The saga of the well.

After two full days of back breaking, sweaty, dirty work , we have well water.

What a frigging nightmare of a job...

When Johnathan and I tested the water originally (back in March) it ran for 2 minutes and died and teh pump to be reset on the well pressure switch each time. An electrician friend tested the windings and found it was running on start cct only, so we pulled the well , 53 ft only , but let me tell you heavy enough full of water, .......... inch and quarter black poly pipe, plus pump - old style 4 wire.

This was sent away to be tested , and came back fine, we did find on examination - a section of the Red phase wire that was open to the water, maybe this affected it too.

Anyway it took awhile to get back to working on this well..... Johnathan brought a helper this time - AB who has worked on his own well before, so he knew 100% more than the two of us.
First we tested the water depth - around 30ft from surface, then the well depth - 76 ft, plenty of water, , so we sourced additional pipe and a joiner and new cable to give us 70 ft - we pushed the pump down and it stuck at 53 ft.

The next day and half we spent trying to snag , or break whatever was down there, we dropped heavy metal, we ran chain , we made a cone to go over the pump end to see if we could slide it past , we cut a whole in the roof of the well house and connected 70 ft of 3/4 galv pipe and pushed that down hoping we could get it into the center of the pipe , that got pretty heavy and we were scared we would drop it - AB on the roof , Johnathan and me inside holding on for dear life - no go , - we made an evil looking spike with a 6ft long, 1 inch diameter steel bar , a woodsplitting wedge and rebar welded to it like a reverse grappling hook , to see if we could snag or even break it - it jammed many times but would not hold waterever is down there -

In the end nothing worked , we dropped and pulled the damn heavy spike 30 or more times - dropping it full height that it shook the ground when it hit the obstacle - and we also pulled that pump and pipe 5 or more times. We tested the water and with such a large diameter pipe we pumped the 20 ft of water in about a minute, but it also recharged in about 45 secs, so there is plenty of water.

Finally it was decided we would just live with 53 ft, as were all out of ideas , in the end we actually managed to get 54 1/2 ft , probably because we drove the obstacle down about 18 inches.

AB tested the pressure tank and the internal bladder was faulty, probably the main reason why the system had stopped working originally - yes - all that work and the issue might have been on the surface all along.

AB had an old spare tank - which was much bigger , and it was decided to redo all the piping at the top, we also found the one way valve faulty when taking it all apart - another potential issue that would have caused problems.

So a new tank, a new one way valve - and we also decided to put a new pressure switch on at same time, so all the head gear is now new.

Johnathan and AB finished up the work last night - I was playing my weekly Thursday night tennis - and today we have fresh, clean , continuous water from the well.

We are going to get the 200 gallon holding tank fixed , welded to its stand and start on some irrigation systems for the hops now.

Hops are growing nicely , plump but not much Lupilin so far , regular water is certainly helping the growth.