Spring forward, "lose" an hour...and wake up with no water, too. And now...

[Jim Becker]

How's that for a "click bait" thread title. :) :D

We woke up to no running water this morning...dreary eyed given the time change, too. It was clearly the well pump so the appropriate resources were called. Three hours and a ton of money later...we have water and at a pressure we haven't seen in awhile. Professor Dr SWMBO just informed me that we also have a leak in the powder room ceiling which is just under our older daughter's bathroom. I guess the renewed pressure accelerated an issue. Sheesh! I guess I know what I'm going to be doing tomorrow!

[Peter Christensen]

We don't do DST here. I wonder that mean we won't have water problems. :rolleyes: Hope your's end there.

[Osvaldo Cristo]

Jim, I am sorry for you. What a nuisance!

...but I cannot hide you I am experiment some relief as I start to understand "it is not happening only with me".

Thanks for share your experience.

[Lee Schierer]

Just over 2 years ago we awoke with no water and no heat since the well pump supplied both systems. I also buried a ton of money in the back yard. Why don't water pumps fail on weekdays in normal working hours?

[Dan Hall]

Same goes with water heaters.

[Dan Hall]

There goes an old saying something like; "Only a fool would think that cutting a foot off one end of a blanket and sewing it on the other would make the blanket longer". Besides it confuses the dog.

[Jim Becker]

The time change was merely an anecdotal part of this. :) But I agree with the blanket thing and hope that action is taken to eliminate the change since the majority of folks "seem" to want that and studies do show negative health aspects that come with the disruption.

Lee, I did ask the guy about why these things don't seem to fail during normal business hours during the week...he chuckled. :) :D

But back to the pump... "Holy water pressure, Bat Man!!" It's back to what it should be and glorious. When they finally pulled the old one out after confirming it was dead, it was observed that there was some perforation of the pipe right above the pump, too, which was likely causing it to overwork and we also likely the cause of our fluctuating pressure lately. Despite the cost for the replacement, it's hard to complain about a pump that was dated 1990 lasting this long when the average life for a submersible well pump is 10-15 years. The previous owners put this pump in...and we bought the property in 1999. One thing is going to be of interest to me...and that's if our electric bill goes down. I have this sneaking suspicion that the old pump may have been elevating our power consumption for some time now as there's no way our two kids could be using that much. (nor me, for that matter) The next few bills should be telling.

Dan, we have two water heaters (NG tankless) so to-date, the one time we had a failure, it didn't take down the whole house. I'm going to install a shunt between the two sides of the house so that we can actually switch the hot supply so either can service the whole house in a pinch if need be. It's just a long hunk of PEX, some connectors and a couple of valves to make that work. The NG is very reliable and we have a whole house generator now so presumably, we will always have water and septic working, not to mention lights and heat/AC. (Two HVAC systems, too, albeit at different ends of the house) I'm sure Murphy can find something else to cause merriment with... :D

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Sorry to hear that Jim.

I think furnaces and air conditioners fail at the most inopportune time too!

[Malcolm McLeod]

... two water heaters (NG tankless) ... NG is very reliable and we have a whole house generator now ...
I'm sure Murphy can find something ...

Maybe not Murphy? But my favorite 29y.o. bartender wants to do away with NG.

Saw a study Friday that NG appliance replacements would cost USA $244B. Just swapping to electric equivalents of WH, cooktop, clothes dryer, and furnace (at average replacement cost) in the homes so equipped.

(No desire for a brawl, so please nuke this if it's too close to the line.)

[Brian Elfert]

Maybe not Murphy? But my favorite 29y.o. bartender wants to do away with NG.

Saw a study Friday that NG appliance replacements would cost USA $244B. Just swapping to electric equivalents of WH, cooktop, clothes dryer, and furnace (at average replacement cost) in the homes so equipped.


Why? Electric heat would drive heating costs into the stratosphere. My house had electric heat when I bought it. I replaced with NG furnace. The electric bill for the previous year was $3,500 and the electric heat was on a special 6 cent per KWh rate. My electric and natural gas bill is around $1,300 a year now.

[Jim Andrew]

Natural gas is about the cleanest burning fuel we have, can't see why government would want to mess with that. Seems to me, the smart thing would be to make the new trucks hauling freight run on compressed natural gas. Clean burning, no need for pollution controls. And, the gas companies have been setting up fueling stations along the interstate highways.

[Bruce Wrenn]

Jim, feel your pain. Only difference for me is we would pull the pump and replace it ourselves. Replacement pump wouldn't come from BORGS either! I willing to spend twice as much as BORGS want, for a pump that will last five times longer. I used to do pump installation. Everything I installed has a safety rope on it. I have a special windless that will pull a 300' deep pump is less than 15 minutes with only myself and a helper. As for the leak, "stuff happens."

[Malcolm McLeod]

Just for clarity, I am merely the messenger. I didn't drink the kool-aide at this particular bar.

[Tom M King]

Sorry for the trouble on a Sunday morning! What sort of pipe is the pump on that developed the holes? Were they wear holes from the well walls?

Since keeping a spare, cheap pump on hand, we haven't needed it. Our current pump is a constant pressure Grundfos, which is all stainless steel. The constant pressure is nice after living with 40 to 60 for 30 years.

Our previous two Goulds pumps lasted 15 years each. They were not all stainless steel, so I'm hoping the Grundfos might last longer.

I have the pump hanging on a stainless steel cable. There is a cable pulley over the cable, with that pulley on a short chain kept outside the well head. The pulley is captive by a thimbled loop on the outer end of the cable. The cable loop is a fairly tight fit over the hitch ball on my truck. I park the front end loader over the well, with the chain that the pulley is on in the grab hook welded to the top of the loader bucket, and the bucket as high as it will go. The truck pulls the pump out, but we have a large field with plenty of room to use the truck.

With help to handle the PVC pipe, we can take it out without breaking the pipe. If I'm by myself, I would just let the pipe break all to pieces as it comes out, and replace it to go back in. My Wife has handled the empty pipe going back in, by keeping a bend up in the air.

Soon after we first installed that constant pressure system, lightning took the electronic control box out, but it was under warranty. I bought another box right away, and the warranty replacement is kept as a backup, but haven't needed it in the years since then.

Good luck with the plumbing repair. Nothing is less fun than working on old plumbing.

[Jim Becker]

Jim, feel your pain. Only difference for me is we would pull the pump and replace it ourselves. Replacement pump wouldn't come from BORGS either! I willing to spend twice as much as BORGS want, for a pump that will last five times longer. I used to do pump installation. Everything I installed has a safety rope on it. I have a special windless that will pull a 300' deep pump is less than 15 minutes with only myself and a helper. As for the leak, "stuff happens."

I'm beyond doing work like that, don't have the tools/machinery and we were also under the impression that this well was much deeper than it actually was. (thankfully) The pros actually had trouble pulling it up and they do it several times a day. Whomever installed the old one had it encased in a slitted PVC wrapper which was getting caught on debris as they raised it. The well was apparently "drilled" by the old impact method back in the day, rather than bored like more contemporary holes in the ground.

[Bruce Wrenn]

The well was apparently "drilled" by the old impact method back in the day, rather than bored like more contemporary holes in the ground.Jim, I'm going on 72, so you aren't too old. Percussion cable tool was most likely how you well was drilled. New wells are drilled also using percussion, but it's furnished by a DTH (Down The Hole Hammer.) Think of a jack hammer suspended by a long string of rotating pipe.

[Brian Tymchak]

Same goes with water heaters.


... and sump pumps.... :o

[Jim Becker]

... and sump pumps.... :o

The original impetus for getting the whole house generator after a sump pump failure flooded the basement during a Hurricane in 2011...and I keep an extra one (older, but still works) for emergency use, too.

[Lee Schierer]

I'm beyond doing work like that, don't have the tools/machinery and we were also under the impression that this well was much deeper than it actually was. (thankfully) The pros actually had trouble pulling it up and they do it several times a day. Whomever installed the old one had it encased in a slitted PVC wrapper which was getting caught on debris as they raised it. The well was apparently "drilled" by the old impact method back in the day, rather than bored like more contemporary holes in the ground.

My well was drilled by the impact method and is 26 feet deep, the well casing goes all the way down and is slotted at the bottom to let water in. My 1/2 Hp Gould Pump was stainless and bronze, though the pump vane stack was plastic. The stack was about 2" shorter than new, the upper guide bearing was gone and the stainless steel shaft had been reduced in sized about 1/8" in diameter. My pump ran the house water and heat system water at 10+ gpm during the heat season for 2` years. It pumped somewhere more than 1.1 million gallons of water during that time. I'm sue I got my money's worth. The new pump should last a lot longer as it no longer services the heat system. We use so little water now that the heat system isn't using the well as a heat source that the well has become artesian.

[Tom M King]

Here, drilled wells are 8 to 6" diameter in granite, and bored wells are 30" diameter in dirt. Bored wells have casing all the way down to hold the dirt back, and drilled wells just have casing down to to top of the granite. The drilling rigs have giant air compressors, and water pumps. Water is pumped down, and air blows it all back out to keep the hole clean. The drilling rig is a million dollar hammer drill.

Bored wells here are usually less than 40 feet deep. Drilled wells can go from around 100 to 600 feet deep. They go down until they hit a good supply of water. Our well is 220 feet deep, and the submersible pump has 160' of 1" PVC above it. Without anything in the well, it sounds like a river running down there.

[Jim Becker]

I guess I used the word "bored" when I meant "drilled" in your context, Tom. Typical wells here are 100-400'. This one happens to be 60' with water at 24'. I thought it was much deeper based on a perceived conversation with the previous owners years ago, but clearly I either misunderstood or misheard or was misled. :) The casing doesn't go all the way however, according to the well pump dudes that were here entertaining me for my weekend emergency...

Lee, the pump they pulled out was stainless steel and generally "looked" pristine under the layer of gunk once it was removed from the slitted PVC shroud. It was just completely burned out. But again...29 years is a pretty long haul for these things I'm led to believe. When/if we eventually move/downsize, I'll not have to worry about the well pump for sure 'cause that's not a long, long way out at this point..

[Tom M King]

Yeah, you got your money's worth out of that one. We had one to almost last 20 years, but the second one only lasted about 15.

[Dan Hall]

Around these parts wells are either too deep to discuss or you punch a hole 20' deep in the back yard and you have to put a plug in it to keep the water from flooding the area. Artesian wells they call them. Like most parts of the country though as more and more folks find a life here, reserves of water dwindle. We are blessed in good years with a plentiful snow pack on the Sierra Nevada. While most of that drains toward the Pacific a fair amount makes it our way by natural aquifer..

[Tom M King]

Here, there is no such thing as a shortage of water. It runs out of the ground every few hundred yards as springs, and over the eons, those have eroded out to be feeder branches, and creeks, that flow into the river. A lot of people have bored wells where there is a thick enough layer of clay over the granite, but the closer to the river you get, the thinner the soil gets, so usually the granite is too close to the top of the ground to have anything but a drilled well.

Our lake is held back by one of several hydroelectric dams on the Roanoke River. So our electricity comes from this water running downhill. The shoreline of the lake is so jagged because of all these feeders, that the lake has over 350 miles of shoreline, while only being 35 miles long.

A half mile from our house, we have an abandoned rock quarry that has .8 acre of 22 foot deep water in it. Story goes that the rock quarry hit a spring that flowed so much water that they couldn't pump it out. I assume all the drilled wells around here tie into that same aquifer. Google Earth shows that the level of the rock quarry is just a little above the level in the lake, so it might all be tied together some way.