Last winter
I had issues with pipes freezing, and decided that I had had about enough of that crap. Letting the damned water trickle for a month so it didn’t freeze was not my idea of a good time. Problem is, the spot where it froze was inaccessible.
See, the city water comes into the house through the old well pit, and the well and well pump are still in there. it’s a manhole, and the manhole is plenty big enough for me to get down, but the pump sitting on the wellhead occupies a large portion of the available space. So yesterday, partner (Who can still wear the jeans he wore in high school) slid his skinny ass down in there and unbolted the pump, and today, I yanked it out of the hole.
It has a threaded hole in top for a lifting eye, and I used the cherrypicker to get it out of there. Oddly enough, the pump was actually not that heavy, it was just that the pipe was stuck in place.
Took a solid half hour to go from that to this.
The pump doesn’t weigh anything, like maybe 75 lbs, so once I got it this far I unscrewed it and yanked it. I notched the boards underneath so I could have a way to keep the pipe from dropping, but it turns out I didn’t need that. The damned thing was stuck, and I had to use the cherry picker to yank it every inch of the way. Thankfully, the well is ridiculously shallow, only about 40 feet, so it was two pieces of pipe.
Anyway, after most of a days backbreaking work in the rain, it’s all done, and out, and the old well is capped, and I can get down in the hole and put a new heat tape on the incoming line.
I’ve messed with some deep wells, and I’m glad this wasn’t one.
11 comments Og | Uncategorized
So, let me see if I have this straight:
1. You now have a well, still with water in it, but no well pump to draw it;
2. Your city water comes in through the same manhole that was dug to access your well.
Why didn’t the city water folks have their own access point to your property and/or building? Why did they put one water source right in with another? This may sound stupid (for which my apologies, if necessary), but it seems to me that planning multiple inputs from different sources to exit through a common output (or point of output) can only lead to complications – as it did, and as you’ve just fixed.
Or am I missing something?
A Spot. A stupid previous owner trick.
I will probably get an old piston pump and use the well for watering grass and such.
Plus, it’s just a convenient access point, as it’s the closest part of the house to the road.
sometime close is good enough for government water. if you are going to re-purpose the hole a little shack might help keep it from freezing.
It’s Attached To the house. It will get power from the house and be at the very least warm from the water line.
IIRC, that well pit is deep enough that you could put some foam board at the top just under the manhole and keep the whiole pit insulated enough to keep from freezing, even without the heat tape…
Yep. Plan is to do a combination of those things.
Dad had a 210 ft. well drilled at the farm in 1970. I’ve had the pleasure of pulling the submersible pump and replacing it twice.
Oy. I feel your pain. Without a rig that’s a nightmare.
Lassie, hurry, go get help! Og is stuck in the well!
….and if we’d have written the scripts, this is about when Lassie sees the squirrel and goes all spazzoid.
Oh, and right now, the water-table here on the island is about three inches above ground level. Poor reporters, all of the hype and equipment down here, and nary a crisis to exploit.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Glad your plan is working… Water in the winter IS a good thing…