submersible well pump wire lifespan

Why did they not use solid no. 12 copper 2 wire pump wire???????????? You should have cut the blackened wire back. What type of waterproof splice did you use?

It just as important to ask if you if the well driller used good cable ties, a torque arrestor, centering discs, check valves every 200 feet and attached a high quality pump rope with the correct knot on the pulling ring. I hope your pump wire is not attached to the drop pipe with electrical tape.

In January I replaced a pump that had been installed in 1976.

They were — and up to a point, are. Shallow well jet pumps (with the jet at the pump, often in the basement) have to be primed, and sometimes have problems with the foot valve. Competent DIY? Five minutes. Average DIY? Time to call the plumber. Deep jet pumps (jet at the bottom of the well) also have to be primed etc.

Plus — they aren't as efficient.

I'd imagine the submersible pump has a lower up front cost so that is what most builders and contractors will use unless you ask for something else.

There could be significant pressure on the splices depending on how far they are below the water level in the casing, it could be very difficult to make them water tight.

I think it depends on the installation. My pump wire had rubbed on the casing and nearly worn the insulation off in 15 years - others have no issues even over 40+ years. Pump movement is the enemy of a long service life from pipe and wire, so making sure everything is secure in the casing is important. Minimizing pump cycles is also important.

I am wondering if you have a faulty splice or of the pump itself has some sort of issue causing the ground fault.

I know close to nothing about wells.

However, my grandfather's jet pump was being used on a well that was 180' deep so I suspect your info of 25 foot or less is incorrect in some way.

Unless the info I've been given was incorrect and his well wasn't 180.

That's also a possibility. But I think it was much deeper than 25. I'll try to find out.

There's a pump guy on youtube who on a lot of his videos discusses the various things that can cause pump wires to get prematurely worn through or broken. Most are due in one way or another to the wire being improperly attached/tied causing the pump vibration itself to cause the failure. I think this is the guy here:

https://www.youtube.com/%40h2omechanic

If the lift from the dynamic (pumping) water level to the jet is less than 25 feet, a shallow well jet pump (one pipe with a foot valve down the well, the jet at the pump) will work, so long as your flow requirements aren't too great. If the dynamic water level is below that, you will need a deep well jet, in which the jet assembly is at the bottom of the well. In principle, they will work to any depth. In practice, not so much. They also need a foot valve. Submersible turbines can be had which work to pretty much any depth you care to name, and lineshaft turbines can go to a thousand feet or more.

Then you have various piston pumps — the windmills @leonz mentioned were, before electricity, favoured in the midwest where the wind is reliable, for instance. You can also have hand powered piston pumps. Again, there are two divisions: the pump piston assembly can be at the surface, if the lift is less than 25 feet or so, or the piston assembly can be down the well, with a pump rod connecting it to the top. Piston well pumps are very limited in capacity, even with big windmills (the ones in the midwest almost always pumped into a cistern or tank, so even a low capacity, going all day and night, was adequate).

Whether a piston pump can be set in the same well as a submersible or a jet pump depends on the size of the casing. There is a limit to how many pipes, never mind a pump cylinder, you can cram into a casing, after all. However, you can pipe, with a little ingenuity, a surface hand piston pump in parallel with a shallow well jet pump and it will work well, provided the leathers or other seals in the piston pump are in excellent condition.

It's all about the dynamic drawdown — the water level when the well is being pumped. For many domestic wells — say five to ten gallons per minute — the difference may not be that much, particularly ones completed in sands and gravels. For wells complete in fractured rock, or with high yields, the dynamic drawdown can be several tens of feet — or even in some cases a hundred feet or so. In high yield gravel wells, it can also be on that order. I remember one in sands and gravels near a riverbank (no I won't say where, but in Connecticut) which was a municipal well at 200 gpm. Static water at about 10 feet. Steady state drawdown at pumping yield was as I recall almost 150 feet (that was a lineshaft turbine set just above bedrock at 250 feet).

No idea. Except that 10 gauge stranded wire is more expensive in such lengths and insulation quality? And you don't really need stranded. Once the pump is lowered and in place, it's not going to move much (you hope) and the wire shouldn't move at all… so why bother?

Have you ever read what the chemicals used to make electrical tape are?; it is a veritable witches brew of chemicals that end up in your drinking water.

They have been using polypropylene rope to pull pumps out for decades.

The plastic drop pipe centering discs placed over the drop pipe have wire holders in them as well.

As long as you have enough drive water in the larger diameter drive pipe you can pump from a very deep well to push plenty of water. A well with a jet pump will be affected by a well that is run dry or the user does not have water storage by using a timer to run the jet pump to fill the storage tank to prevent the well from running dry by depending on the storage tank for the supply using a smaller centrifugal pump with a small bladder tank.

Hello Jamie,

If I remember my oil well history correctly the steam powered donkey/pump jack came first then the electric 2 pipe jet pump was used in oil wells that had light crude and the deep well submersible was the next generation of oil well pump and finally the electric rocking horse donkey became the normal method with a drop pipe sucker rod and foot valve.

They have been using black polyethylene pipe for the drive and driven pipes for years.

They used steel pipe before that in my inlaws and my parents wells at the old house.

At my fathers new place they set up his plumbing with a 550 gallon tank and a shallow well jet pump so they could store water as my brother bought water for him and the farm house next door as my brother refused to install an aluminum sulfate injection system to knock down the colloidal clay in the drilled well water as he did not want to mess with a clay waste water dumping system since my father could not do it and they used ultraviolet light to sterilize the water used for bathing and cooking. He ended up installing a second 550 gallon tank and an Alum injection pump system after my father went to a nursing home so he could sell the place.

Typically a black poly tank ment for potable water is used to store potable water at an elevation outdoors typically on scaffold or a flat roof or a haymow.

I have black poly and copper pipe at my place and a bladder tank.

I had an alum injection system and an 80 gallon tank for mixing for my place until the water finally cleared after 7 years of use.

The Amish and Mennonites use a compressed air system to drive well water into their storage tanks in their haymows for their cow barns and homes.

I wanted to install a 4 post aermotor 6 foot mill with a water tank in the shed in the worst way because of the yearly lightning strikes killing my pumps but I could not afford to do that.

The pvc film and adhesive in pvc electrical tape aren't soluble in water in any appreciable way. I would be more concerned about what works past the seals in the pump.

Jet pumps, at least the two pipe ones do push water.

A submersible pump must be set below the maximum dynamic drawdown of the well. If this is done, it will not overheat — nor will the seals, which are water lubricated, be damaged.

There is no need for any special sleeve — the pump will self cool quite happily in any casing it can be set in. They can also be (and often are) used in large cisterns.

It is interesting to note that the motor on a submersible is at the bottom of the stack, not the top. This also helps cooling, as much of the intake flow (at least half of it) is drawn past the motor on its way to the first stage intake screens.

A submersible does not like to run dry… if there is any doubt about this, then a level switch should be installed in the well to shut off the pump when the drawdown reaches a critical level, or a flow switch can be used to detect lack of flow. This switch is often preferred, as it will also shut off the pump if its discharge is blocked, preventing damage or failure from high pressures (the actual shutoff head of bigger submersibles can be startlingly high — many hundred feet is not all that uncommon; the little one in Cedric's home is 12 gpm at 100 psi, and shuts off just below 300 psi — 700 feet —, for instance).

There is one application, however, where submersibles — and their cousins, line shaft turbines — are at a real disadvantage: wells which were poorly or incorrectly built which pump significant quantities of sand. While this condition will wear a jet pump rather quickly, particularly the jet, it is not that hard to replace. In a turbine or submersible, when the pump shuts off it is possible for enough sand to settle in one or more of the stages to "sand lock" the pump sufficiently so that it cannot restart. While this doesn't actually damage the pump (assuming the motor overload devices are correct), it does create the hassle of pulling the pump, disassembling it, and cleaning it. Such a thing will not happen, however, with a competent well driller (and if the well is completed in unconsolidated materials, such as sands and gravels, proper design, installation, and development of the screen and sand or gravel pack).

Jamie, perhaps you can help explain or clarify how my Grandfather's water pump worked.

He was an early well driller, blacksmith and steam tractor operator. He moved to this village in about 1915.

Built a house and drilled a well next to it, set up a 40-50' windmill tower.

In the attic of the house above the kitchen/bath there was a small stock tank, (insulated with newspapers of the day). Windmill would pump the water that high to fill the tank which has an outside overflow pipe.

You could walk out and shut the mill off if needed.

I was told the cylinder was down below freezing in the well pit. The sucker rod come up thru the pit cover.

Probably a small hole drilled into the riser pipe so it would drain down to avoid freezing when not pumping.

But how did the sucker rod not pass water down in the pit. As you know when you cover the outlet of the handle type or windmill pump the water will come up out of where the sucker rod enters…………….

………………Sudden brain flash: ……………perhaps the 1 1/4" galv pipe out of the top of the cylinder had the sucker rod extended up to the horizontal pipe that entered the house with a tee and the rod was above that point. Then when off the entire riser would drain down thru the hole drilled in the riser pipe in the pit.

This all came out in the mid 50's when city water was extended up to the house, so being only 6 years old then, I never studied the windmill system. (other than getting caught by Grandma while climbing the tower)

Not trying to steel Jamies thunder here:

The sucker rod rises all the way up through the stuffing box to the mills connecting rod in the tower.

The well water is in the drop pipe with the sucker rod all the way to the stuffing box where there is a tee to divert the water to the tank or the home.

The first drop pipe under the stuffing box typically has a one quarter inch weep hole drilled in it above the static water level to allow all the water in the exposed pipes to drain back into the well the year round.

When a submersible pump shares the well casing with the drop pipe and cylinder it is placed above the cylinder

with a tee, short nipple, elbow, longer pipe nipple then the submersible. when the submersible is needed the water being pumped stops at the piston and is forced upward.

The Aermotor folks have a nice drawing of a mill pumping water into a large open tank with the well casing rises to the top level of the tank and the and it then enters a tee which is connected to cross pipes that drain into the tank.

On Galveston Iland a rancher there has an aermotor with a well casing rising above the surface and draining with a cross pipe into a covered galvanized water tank to water his livestock. The galvanized storage tank being lower than the wind mill sits on its own tower and has a cover that was made to be part of the gravity drainpipe from the well head and into the tank. I am not sure it survived the last hurricane but those mills are very tough machines and when the wind is strong enough the sail pushes the mill in the direction of the wind if the hand brake cable is not set.

Fun fact, Aermotor is located in San Angelo, Texas, San Angelo is the Okra capital of the world.