The reason why I am including this stuff here is because I'm guessing that someday at least one of the girls will be interested in what's in that little cement cylinder behind our house. (And perhaps one day either Leia or Annie will have a well of their own or at least have to do a paper on whether it's better to have well water or city water.)
Mike Vaught (AKA "The Water Professor") was here from 8 AM - 8 PM today. This was mostly due to the difficult location of our well. He couldn't get his equipment up to pull the pump out, so he had to do it by hand. I watched him, it was exhausting work!
This is the way our well looks from the top right after the well cylinder is removed. The actual well is the thing with the black top on it and the blue and black tubes sticking out. You have to keep that special top on it so that debris doesn't get in and foul your well. The "well tag" revealed lots of interesting information, like it's one of the deepest wells in the neighborhood at 525 feet! (We figured, actually, because a few years ago when everyone else was having problems with water during the drought, we never saw any change.) Most wells in the area are dug 200-300 feet. The tag also revealed that the amount of water per minute of "storage," which I guess means how quickly the water can replenish itself, is 4 gallons a minute.
Next came the hardest job, removing the pump. By hand, Mike pulled 340 feet of wire taped to a big black tube up out of our well.
The tube lay all the way down the side of our house.
And up and back our driveway two times! Periodically, he had to stop pulling to twist the pipe because the pump would get caught on some kind of snag in the rock (and this made him glad he didn't use his equipment). It was during this whole process (and while Annie was napping) that I gleaned as much information from Mike as I could, . . . I was just sitting on the back deck, glad that it was the first day in the 80's instead of the mid-90's. What did we learn? Well, during the whole thing, Mike kept saying, "It's going to be really interesting to see how deep this pipe goes!" He kept saying that over and over. It was cool to see a geologist so excited about his work. The answer was, the pipe and wiring went down exactly 340 feet. He couldn't believe it for a few reasons. First, pipe comes in lengths of 100 feet. Second, 340 feet is far below the top of the water table. I can't remember why, but the actual pump is usually set near the top so that it doesn't have to displace so much water when it removes it. The used water has to be replaced by air, you know. His best guess was that the guy who sunk the pump simply let it down until it hit something (hence the damage on the side). When he got lower, he noticed what he called "a mixture of manganese accumulation and leaf rot" which he said we can't prevent due to the well being in the middle of the woods, but he did say that twice a year we can "chlorinate" the well. This simply involves adding one quart of white distilled vinegar and one quart of bleach. Then you run the water for a while to get all that chlorination out (so we can drink the water, of course). This step takes care of all the accumulation.
Here's the shot looking down the well after the pump was removed. The large white pipe inside the metal well-top is the liner, that's the thing that keeps us from having orange/brown color in our water from rust. I asked him why we had blue water instead, and he said that was due to the low ph of the water, raise the ph and the calcium would precipitate out instead of dissolve. He also showed me the gap between the metal casing and the liner and said that it should be full to the top with cement (that prevents bacterial growth by not allowing water to get in there). There's your next project, Brian! Still, Mike said our well looked really healthy. He was pleased with it's condition. (That was really good to hear!)
And here's the cause for all our headache: the well pump. It actually served the house well, working for over 12 years. The motor was trying to work, but the top was totally clogged with sediment, which ruined it. It was also damaged on the side (which you can just see at the junction at the top, directly to the right of the green intake ring), this was due to it rubbing against the side of the well. Because it's a top-of-the-line McDonald pump, he simply got the same exact one for us (even though he looked to up the power 1/4 horsepower from 3/4 to a full 1, but he couldn't find one). At full capacity, it pumps 10 gallons a minute. As for the wire, we definitely upgraded. We used to have a 12 grade wire and now we have a 10 grade wire. The new wire is thicker and therefore will allow the pump to run more efficiently. (Any time you have more and more power cord, the load is less.) He also wanted to get flat wire that wasn't corded so that it can simply "move out of the way" if the well wall hits it, instead of getting scored. Again, he had the flat wire, but he didn't have a full 340 feet, so we had to go with the corded again. (That is, unless we wanted to go without water for another week. No thank you.) We had to settle a bit because of availability right before the Labor Day weekend, I guess. [Still, I was glad to get some info for Oma and Papa to sink their (eventual) well. There happens to be a reputable drilling company right in Siler City called WW Maness and Sons at 919-663-3891. And Mike suggests a reputable pump like McDonalds or Goulds, but NEVER Meyers (guaranteed to break in two years). Mike's number is 919-740-0284.]
A bit about Mike. A Geologist by trade, this guy is the premier guy in the area when it comes to wells and water. He is actually FEMA's main contact in the South when anything goes wrong with many wells at a time due to a catastrophic event. He also is the main guy to call for continuing education for his field, hence the name "Water Professor." He created an ingenious invention with a camera on the bottom of it in order to truly see what is going on with any well he digs (or works on). He works in a 5-state area doing lots of corporate work as well as personal work due only to word-of-mouth recommendations. (That's how we found out about him, through our neighborhood listserve.) He has a special place in his heart for the people, the geology, and the topography of the area. In fact, he shared with me something so interesting about the large boulders dropped around due to glacial plucking many years ago (did I impress him with my undergrad knowledge of glacial plucking Furman Geology?). He said all of these rocks were a special kind of granite typical only to this area. They are very porous and allow water to actually run through them. This is good for the water table, but bad when they are simply embedded in the top soil (because then bacteria can filter right through them into the well). And they are 660 million years old! They were around during the time of the dinosaurs! Cool!
No comments:
Post a Comment