Well characteristics and well pumps

Jamie Hall said:

Actually, there are water rights east of the Mississippi, but they only apply to surface waters -- and they can be remarkably arcane (in my immediate area, there are rights to a local river which date back to a mill erected in 1738... and are still in force!).

It is quite true that there are no limits on the use of groundwater in the east -- other than what one's own conscience might impose, and those are quite variable (or what Mother Nature imposes, particularly near the sea shore).

On the other hand, the common misconception is that there is ample water and no need to conserve. This is simply not true. Most public water supplies in the east (there are a few notable exceptions) have had to impose limits on use two or three times in the last decade or so, and I know of at least two which simply ran dry. For private wells, if the use is not consumptive there is rarely a problem, since most residences served by private wells are also served by septic systems. It's called recycling... If the lots are large enough (two acres for a four person family) it is usually closed loop recycling; on smaller lots, it's shared.

However, if the water use is consumptive, such as for irrigation, this no longer holds. It turns out that, for consumptive use (such as the lawns in this thread) the available water is around 700 gallons per day, per acre of permeable surface, such as might be woodland or agricultural fields. It's about half that for surfaces such as well maintained lawns, and nothing for driveways and rooves and the like (this is not an opinion; it's just plain math and science). That's averaged over the year, of course. So, if your average water use is greater than that, you are borrowing from your neighbours, and borrowing or not, the static water level in the well will fall over the summer months.

As I note, there is no regulation against it; whether your neighbours mind or not is for you and them to figure out.

ChrisJ said:

Timco said:

Thanks. After some real help this turned into more of a traffic stop than help...I appreciate the advise on the speed control. I’ve found many for koi pond pumps and VFD drivers but not any for a fixed 240v 3/4hp pump. I’ll look more today. Seekonk supply said they had never heard of such a thing...the rest went:

Reply: Sir, where are you headed with all that water?

Me: I’m watering my lawn...

Reply: You shouldn’t need all that water...You Must be keeping up with the Jones’s..

Me: But I do. I just need a bit more water.

Reply: That’s wasteful. I don’t use that much. I let my lawn die..and now I don’t have to mow...

Me: I’m not running it down the street, I adjusted coverage, and I only water each zone every other day. It’s even internet controlled to not water when it rains. I mow weekly all summer.

Reply: You’re stealing from your neighbor.

Me: My neighbor has almost twice as much land and waters every day..all grass. I’ve never accused him of stealing from me. It even waters when it rains.

Reply: Can I see your permit, registration, and water rights for that well?

Me: There are no such requirements here.

Reply: Many places on the other end of the US do require those things you know.

Me: Not here sir.

Reply: You know, golf courses have permits and use twice as much water.

Me: I’m not a golf course. I’m just a guy trying to water his lawn.

Reply: Some people use millions of BTUs to heat pools. Is it legal? Sure. Is it ethical? No.

Me: I’m not connected to gas and I don’t have a pool.

Reply: I’m just saying, you’re doing the same thing.

Me: Again, just trying to get a few hundred gallons of water a bit faster.

Reply: Use your old pump. You’re killing your well!

Me: I’m aware of that. That’s why I posted. I need to cut back the new pump. They don’t make a 5/8hp or a 9/16hp pump...

Larry Weingarten said:

Hello, I don't claim to know how much water, grass needs as I live in the arid West and got rid of my lawn long ago. It might be that watering less often but a bit more per session could encourage the grass to send its roots deeper, saving water overall.

But there is a problem. I see that @Timco has been a member of this forum for over fifteen years, has contributed steadily and received lots of good feedback for what he's given. Here, he asked for technical advice, but is being challenged, as I see it, on moral grounds. How about we use our brainpower to help him both figure out the technical fix and consider ways to help him use less water and achieve what he wants to do? If the goal were to drive him away, we couldn't be doing a much better job. This thread is beginning to remind me of years past where we had some real knock down, drag out "discussions".

Yours, Larry

I'm confused.

Did you break down what was said here, or did someone literally give you the same exact hard time over the phone?

ChrisJ said:

I'm just over here amazed golf courses use 300,000 gallons per day and that's ok because they paid for a piece of paper.

Jamie Hall said:

Setting aside any value considerations, @Timco , it is my honest evaluation, as a registered PE and licensed well driller, that you would be better served with the old, lower flow pump running most of, or all of, the day to provide the water which you want.

Like your supplier, I am not aware of any speed controls for 3/4 hp 240 volt pumps which are easily available. The problem is that they are all squirrel cage motors of one sort or another (unless it is three phase), and the speed of those is set by the frequency of the power (in North America, 60 hz) which is supplied to them and by the design of the motor (typically 2 pole -- 3500 rpm or 4 pole, 1750 rpm). Thus you need a variable frequency drive and, while they are available for small motors -- and, for that matter, for big ones -- they are not cheap, even for small ones.

Given the existing pump, then, the solution is as has been suggested: throttle it to 2 to 3 gpm -- no more (again that is not an ethical consideration, that is my professional judgement based on what you have told us about the well, given as a well driller). Put a low water shutoff in the well to protect the pump (I always installed one on the wells I did anyway) and a pressure relief valve on the piping at or very near the well, to protect the piping. If it were mine, I'd use a float switch on the cistern, as I suggested above, but you could, of course, adjust a timer or manually turn the pump on or off as needed.

I am dismayed, again writing solely as an engineer and well driller, at what you were told about a flow (capacity) test for your well. That's not your problem, of course! But it's also not a real pump test. Not even close -- although I used to see it done all the time. There really are two kinds of capacity tests -- for a residential or low flow irrigation well, such as yours, it's about as exciting as watching paint dry -- but requires only that the well be pumped at a steady flow for at least 12 hours, while plotting the depth of water in the well (electronic data loggers are a big help!). For bigger wells -- such as the ones I used to do for municipal supplies -- it requires 72 hours of constant flow and at least two additional monitoring wells (sometimes more), all of which are logged.

There is no reason why, if you were curious, you couldn't do a pretty decent job of a capacity test on your own, for your purposes. While electronic loggers are really nice, you can make a perfectly good water level sensor yourself -- all you need is a good tape measure (long enough!) and a "plunker" at the end -- which is a fancy name for a 1 inch socket fastened at the end. You'll miss the initial drawdown -- which is nice to know but not absolutely required (though you do need the static level pump off for at least 24 hours) -- but the procedure is simple enough: start the pump and adjust the flow to some reasonable flow (in this case, I'd again suggest 2 to 3 gpm, but something which you positively know you can run for 12 hours). Make sure you adjust the flow to hold that; it will want to change as the well draws down. Then, every hour, stop the pump briefly and quickly measure the depth to water (if you can hear the plunker or have access to an electric depth tape, which buzzes when you reach water, don't stop the pump) every half hour and plot the results as drawdown vs. time. With any kind of luck at all the curve will flatten out after a few hours, and then you can figure your drawdown vs. depth relationship. This works for most smaller wells, although in some cases the well is such that yield (expressed as gpm per foot of drawdown) can drop dramatically at greater drawdowns (it may not work for bigger wells -- there was one I did which didn't stabilize for a week... we were bored...).

hot_rod said:

Any smell to the water, well water can harbor various bacteria’s. Iron bacteria can be a nasty black sludge or debris.
Does the particle stick to a magnet?