What Did Ya Get Done This Weekend?

[bruno]

Absolutely nothing.

 

[maverickmk]

I didn't know Porsche made a tractor, until now. [cl

.

I was thinking I knew that for some reason, but then I realized it was Lamborghini that started as a tractor company and became a car builder. He got ****ed at Ferrari and decided to start his own car company (I think that's how the story starts - ?)

 

[soltz]

Wildfire $

In sunny California????

A little goes a long way and my grass likes it

 

[kenny c]

Stripped the 2000 Ford Explorer that I bought for the 302 . I'm going to try to sell off as much of it as I can to recoup some money to go toward the 37 pickup build.

 

[Tripper]

Worked on my doors & did chores around the farm I've been neglecting!

BoB

 

[smallfoot]

Well, so far I haven't got much done...still building a house with my bud. We're painting walls and ceilings and placing outlets and starting to place fixtures. My next inspection is Pre-power, which in this case will be permanent power because of the way we planned it out. But Thursday morning I woke up to no water at my house. I have a submersible pump down a drilled casing here for my water. I went methodically thru all the tests and determined the problem to be the pump. Everything else tested ok but read trouble down to the pump. OK, ya'll know what I'd do, I'd pull the pump myself...done it before, I can do it again. So I jumped online to Amazon and ordered parts and pieces to do the job and left a few locally obtained pieces until I saw what I had after I got the pump out. Friday, up early to start pulling the pump. Parts will be here Friday night. I'll get them early saturday morning where they get delivered to my daughter's house because delivery trucks can't seem to find my place... . By quitting time I had only moved the pump up about 16 inches... . Last thing I did was sanitize the well with bacterial bleach. Next morning I placed the come along on it and it started coming up easy and I managed to pull it by hand. Cool beans! I got my parts and my buddy Junior stopped by to help with putting it all together and back down the shaft. About dark we had it all back together. New pump, new drop pipe, all new fittings. Before I left to pick up incidentals for the build, I checked everything again to be sure everything else was right.I checked everything right to the end of the circuit driving the pump. 123 volts each leg and good ground to pressure switch, closed switch and read the same power at end of wires to go down shaft. When I fired the pump up, it pumped immediately up to 50 psi where the pressure switch shuts it off. Ok, we have a faucet wide open, the first out of the tank to flush the system as we get sand down here after well work usually taking a good while with everything running to flush the sand. When the pressure got down to 30 psi it should kick back on. The pressure switch operated one time and failed..tried cleaning points to no avail,..sheesh! Back to get parts in the am...

 

[Dr Crankenstein]

Good luck, smallfoot!

Building things makes me happy... repairing things, not so much.

.

 

[DozerII]

Murphy decieded to make a stop in Florida I see. Kick his butt outta there and everything will go smooth.

 

[forbigpicture]

I'm feelin' ya smalls.....

 

[smallfoot]

Did I mention we're supposed to get 5" of rain today???

 

[Old Iron]

I've pulled well pumps before too.
Like you said, not all that hard to do.
Did you determine what the reason was why it was hard to get moving?
Do y'all have to contend with cave ins much in the sandy earth?

 

[ANNAMEL]

Dang Smalls, All i had to do was trick my heatpump high pressure switch until monday dude fixes it. Im sure you will get it.

 

[kenny c]

Sounds kind of like it may have been stuck in sand at bottom of well shaft. How deep is the pump set and what is the static level of the water in shaft. You may be able to raise the pump a little to get it off the bottom.

 

[kenny c]

I pulled the efi intake and exhaust manifolds off of the motor for the 37. Only 2 broken bolts in intake, came right out after welding a nut to what was left. 2 broken bolts in exhaust manifolds. 1 came right out with the welding trick the other fought me all to way but I got it out without wrecking the threads. Once it was out I found a crack in the exhaust runner. It looks like I need at least one GT40P head or another donor 2000 Explorer

 

[smallfoot]

I've pulled well pumps before too.
Like you said, not all that hard to do.
Did you determine what the reason was why it was hard to get moving?
Do y'all have to contend with cave ins much in the sandy earth?

I've pulled this one before by hand the last time. This time I started with a come along cause it didn't move past 16" by hand and one poor beat *******...
The problem was sand and sludge caked around the pump. The old pump was indeed bad. Checked it ever which way on the ground with nothing else attached. It's the original pump that I placed in 1992. It's done well. Over the years, I've had the well get sanded only twice, well 3 times now. You have to flush out sand down here every time. My well is a drilled well with 4" iron casing and a 4" submersible which measures 3 7/8" in diameter. You have 1/16" clearance all sides. Sand and sludge can clog that up and it's suction you have to pull against. It stuck again. Tomorrow I rig an air lift pump to pump sand and sludge out to try the pump again. If the pump comes up when I first try, I'll still use the air lift pump to clean the casing. The casing is 105', the pump is down 30', static water level is about 10'. Hoping the pump is sanded and ok when I clean it.

 

[smallfoot]

Sounds kind of like it may have been stuck in sand at bottom of well shaft. How deep is the pump set and what is the static level of the water in shaft. You may be able to raise the pump a little to get it off the bottom.

As much sand that pumped out when the pump cranked up the one time, it might be sitting in sand. But that means I've got about 75' of sand packed in my well casing. When I get the air lift pump rigged, I'll run it until the sand is out. Down here, we have bedrock down deep but sand and clays above and below. They drill till they get below bedrock and casing is down that far. They don't slot the sides of the casing like they do in rocky terrain. Casing is solid and pumps are placed in the water column deep enough to get good water, but they run the drill pumps for quite a while to blow a pocket and pump the sand until the water clears. It might be a sand cave in underground and I'll just have to pump until it clears. Smarter fellers would have paid several thousand dollars to have pump guys come out. So far, I've got all new well and about 700 bucks shorter...

 

[smallfoot]

WELL HELL! Still haven't moved the new pump much. I tried to raise it first off. Then put the air lift rig I made down the casing. Not far after submerging the end of the air lift, I started pumping big time sand. Now get this. I'm only down less than 20 feet and hitting sand. I mean packed sand. So where I'm at, I'm more than 10 from the pump and above it. I'm pumping sand stacked on top of the pump. Baffling... I pumped from 9 am yesterday till 7 pm last night. In the first 2 hours I had cleaned the casing down to the pump. I could bump the pump moving my air lift pipe. So I let it sit about a foot above the pump and ran it till 7. I've got huge piles of sand where this pump brought it up. I pumped this am from 8 am and am still pumping. The well is flowing up past my pump and bringing sand up with it. If I have to, I'll pump the whole thing with this rig. For a simple idea, it works well. It consists of what was left over from my 100 ft roll of poly pipe and a 50 ft air hose from the barn. Cut the female end off the air hose and ran it down the inside of the poly pipe. You leave the end of the air hose up inside the bottom end of the poly so that when air bubbles rise from the air hose, they have no where to go but up. I'm hooked with an air compressor regulated down to 16 psi. I'm set up with two portable air compressors and am trading them off every half hour to save the motors as they're not made for continuous running. When bubbles come out the air hose, any column of water above the bubble is pushed up and in turn, the water below the bubble is sucked up and the process repeats every time a bubble lifts off. The hose and poly just chugs and burps but I'm pumping 2-3 gpm. Not to be confused with systems to pressure clean well casings but it is a pump and with sand and gravel, it works like magic. Took a few pix but it's been rainy and pretty dark..

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[Old Iron]

Wow lots a sand
That's a game of patience

 

[kenny c]

When I worked for the well company we would do sort of the same thing. We would use a hose with a weight that had air holes drilled in it that aimed back up the casing . the air would perkulate the silt up the casing.

 

[smallfoot]

Kenny, any idea why the sand is above the pump? My buddy Junior thinks I got a cracked casing or a hole in the casing. Now we don't have shifting underground like some rocky areas. No earthquakes. The casing has been under a pump house since it was placed. There's no way any vehicle could hit it to crack it. We don't freeze down here enough to crack a pipe underground. We do have lightning from hell...I still don't consider that much of a threat on this. I believe if lightning ( strike good enough to blow a hole thru 1/4" walled 4" pipe) hit the well and either traveled the wires or the casing, the pump would not have survived. No evidence of a strike on the old pump.
My ideas on the sand above the pump is that my little airlift pump is pulling it around the stuck new pump. I'm hoping so. If so, I'm emptying the sand from the casing and that is what I'm aiming to do. I wish I had known the sand was up so far in the casing before I placed the new pump. I would have got the sand out before lowering it down. Usually, you place the pump and it will lift the sand out and you run it till it clears. This was so bad that when the pump was energized, it locked up after the first shut off of the pressure switch. I'm shutting down at 9pm. Yesterday I pumped for 13+ hours and at 9 tonight it'll be another 13+ hours straight. I wish there was a run on fine sugar sand...I got loads of it today...merry fuggin hoho