A sturdy DC well pump good for low flow wells.

Hi again. I want to recommend a well pump that I use in my low-flow well. Amarine-made 24V Stainless Shell Submersible 3.2GPM 4" Deep Well Water DC Pump (available on Amazon) It operates on DC, so can run off solar panels. For now I'm running it on grid power with an AC/DC inverter because I want to run it in early morning and evening when the sun is not directly shining. The pump is also quite sand-hardy. I have fine sand and mud in the water bearing layer and this little pump can handle the occasional bout of sand that gets lifted up off the bottom when I pump too much water out at once. The pump even has its own no-water shut off switch built in. It pumps 1.33 gpm at the depth of 200 feet in my well. I also wrote an article about how I got enough sand out of my well to be able to hang the pump. http://www.village4health.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Improving-a-sandy-well.pdf

Thanks for the info on the site, it's a nice layout over there. How long have you used this particular pump now? My own site has sandy soils, but no well drilled yet so no idea how sandy it will be 70' below. I'm thinking a large storage tank kept filled with a solar-powered pump that runs when the sun is shining, with a float switch to stop it when the tank is full. Some pumps like Grundfos look good but are pricey, while the one you mentioned seems great if it's reliable. At 1/8 the price of the Grundfos, seems like I'd just buy 2 and keep one stored as a backup, and when the first fails I order a new backup. If each lasts a couple years, then a big savings overall.

Yeah, Mark that's exactly what I did, bought two, and I did have to replace it at one year old, after the second time it got covered in sand I think I tried to use the pump to get the sand out instead of pulling up the pump and laboriously removing the sand with the bucket. I was going to take the pump apart and clean it and see if I could get it running again, but... This second pump has been going strong for a year now too, and has survived one minor sand event no problem. Hopefully your sand is just in the soil and you will hit good rock for your water, but I think you can check well logs at the county to see average depths and strata info. Some counties may keep more detailed records than others, but most new wells should be in the county records. Here the geology varies a lot and being on a steep hill some are deep and some are shallow. If you are able to do the lowering and lifting of the pump yourself, which at 70' would be pretty easy assuming you hang it on plastic pipe, then for the cost of one of these little pumps you can hardly go wrong.