Well pump advice and recommendations

So I'm having a well drilled in a couple months (the drilling company is so busy, I'm on the waiting list) and I'm trying to do a little research on what brand of submersible pump to buy. I don't know anything about well pumps. I'm inclined to get a 230v pump as, from what I've learned about motors in years past, any 230v motor is more efficient than 115v. I've been looking at different pumps on the internets and I want to shy away from the pumps that have.... plastics. Most have a stainless steel housing, some have plastic water entry screen to keep the pebbles out of the impeller, and plastics on the top where a pipe and rope are attached. I've seen some others that, from what I can tell, appear to be all metal. Brass fitting on top, stainless pebble screen, and so on. Two that I've found that appear to be all metal are Tuhorse and Schraiberpump. They look good, but I can't find much information about them or where they're made. For all I know they could be sexy pieces of chineseium that will crap out after a year of use. There also seems to be a lot of different manufacturers. I'm trying to sift out the junk from the quality pumps.

Fellow permies who have a well, what kind of well pump do you have? And if you have any other advice on wells, I'm all ears! Thanks!

Around here the people that drill the well also install the pump. They are preferred dealers and as such the well gets what they have so there is little shopping around. There really is no sense too anyway, with the exception of going with Stainless Steel and 230 volt, they are all the same for residential usage. Don't even consider 115 volt, and honestly I was surprised they still make them. The amount of force it takes to push water up out of a 300 foot hole (like mine anyway) is so tough, 230 volts is needed at the start. After it starts flowing the electrical requirement goes down, but you need some clout when the contactors kick in.

Mine has been down in the hole now for 23 years and working flawlessly. They drilled the hole and I got the pump system off them, but I ended up installing it. It is very simple, I think a 5th grader to install one.


By the way: Did you have your well location witched?

Hey Travis thanks for the reply. They do appear very straightforward to install, and it's something I'd like to do myself instead of pay someone else. I have not had the site witched yet. I've asked my new neighbor if he knew anyone who did water witching and he didn't, unfortunately. I'm still in the process of trying to find someone who does. I looked on the internets about dowsing, and some folks seem to imply that most anyone can do it, if they believe in it, but do acknowledge that a few people are gifted for such a thing. I asked the guy from the drilling company if they did witching and he said no. I then asked him if they've ever drilled dry holes and he said "yeah. One place we had to pick up and move over 50 or 75 feet and try again. Ended up drilling 4 holes before we found water." That is exactly what I want to avoid. I believe there's something to water witching and certainly want it done instead of blindly drilling into the ground hoping for the best. I'm half way inclined to try it myself, but I'd prefer to find some old timer who's done it all his life.

Too bad you do not live closer as my father does it. I have done it and it worked for me, but I don't consider myself a dowser or water witcher.

Funny story: when I started to build my current house an old duffer asked me if he could witch my well for me, and so I said sure. He brought out his brass sticks (my father uses a forked apple twig) and set about doing this and that. He ran this way and that, up and back and in the end said, "Right here, drill right here there is water, you can tell because it runs right to your Grandmother's hand dug well (which is 27 feet deep and has never run dry). Then he said, "Do you want to know how deep it is?" And I said, "Humor me Leland," so he brought out more sticks, did this and that, and put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Get a backhoe son, 17 feet down."

So I drilled in that exact spot, not a foot left or to the right of it, and went down some 290 feet! But here is the interesting thing, when you drop a block of wood with a string on it, it is 17 feet down. In fact water is always 17 feet down. That is because water typically rises to the depth of ledge, and my well hit ledge at 17 feet. So in a lot of ways old Leland was right, water was 17 feet down. Now the well itself, I am down pretty deep at 300 feet, only get 2 gallons per minute, but it is more than enough. A well holds 1.5 gallons of water per foot, so I would have to pump 425 gallons of water before I even began to run out of water, and a family of 4 only uses 150 gallons of water per day.

Now what lies under the earth has always fascinated me, but I am simple minded I guess. As many know I got a gravel pit and on occasion mine gravel and find the patterns of various types of gravel interesting. When I was a welder I welded up sections of pile for various bridges, tunnels and viaducts and always found watching how the ledge beneath us rose and fell was interesting. But how in the world the old timers knew where to sink hand dug wells here is beyond me. As I said, ledge is 17 feet down here, yet we have a hand dug well just a few feet away that is 27 feet deep and lined by hand with rockwalls. At another spot on my farm where ledge is right on top of the ground, is another 27 foot deep well. How in the heck did they know to sink a well RIGHT THERE? I know nobody wants to dig a dry hole, but considering the work a hand dug well involved, I could not imagine going through all that trouble for a dry one. But how did they know exactly where to sink one?

Up in RI I was having a well drilled and borrowed some "witching rods" from a guy who had done some work for us.  Then I walked around watching them cross and uncross and finally decided on a spot and we got water, but I don't think it was that big a deal, the creek was only 30 0r so feet down and the soil is actually sand pretty deep so we probably would've got water almost anywhere. Then they drill a deeper hole to act as storage, the depth related to expected usage and flow.

Anyway, the story they told me was that his father had gotten the rods from an old native american...  but then as they were leaving I saw them sort of grinning at each other.

Turns out a couple of straightened coat hangers  bent into an L shape will do as well. get a couple 4 inch pieces of pipe and put the short end of the L in them, so when you hold the pipes the rods move freely. try and hold them level, and they will do their thing.

And that's pretty much exactly what these guys had loaned me, only with an interesting background story. to their credit I was offering to rent them but they wouldn't take any money.

From what I was told they cross and uncross according to where the water is, but it is reversed for men and women--I forget if they cross for men where there is water, and uncross for women or vice versa.

But it did seem to work that way

Here's what I think I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go and make an attempt to witch it myself, and hopefully, between when I do this and the drilling rig arrives, I can find someone who claims to do it, and see where they say to drill. Heh! It'd be interesting to see if we come up with the same location. I feel this is better than drilling where the well rep randomly hammered a wooden stake in the ground.

That is what I did on my well. I had my father witch it, then I had old Leland which it, and when they came out to the same spot thought for sure it would be a good place to drill.

I even had the well drillers show me how to witch and the father did. The thing was they worked for me whatever we tossed on the ground. Throw a penny down and the things would cross over the penny. Toss a stick down and they would cross over the stick. Whatever it was that I had in my mind to find, it would cross when I passed over them. Electrical wires, plastic pipe...water, that was the mans claim. But when I asked his boys who really drilled the well, they said their father only believed in it if the customer did!

Bob is indeed right though, bent coat hangers was what I use, but have seen a lot of different items used. Apple, willow, etc...just use a forked stick and a light touch and the stick should drop/rods should cross.

Myself, I think the cost of setting up a well drilling machine is so costly, they just drill down until they make x amount of money, hitting water or not.

Heh. Interesting story Travis. Yeah, I certainly don't want to run into a situation where they're drilling and not finding anything, I don't have a blank check for this project. I don't know if every state has this, but the TN state gov't has a division of water resources, and every well in Tennessee is plotted, and information such as depth and type of water is logged in a book, or I guess database nowadays. So I called them, gave them my lat. & lon. coordinates of where I'll be drilling and the guy said all the nearby wells are approximately 200ft deep, give or take about 25ft. He did say there was one not far from me that's 70ft. Knowing this information makes me feel pretty good about going into this, I guess I'm a little worried that I'll be the exception and they'll have the bit down 300ft asking me if I want to keep going at $17ft. That's the dreadful scenario in the back of my mind.

Travis let me ask you this. If you were buying a new well pump tomorrow, what would you get? I've done some more searching, and I'm kinda liking the Goulds pumps.

That is VERY smart on the part of TN. I say that because when I was on the Soil and Water Conservation District board we did a study on wells and it was not good. Maine used to have 3 times the population it has now, and as such hand dug wells dotted the landscape. These are the worst kind because they collect the surface water unlike modern ones that seal it out. At my house alone I can throw a stone at 3 of them, and have over 100 on this farm. Considering every one is a direct pollution source point right to our aquifer it is kind of scary. Maine fortunately is 90% forest so we filter our ground water well, but the potential exists.

I have always joked that I am fortunate to know where these old wells are because it saves a lot of shoveling if people make me mad. (Joking people) I also joke that us New Englander's used to burn people at the stake, but realized it was a waste of good firewood, and btu's are hard to come by. (Again joking, and I can say that because my family was part of the Salem Witch trials and not in a good way). My cousin lives in middle TN too (near the Jack Daniels Distillery) and her husband refuses to move to Maine because "I have seen the piles of your firewood here, and if it is that cold", he says, "there is no way I am leaving."

As for pump brand, I honestly cannot remember what is in the bottom of my well for a brand. I really cannot say anyway because in New England most water is so hard that we can get by with cast iron pumps with out issue. When I had mine installed we could still get them, but because regional, pump makers were getting away from regional sales and into just making ones that worked across the country, so I think stainless steel is the best out of the options that exist now. So I guess the statement that my pump has been down a well for 23 years means little to you in TN, only because the water might be prone to rusting it out unlike here. I know my Grandmother had a Goulds pump and it went in the ground in 1966 and was redone in 2006. I think they are pretty good based on that. It was so old it did not even have plastic pipe, it was solid copper (not coiled copper).

in 1994 when mine was drilled it was $15/$15 meaning $15 for casing and $15 a foot for the drilled well. Since I hit ledge at 17 feet, it meant I only had to have (1) 20 foot length of pipe for casing (17 in the ground and 3 feet above), then the rest is just a hole in ledge. So in my case the cost was $4370. I told them I only had $2500 and at 150 feet told them to stop and that I was out of money, but they kept drilling. Every 50 feet they would pan the rock and say, "this is good shalely ledge, we'll hit water any time now", but didn't.