How to Work on a
Water Well Pump

How to Work on a Water Well Pump, a little history:

I woke up last Tuesday morning and turned on the bathroom faucet and much to my dismay no water. I knew it was time to call a professional water well contractor. As you may already have read on the Water Well page we bought our land with a water well already on it that had not pumped in many years. It had been installed by the previous owner prior to building a house, which was never built.

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After doing my research (actually I had done it before, I knew the well was on barrowed time) I called the most qualified water well professional that I could find. Having a reliable source of water is so essential. This is why I made sure the job was done right.

The water well contractor came out and reworked the well and installed a new water well pump. This is a picture of his water well rig . He started out by positioning his rig over the well to start pulling pipe from the well. The submersible water well pump is installed on the bottom of the pipe screwed into the 1 ¼ inch pipe. You will notice a tall boom on a truck crane extended into the trees. The crane is used to pull the well pipe out of the casing.

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After disconnecting the piping and the electrical wiring to the well pipe and the pump he put a chain around the well pipe at the first pipe 90 and pulled the pipe from the well.

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The Well contractor then pulled the pipe out of the well casing to the first screwed coupling. The pipe that was in the well was galvanized schedule 40 pipe and each length was 21 feet. They used galvanized metal pipe in the 80’s when the well was originally installed (more on the new pipe later). He securely clamped the pipe below each joint then broke the coupling on the pipe and then laid the pipe down. After each joint was laid down he attached the crane to the pipe in the well casing pulling the next joint.

There was 6 joints of pipe in the well casing approximately 126 feet of schedule 40 pipe with a 1 ½ horse submersible multi stage well pump hanging on it. Needless to say it was very heavy. You really need a crane or a jin pole rig to pull up this kind of weight out of a water well.

It would really be a mess if you dropped the well pipe and the submersible pump down the well casing. My well is 348 feet deep and it would go straight to the bottom and probably foul up the bottom of the well!

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The last joint of pipe had the submersible well pump screwed onto it. He disassembled it and laid all of it to the side.

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Here is a close up of the old submersible well pump. As you notice the body was made of carbon steel (note the rust). I never really knew how old it was until I looked at the tag on the pump. It was a 1984 model.

I did not want to take any chances so I had the water well contractor replace the piping, wire and all the fittings. The reassembly of the piping and pump was the reverse of pulling the submersible well pump out of the well.

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The Well contractor used stainless crimping connections and waterproof electrical tape to secure the connections to the submersible well pump.

You will notice the electrical wire that feeds power to the pump is lowered into the well as each subsequent piece of pipe is attached. He feed the wire off a spool that was pre-wound on his truck. This made it convenient and tangle free.

The well contractor attached the wire to the pipe with waterproof tape as it was feed into the hole on each joint of pipe.

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The Water Well contractor attached the well pump to the new PVC schedule 80 pipe. Each joint was attached to the other using galvanized couplings. He put a total of 7 joints of pipe back in the well casing. The well contractor put an extra joint of pipe back in because the PVC comes in 20 foot lengths not 21 like the old galvanized pipe.

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The last two joints of pipe to go in the well casing (the top two) are attached together with a galvanized tee. The well guy screwed a bleeder valve in the tee. The bleeder valve is a simple piece of hard rubber with a flapper on it that allows air to escape as the well start to pump water.

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I decided to have him add an extra 3 feet of casing to the well. I did to prevent water from draining down the well in the event of a flood. This is just a precaution to prevent containments from getting in the well. Here is a picture of the final joint of pipe right before he dropped it into the well casing.

After all the pipe was in the well casing he installed a new sealing flange on the top of the well casing and made up the electrical connections.

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Here is a picture after everything was hooked up and finished. You may notice all the standing water around the well. It came a hard rain right after we finished.

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