Need tips for installing water supply pump.

[Vilx-]

Here's my situation:



I've got an old house where I'd like to add running water. You know, the kind where you simply open the tap and it just works™. Some knowledgeable people have recommended a pump for me, but the question now is - how to properly install it?

The source of water will be a well about 30m removed from the house. The well is made of concrete rings, each about 1m high. The top ring is above ground. The water starts about 5 rings down. If the summer is dry, the water level can be lower. Winters here always have some months of below-water-freezing temperatures. Also, currently the house is only inhabited 4 months during the summer, however we'd like to extend that. Perhaps even move in there and live all year round, though that won't be in the near future. Anyways, first I've got to fix the place up and running water is one of the basic prerequisites.

So the questions are:

• How deep do I need to dig the pipe between the house and the well?
• Where do I put the pump? It'd be nice if I could avoid drilling a hole in the concrete wall and construction work inside the well. I see the following options:
• Inside the well. Then I need to rig up some kind of shelf for it in there, which is construction work inside the well (I'm kinda afraid of falling in...)
• On the ground, outside the well. Then either I drill a hole, or the intake pipe goes first up, then down over the edge. Will the pump be OK with this? The instructions show that the intake pipe needs to be below the pump, though I'm not sure why (possibly something to do with priming).
• Build a shelf/cover over the entire well and mount the pump on top of that. That would kinda work I guess, though the pump needs more suction force.
• Inside the house, but then I'd have to deal with the noise (though, reputedly, this pump has very low noise, so maybe that's not a problem). Also, the intake pipe would then either need a hole in the well wall, or take the same "over the top" path. Plus, if I read the manual right, if the intake pipe is 30m long, the pump will only be able to suction about 1m, which is too little. Not sure about that part though.
• What about the winters? The pump manual says: min ambient temperature: 0C (water freezing point). That makes sense (since it's pumping water and all), but what if I want to live there in the winter? What if I don't want to live there in the winter (which is initially going to be the case for quite a few years yet)? Do I need to remove the pump then? And is there a point to dig the pipe in the ground deeply, if the pump and suction pipe are going to be outside of ground anyway?

[enigmaT120]

How deep is the bottom of the well, and is it just dirt/muck or is it solid enough to sit the pump on?  If you can't let the pump rest on the bottom, maybe you could rig up a suspension system with stainless steel wire rope maybe joined to the electrical cord.  That would have the advantage of making it easy to raise the pump if needed for servicing or replacement.  I think that's how deep well pumps are done here.

I have a cistern into which flows water from my spring.  The cistern is a big concrete box and I use a submersible pump made for deep wells, but mine just sits on the bottom of the cistern.  You mention a pump manual, but you didn't say what kind of pump.  My family, when I was a kid, always had pumps in a pump house built around the well, but the pumps were on the floor of the pump house.  Those pumps never lasted as long as the one I recently replaced, a submersible one.  But they cost less.

My water lines are about 2 feet underground and have never frozen, but I don't know your climate.

[Milspecstache]

Sounds like you can do a jet pump which can be mounted above ground and will pull a suction to self-prime.  That means you only need a single pipe going into the well.  You will need to ensure that pipe travels below the frost line.  Do you know how deep that is for your location?  I would put a decent screen on the bottom of the pipe to prevent damaging the impeller/plumbing downstream.  Also you do want to cover the well to prevent something from falling in.  I shudder everytime I hear of stories where an animal falls/jumps into a well and dies...

I would build a small pump-house near the well which would provide weather protection.  During winter just plug in a light or a thermal blanket/heater strip to keep the pump warm.

I am not an expert but this is what I believe based on my 3years experience of having a shallow well for drinking water.

[zolotiyeruki]

If you're going to run a water line underground to the house, the general rule is to keep it below the frost line (you can find out the exact depth at your local city hall or from the local building codes).

Another option is to ignore the cold weather requirements for now (deal with them in the future if/when you decide to inhabit this year round), and drain the system when you leave at the end of the summer, so there's no water in the pipes to freeze

One more thought: build an insulating cover for the well--just a big circular piece of plywood with a slightly smaller circle of styrofoam glued to the underside.  Stick that on top of the well, so the plywood rests on the edge of the concrete.  That'll also help keep debris from blowing into the well.

I'd go with a submersible pump myself, and have it rest on the bottom of the well, so you don't have to worry about priming it at all.

[Milspecstache]

I've rented a trencher and trenched in 400' of PEX, from 3/4" to 1", down about 2' and I did it all in a day.  Of course, if you have a lot of rocks and roots it will go much slower.  PEX will freeze without damage so I would definitely do that before using any other material.  You want it below the frost line so you still have water available.

Are you considering doing this yourself or hiring out?

[Vilx-]

Actually, I did mention a pump, though I guess the link wasn't well visible. It's this one: http://us.grundfos.com/products/find-product/mq.html
Also, the manual is here: http://net.grundfos.com/Appl/WebCAPS/streamliterature/Grundfosliterature-5271306.pdf

The well is actually covered right now, though the cover could be better (it's just some large flat piece of plywood and a few bricks to keep it down). But nothing has fallen in there for the past few decades. :)

Submersible pumps - I haven't seen a kind of submersible pump that would automatically turn on & off to provide a fixed pressure in the outlet. I think there are special pumps like that for deep drilled water holes (say, about 60m/200ft or more), but here the water is, like, 4-6m beneath the ground level. Wouldn't that be an overkill (and also a huge outlet pressure, which is an order of magnitude too large)?

Letting the pump down on some cable - that actually sounds like a nice idea. We currently do something similar - there is a plain cheap submersible pump on a string which works when you plug it in. When the summer season ends, we pull it out and store it away. It's nowhere near powerful enough to use for a water-supply-system, and it has no automatics though.

However, if the outlet pipe is dug in, and emerges somewhere in the middle of the well, then the connection between the outlet pipe and the pump needs to be flexible, right? Is that possible?