Old shallow well on raw lot - what should I know before choosing a pump?

I have an old shallow well on a raw half-acre in northwest Missouri. It has a wooden cover right now, no power on the property yet, and the old pump setup is rusted out and unusable. The pump that was there was marked for a 0-25 ft shallow well.

Visually, I think water may be around 20 ft down, but I do not have real measurements yet. A certified well guy is supposed to look at it soon.

My first use would be plant watering and land work, not drinking water. Long term, if the well is usable, I’d like a simple setup: maybe a small submersible pump, maybe solar-direct to a tank, maybe portable power first. I don’t want to buy a pump or tank before I know what the well can actually do.

What information should I make sure I get from the well guy?

I’m thinking depth, static water level, recovery rate, lining/wall condition, whether it is seasonal or drought-sensitive, and whether it needs cleaning or a better cap.

Anything else?

I’m mostly trying to learn the right order of operations. If this well can keep plants alive while the land gets developed, that changes a lot. If it cannot, I need to know that before I build a plan around it.

Wow, all that brickwork is pretty cool. Old mortar in the well casing bricks makes me nervous though -- a possible leaky sieve.

I would ask the typical depth of good wells in the area.

Based on the lay of the land, am I collecting good groundwater or runoff water?

Can a casing / sand point be put down to exclude runoff water?

And if there is a very shallow groundwater or runoff water, I would carefully consider where that might be coming from in the mile surrounding it.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Old mortar in the well casing bricks makes me nervous though -- a possible leaky sieve.

Thanks, this helps. The runoff question is probably the part I was not thinking about clearly enough.

A certified well guy is supposed to look at it soon, so I am trying to get my question list straight before he comes out. I was focused on depth, static water level, recovery rate, and whether the old pump setup was worth replacing. Now I know to ask whether the brick and mortar casing is letting surface water in, and whether there is any practical way to separate better groundwater from runoff.

I am not planning to drink from it. The first goal is just finding out whether it can safely and reliably water plants or support site work.

Given the state you are in, I would have the water tested first … especially for lead.

To explain, Missouri had a great deal of lead mining.  I don’t know where things stand now, but at one  time it was not unheard of to find a building with lead shingles.

Testing is a good idea, especially after the well has been "worked" by pumping for a while. Beyond biological fouling and basic chemistry, the challenge is knowing what to look for. Advanced testing can be a bit of a bottomless pit.

One cheap way to assess water quality is to plant some peas and beans in pots and water them with the well water. If they grow normally, it's a good sign; if they turn yellow  or start to grow in a corkscrew, it's a sign of trouble -- maybe natural chemistry, maybe herbicide contamination.

I know the whole pump assembly looks pretty rough, but are you certain that jet pump is fried? They are tough little guys, built for industrial duty and usually lasting decades.

It's pretty easy to open the pressure control box on the left and put a multimeter on it. Open circuit (no connection), closed circuit (shorted connection), or 2-3 ohms-ish (good) -- that's that status of the motor.

Depending on whether it's wired for 120VAC or 240VAC, I might be tempted to give it a quick kick with a portable genny and see what happens.

Around my corner of North GA, well tech guys charge 200 per hour just to offer opinions. Please consider some tasks you could perform, easy to test for free.....Costco is where I got a free consultation on whole house filtering that included water test.   Using a rope , a rock and a bucket, you can find out what your water column looks like, and ask around your neck of the woods for existing  wells being used.  Can't hurt for you to give it a go.  

I suport what other have said regarding doing the preliminary checks yourself.
Things I did under a similar situation:

Put weight on my 100’ tape and dropped in to measure depth of well and static water level (24’ of 2’ ID  pipe starting 2’ below grade and water starting 11’ below grade) told me that water leave  below clay layer I have found to be pretty consistent on other parts of the property.

Used Test kit from Home Depot found near well pumps (was recommended to me by chemical company tech that we sub contract chilled, condener and boiler loop testing). Tested good enough for irrigation. There are also kits on Amazon but I do not know their accuracy.
Pulled suction pipe because foot valve (check valve at bottom of pipe) did not appear to be working when I tried an up down pump with that pipe.
Used 22 feet of 1 inch PVC and a new foot valve.

Since I wasn’t relying on this portable water at the houses I cheap skated and bought the $150 Harbor Freight shallow well Pump. Not a bad bit of hardware considering the price.
Be advised you’re gonna need a generator in the 3000 W range with some extra surge capacity to run this. With 150 of 10 gauge cord pump runs at 9.5 amps with a measured 29 A using the function of a RMS meter (technically not a true in rush, currently reading, but as close as I could manage with what I had).
if you are electrically inclined, recommend replacing the 16 gauge cord with a good 12 gauge cord parentheses cord ran warm after extended run times meaning there’s some voltage strap through it). I haven’t done it, but I also intend to replace the 12 inches or so of 14 gauge cord connecting the pressure switch to the motor.
Initially, I tried to run this on 12 gauge cords but had startup problems so I installed a hard start kit on it (subco sb6) this is a Start  capacitor with a relay of taken out of the circuit after startup commonly used in light commercial HVAC to help PSC type Motors start.
With 100 feet of three-quarter inch hose. I can fill a 5 gallon bucket in a slow count to 30 seconds.
I used this assembly to run the pump for over eight hours to ensure that my well will not run drive. It did not. In retrospective I should’ve checked my standing water level during the end of that run.

as an alternate to what I bought. They also sell the same kind of pump, but without a pressure tank and pressure control.
A friend uses one of those pumps from a surface water source on his property to water the lawn and trees.
Has lasted several years for him.
You could use that assembly directly out of the well with a suction pipe and foot valve to to pump out all the current water and see how fast the well makes up.
In the future, you could use it for watering trees and irrigation while you’re on site.

if the well proves to be usable, I would recommend you look at various health department sites that will give instructions for for using bleach to kill bacteria in your well and pipes.
Get a legitimate test done The lead mining mentioned spooks me.
All the ones I’ve looked at have a very similar SOP. Even if you’re not drinking the water I recommend doing it if you’re going to irrigate crops, you eat.

PS you take that other man’s excellent advice regarding trying to get that older heavy duty pump back in operation. I would like to add that you’ve tried to find some way too manually roll it over.
Maybe from the tail end of the motor there’s probably a cooling fan and vents that you can stick a screwdriver into and see if the pump and motor will move freely.

PPS the subterranean pump room intrigues me.
Looks an awful lot like a root cellar to me…

I think the best questions to ask the well bloke are;
- what can I use this water for?
- What should I get tested for? And others have made good suggestions.
- what do I need to do with the well inself?
Other issues
- As Doug says, get a generator and try the pump out.
- the galvanised pipes may be corroded inside
- raising the rim of the well may help surface water intrusion.
- is it worth getting power on where you are located?
- will you consider having a tank above ground with a few days watering stored?

Excellent post, Ray Schmidt.

Ray Schmidt wrote:PPS the subterranean pump room intrigues me.
Looks an awful lot like a root cellar to me…

Yes, agreed. Lots of possibilities there.

Yes, Ray , you give a thorough analysis,  thanks

My friend has a 20’ hand dug well that has E. coli contamination and after several different systems, including UV treatment, is now using chlorination.
Local lab that test water may have recommendations about what to test for also

When we bought our property some years ago there was a shallow (28ft deep)  well with an old pump at the surface- which worked well until the local tin mine started pumping again. Then we had to switch to a downhole pump, which at 300W does a good service  to lift to the surface and to the top of the house for attic storage, to give us some head.
We have our water tested occasionally and use a UV system to kill off bacteria -which works successfully.   The well drops to very low levels  in the summer, but starts to recover  about one week to ten days after the rain starts again, which I hope will be soon!  Even though this area has many old mines our well water is free of metal contamination; the main issues are  pH being too low (acidity has eaten our copper pipes and tanks in the past - now running the water through chalk balls reduces acidity to neutral) and potential E.coli from local cattle in the fields above our land. Hence the UV system.

Can you say more about the 'chalk balls' please?