Well Pumps

Well Pumps

 

I attended a Continuing Education class yesterday and the subject for 3 hours was Shallow and Drilled wells.  The speaker was from a company that has been in the business for 65 years, he is a 3^rd generation owner of a well drilling company, so I feel comfortable with his knowledge base.  This type of focused topic class is extremely important because it provides the opportunity to learn in-depth information about one particular area of expertise.  A house has many different areas to learn and it takes a long time to become even conversant in all of them.  It is a very long journey before you know everything there is to know about houses.  I doubt if anyone has ever got to the end.

When inspecting a home whose water source is a private well one needs to get as much information as possible from the few visible clues provided.  This is important because there is a significant difference in the value of a drilled well as compared to the value of a shallow well.  If the house is advertised as a drilled well and you have a shallow well pump (one pipe pump) it raises a red flag and you should alert your client to the fact it may not be what is advertised.  Of course, Home Inspectors do not inspect wells and determining if it is a good well or a bad well is up to the well drilling professional, but we should be looking for signs of possible issues. 

I once had a client who said that the house he was interested in was on a drilled well.  During the inspection things just didn’t look right. I went out to the back yard and just lifted the well-head.  It was merely a casing placed in the back yard with no well under it.  The shallow well and the pump were in a small shed further back on the property.  Nobody was happy; but my client was happier to know about this situation ahead of the closing.

Another situation I have encountered and have been unsure about is where a two pipe pump fits into the story of wells.  My understanding was that a two pipe pump is used when the water is further than 20 – 30 feet from the pressure tank.  However, when I saw a two pipe pump I would ask myself, “Does it mean it’s a shallow well that is far away? Or is it a drilled well that does not have a submersible pump?”  I think I got my answer yesterday.  Our expert informed the class that most of the time when you see a two pipe pump in the basement it means that you have a drilled well.  Two pipe pumps were used for drilled wells before submersible pumps became the norm.   In the past I would see a two pipe pump and couldn’t determine for my client with surety whether it was really a drilled well or a distant shallow well.  Now I can state with more confidence that it is most likely a drilled well.

 

 

Next time I will discuss well flow and well water purity tests.