Reply #119: well, (no pun intended) that was a bust [View All]

:-( :argh: :mad: :grr: :nuke: :cry: :banghead:

First, a bit more detail/background about our water system. we are using a well that is 6 miles and over 500 feet in elevation (at surface level) away from the headquarters. The well is close to 600 feet deep itself. At the halfway point there is a big 20,000 storage tank for livestock water. In order to manage the varying pressures that a pump would have to handle (from hard-learned experience, don't ask) we have a fairly standard 1.5 hp submersible down in the well and then up top a 6 or 8000 gallon storage tank (can't remember volumes tonight) and to get the water all the way up here we have a second pump - it is a powerhorse of a thing - a reciprocating three piston pump that runs off a 3 hp electric motor with a belt and pulley. The pipe is primarily 1.25 schedule 40 pvc. All of this is worked and accessed by miles of rocky, bumpy, washed out, beat-you-and-your-truck-to-death dirt roads.

Last summer the submersible went out. This time the piston pump exploded. We can't tell what exactly happened as these things are supposed to be virtually indestructible unless they freeze and trust me it wasn't freezing here last week!

Because of some strange structural issue with this well, if water gets into the concrete security box housing the pump and the well head, it is supposed to flow out this mysterious drain but I suspect there may be a leak and it somehow travels back down the casing and causes the deep pump to suck up silt. However it happened, we dumped thousands of gallons down that drain and then ended up with about a mile of pretty silty pipe when everything quit.

We will hopefully have the pump rebuilt, but since that water is pretty critical when the stock ponds are dry (and it hadn't rained at that point, plus it is our only source of domestic water at the moment too) we decided to order another one and have it overnighted from the nearest distributor in El Paso. Of course it quit on Friday and nobody was open until Monday. Then the overnight got fucked up and it didn't get here until Wednesday. Needed a new pulley and that caused another day delay. Finally got it installed and replumbed Thursday evening. Started it up and pow! shorted out a wire and burnt up a breaker. Friday morning to the hardware store for new breaker and hope motor not damaged. All seems ok - yippeee! Water never made it up to the half way point. Now, it is almost routine to have the pipe break somewhere down in the low points that have eroded and are exposed - sometimes they get broken by vehicle traffic (read: border patrol or their prey) and often we find a rock under a broken spot with another hammer stone nearby - frequently empty waterbottles or other migrant detritus will be discarded as well.

Finding the break is usually easy - it is often in the same three or four places, but sometimes requires walking a couple miles to find new ones. The poor husband spent most of the hot, humid morning yesterday walking segments of the line and never finding the break. He finally came back here to the house so I could drop him off on top of a hill and go around to meet him at the bottom. I had the feeling there was another problem - I was worried about that sediment. I'm also a champion at being lazy and it was hot so I convinced him to cut the pipe down close to the well, so we could see what was going on inside. A bunch of mud ran back out from the uphill side and the flow going from the pump side was really slow. We ended up cutting it in three places, the last right at the well head. Still not much water. He was convinced that new pump should have pushed the mud on up just fine but I was skeptical. He was probably right as the pump seemed to work just fine after I panicked and called the well guy back out to check things. Of course, like going to the mechanic or doctor it worked fine when he tried it. Since we already cut the pipe in several places we decided to play around and try to clean out the silt, but of course it was almost dark by then so we put it off until this morning.

So that is what we spent a couple of hours on, then glued it all back together and sent the water on up.

Went back around to the mid-point to wait for the water. It was a little slow, but we blamed it on the smaller pulley and lower rpms the new pump was set at. waited until the water ran completely clear and then switched the valves to send it up here.

A couple of hours later it was here! That is when I posted my announcement about going in to get MFM's laptop to him. We were going to let the water fill a couple of troughs in the corrals before sending it to the house storage tank for my much anticipated shower (animals first in the livestock biz) but when I went back to check it had stopped flowing. DAMMIT. We knew it was going to happen, our luck on this thing was too consistent for this to actually work.

The coupling closest to the well pulled apart.

:-( :argh: :mad: :grr: :nuke: :cry: :banghead:

Not a huge deal and not unexpected, but damn! I really would like to take a shower and poor MFM is languishing without internets. I would have called the person who generously offered to help (or another possibility) but I couldn't get a hold of anybody at the rehab place to make sure they didn't lock MFM's stuff up or to let them know somebody else would be picking it up so I will try again tomorrow. We couldn't fix the break this evening because it takes several hours to drain 5 miles of pipe and frankly we were just to damn sick of it all.

I'm not sure why I am posting all this or why here in this thread, although the events and people are interconnected. I just needed to vent and so now I am done.

So...as we say in this part of the world: hasta manana.:beer: :boring: