, pull it back out and measure the dry part of the string. That should at least give you a pretty good position of the static water level. The pump of course would be a bit lower (perhaps 15-20 feet lower?), although how much lower could vary a bit.
For the iron/sulfur issues, you can purchase filter housings and iron/manganese and carbon block cartridges to filter the water. The iron/manganese cartridge should filter our the iron, and the carbon block filter should filter our the sulfur smell. While you’re at it, I would also advise installing a sediment filter ahead of the others.
On my well, I installed four filter housings in series, followed by a UV filter. The housings contain the following filter cartridges: a 10 micron pleated sediment filter, an iron/manganese filter, a carbon block filter, and a 1 micron particulate filter. After passing through the four filters, the water passes through the UV filter to kill any remaining biological contaminants. The housings I used are for the large 4″ x 20″ cartridges, so I can have a higher rate of flow and so they last longer between changes. I bought the housings and filters for my system on Amazon. I didn’t buy a pre-configured filtration system, but rather just bought the components and built my own filtration system.
If you decide to go this route and install these filters on the incoming water line, be sure to install shut-off valves before and after the filters, to make servicing the filters much easier. That way, when you change filter cartridges, you only need to drain water from the section between the valves, not the entire house.
- This reply was modified 7 months ago by Farm-Ranch-Homestead. Reason: Added info about where I bought my filter housings and cartridges
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Thanks for the info, I ll pass along the filter details to my son. He works out of state majority of the year so trying to do what I can to help out and get things situated at his place as best I can.
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I always use a fishing line and sinker… You can here the static level of the water, when the sinker hits the water, Pull out and measure the length of the fishing line, Then allow it to go all the way to down to the pump. To get full depth you would need to pull the pump out which normally involves a machine to help do so if it is very deep.
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Thanks for the info, naturally I have both line and sinker!
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My Gmaw had an old well we use to draw water from way back when when I was younger, the way we measured the water depth was to take ordinary cotton string and tie a weight to it, lower it into the well slowly until it stopped, pull it up and use a tape measure to check from the weight to where the wet area stopped, she had a 500 ft spool of string, It always worked for us, not scientific by any means but close enough. Hope it helps a bit.
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Thanks. A string or line and a weight seems to be the general consensus. Just trying to figure out the depth to see if he can utilize a hand pump or if it’s too deep for that.
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Update: so after contacting the River water mgmt company and the county environmental health dept. I found all the info regarding the well. Its 2″ / 85′ deep. Not nearly what my son was hoping for but still. I also contacted the well company that drilled it regarding a hand pump, they said more than likely its doable but would need to come out and take a look at a few things. So I ll need to schedule that when I can get away from work for a few which shldnt be too hard to do. Thanks for everyone’s input and suggestions!
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For sulfur water a chlorine injection pump into a mixing tank will kill the smell. Adjust pump stroke to minimize chlorine odor.
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And now we have another concern at my sons place regarding the well. When the well ppl came out they mentioned to my oldest son (youngest sons house, oldest just moved there to keep an eye on the place), he needs to run the water in the house or somewhere else on the property while watering the garden because the pump keeps shutting on and off. He said they tried running another hose at the same time and it still kept shutting on and off. Is there anyway to correct this without the worry of burning up the pump? Side note, the well ppl were out to give an estimate on a water softener system regarding the iron and sulfur, not for the well shutting on and off when watering the garden. Any advice is appreciated as I know very little about wells / pumps. Thanks!
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There’s a possibility that a larger capacity pressure tank would help.
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