Well sucks air?

[Chris]

So this thread is for a friend of mine living off the grid.

He lives in Arizona 40 miles off the nearest paved road. He has a well and the water was slightly saline. None of his neighbors have this problem. He had a second well drilled and came back with the same results.

Now just recently his will will run fine for about 30 minutes and then it will pick up air and stop pumping. Then let it sit a few hours and it will do it again.

What would be your guess to the problem?

 

[havasu]

I know nothing about wells, but just by reading what you wrote, it seems to me that the well is too short?

 

[Matt30]

Low yielding well maybe. submersible or jet pump? How deep is the well?

 

[speedbump]

If it's a jet pump, this shouldn't be happening if it is properly set up. If it's a Submersible pump, probably like Matt30 said, it's a low yield well. Geesh, it's bad enough to have salty water, but not to have enough???

 

[Chris]

I'll find out the details on it. I guess the few neighbors he has have great clean water with no issues.

He has lived here for years with no problems until recently.

 

[Chris]

Here is the text I got back from him.

I would have him come to the forum but living off of batteries and solar makes you conservative on your power.

330ft, submersible
Pump runs 15 mins then sucking air? Says it runs water going in tank, then nothing then water, then nothing....

Asking about wicking?

 

[Chris]

Also the well has been there 8years. He is on 40 acres and like I said no neighbors have ever had well problems but he also doesn't know their well depth or pump style.

 

[speedbump]

The thing to try to find out is whether or not his well is a screened well or a rock well. If it's a screened well, the screen is most likely plugged and needs to be acid treated. Nu Well tablets will take care of that.

One thing for sure, if he keeps using it like this, the pump isn't going to last long. They don't like to be run dry and the motor likes to have cool water running past it all the time it's running.

 

[Chris]

Thanks. I forwarded that onto him.