Well, Well.

Time to catch up on some of our adventures. The beginning of September I started working on building the front porch. The permit was pulled, the holes were dug, the footers for the posts poured, and then on September 16 the pump stopped working.

Matt and I tried pulling the old pump. It wouldn't budge. Turning the power off and on assured us the motor was still working -- or at least trying to work (we could feel the pipe torque) -- but no water would come up. 105 feet down, it seemed to be stuck, maybe in mud, but we couldn't tell.

I remembered the last time we pulled it, just before Mike and Suzi got married. The location under the front stoop made it very difficult to work on, and we knew that the old casing was rusty and would cause us some problems. A 4 inch pump slides into a 4 inch steel casing nicely when the casing is new, but when it is rusty, there is a lot of friction. We thought it over, and decided it was time to drill a new well.

Old well under the stoop.

Old pump after Frontz pulled it.

No water for over a week. We hauled water in 5 gallon containers from Jesse's house and from Grannie's house. It was like not having a working water heater, but worse.

On September 23rd the crew from Frontz Drilling showed up. In order to get the rig in, we had had to cut down the maple tree by the drive, grind the stump down below grade, and remove the low fence along the drive with the electric outlets and the post light.

I came home for lunch at noon, and they were already down over 65 feet. When I came home at 5 PM, they were wrapping up their operation : the hole was 135 feet deep, cased in 120 feet of 5 inch PVC.







The next day the pump crew came in and installed the pump, set it up with the 86 gallon pressure tank, and chlorinated the system.



I was up at 5 AM, purging the system, and when I could no longer smell chlorine, I turned on the water heater. A half hour later, I enjoyed a hot shower before going to work. The Health Department took the water sample on the 30th, and on the 3rd we were told that everything was OK. I opened the valves for the softener. Frontz had tested the water for hardness; the new well was not as hard as the old one.

Hardness	5 gpg
Iron	o.4 ppm
pH	7.1
Manganese	0 ppm
Hydrogen Sulfide	0.2 ppm
Total Dissolved Solids	790 ppm

While they had noted a trace of hydrogen sulfide, there does not seem to be any noticeable iron or sulfur in the water. Thank God for that; clear, pure water at 12 gallons per minute for a half hour with no draw-down.