I bought a house about a year ago and I'm just now getting around to messing with the well. The house set vacant for about 5 years with no well use. I've replaced the pump with a Simer 1/2 hp two wire pump. The well is 71'8" deep and seems to have about 12' of water in it. The pump is setting 3 feet off the bottom of the well. It pumps about 12 to 14 gpm. I've pumped it off a few times with the old pump and now with the new pump it runs dry after about 10 minutes. I have excellent pressure with a 40/60 spread but when I run the hose off the pressure tank it falls to about 32 to 38 psi until it quits pumping/ runs out of water. The well recovers after about 20 minutes. Also I seem to have black shiny metallic looking flakes in the water. The well casing is galvanized and is a 6" casing. Some people have suggested shocking it with chlorine or acid or drilling down further but I'm not sure what to do. Any help would be great thanks.
If you shock the well you will get a greater amount of water threw the screen(If it has one)and also get rid of the black flakes as well. This should help. Really. Jean
It would be helpful to know if its a screened or rock well and if it was any good to begin with. Chlorine will not clean the screen. You can put in a product called Nu-Well (its acid in tablet form). Pull out the pump first, pour in 2 gallons, let it set for a day, then pump the well (be ready for nasty foam and crud)over the top until the water clears up. I have had some good results and some not so good.
I agree, if it's screened the Nu-Well Tablets do work sometimes. I found it's important to run water down the well after dropping the tabs to make them work and wash out through the crud that is built up around the screen.
the well is in bedrock i don't think it has a screen on it but i don't know. I tried muratic acid and it seemed to open up a vein because now i can hear water going down the well. I also put some dry ice down it to agitate it. It seemed to have worked for now but we'll see.
I actually got the idea for doing that from wellowner.org. I assumed it was extremely dangerous for the fact that muratic acid is an extremely volatile chemical. However i was wondering if you had ever heard of dry acid, i had a plumber tell me that it would work better than a liquid acid? In my area we hit bedrock or limestone around 15 feet so i don't know it they screen them or not. Also can someone tell me what the black metallic flakes might be?
Well Concerns
Posted - Jul 20 2010 : 9:59:04 PM
