Well pump head fitting

[metalchomper]

Hi fellow brain trust!
Neighbor heard a funny noise coming from my well head cover. Said he never heard anything like it. I ran out and pulled the cover off and found water spraying out the tee on top of the well. The tee fitting developed a small hole. I quickly fixed with a peice of inner tube and Vise Grips. I'm new to wells. Is this something I can put some torque on to remove the fitting? I don't have an understanding of what's below the fitting. I don't want to break something below it if this fitting is rusted on tight. I guess I could try to stretch my welder out to it and fix the hole. Would hate to risk damage to the pump. I could also fab up a backer to my patch and hold it on with worm clamps.

Also, the well pump is 23 years old. Was wondering if I should replace it as a preventative measure rather than it fail at an inconvenient time?

Thanks in advance for your input!

 

[MoKelly]

Sorry - no clue as to help you but your fix is very clever.

MoKelly

 

[bcp]

That tee may be all that is holding your pump and pipe from dropping into the well. Some systems have a safety line.

Bruce

 

[Menagerie-Manor]

Any idea how deep the well is.

The tee appears to be either galvanized or black malleable and they do not take to welding very good and usually wind up being worse off. I would probably loosen and pull the cap straight up and get a u-bolt thru a 2x4 to support the weight of the pipe.

 

[Roadworthy]

Do you have any idea where your pump is physically located? How deep is the well? The fitting itself appears to be a simple "tee" fitting. They're pretty common. If you don't know what's where it may be best to call a pump guy to fix it. That's not the pump, it 's a fitting you could buy at almost any hardware store. What it connects and how things go together is the greater concern.

 

[etpm]

You need to somehow pull that cover up and find out what that tee is threaded onto. It may be supporting the well pump! Don't laugh, I have see stuff even more stupid on wells. My own in fact. My well head has something called a "Pitless Adapter". This doodad is a bronze right angle fitting that penetrates the steel well casing about 2 feet underground in my case. So the pipe from the well pump screws into it, the fitting makes a 90 degree bend and comes out of the side of my well casing. Because it is bronze, and because surface water should not be allowed to get into the well, the fitting uses a gasket between itself and the steel well casing. This gasket also prevents electrolysis from corroding the well casing or the fitting. So what did the genius who drilled the well do after he installed the Pitless Adapter? He screwed in a piece of black iron pipe which in turn connected to the PVC pipe that supplies my water. Of course the iron pipe corroded away. At night. When we were sleeping. In the middle of winter. If I didn't have a backhoe to excavate the pond from the huge leak I would have had to hire it out. Even so it took me all day in the cold and rain to fix just the pipe connection. I had to wait for summer before I could finally fill in the hole because of all the mud. So be really careful when figuring out what that tee screws onto. And try to determine if galvanized pipe is proper for you situation. Pinhole leaks are usually caused by corrosion which is often caused by electrolysis. Good Luck.

 

[CH4Ohio]

That tee is supporting the weight of the pump and the water pipe that's hanging in the well casing. If you break the threads or that tee somehow fails, you could lose your pump and carrier pipe in the well casing. Might get lucky and be able to pull it out with the electrical wire, but if it's steel pipe, doubtful.

I recently had a well fail. Normally I would have tried to DIY it. SO GLAD I didn't. A well pump guy (that's all they do) showed up with a derrick truck, parked over the well, and attached their cable and winch to that tee and proceeded to pull out 200' of steel pipe, one joint at a time, and ultimately the pump. They had simple, but specialized, clamps to grab the pipe at the tee and the collars at each joint and keep everything secure as the pipe was pulled and cut so we didn't lose the entire assembly into the well casing during the process. All new pump, plastic pipe, cap and fittings on top now.

Might be worth having an expert take a look. I didn't appreciate how specialized this work is. The tools and equipment aren't something that the average plumber / electrician DIYer has available.

Anyway, for "down casing" work or anything related to the fittings that support that equipment, I'll be calling my pump repair guy from now on. Money well spent.

Your mileage may vary . . .

 

[oosik]

You have made a temporary fix. You have no idea of what is further down the well. It is time to call in professional help.

 

[ponytug]

Nice fix! Speaking from experience, if you have one pinhole, there are a few more waiting to happen and you are on borrowed time. I have steadily removed all of the galvanized in our water system because it kept corroding, and I don't miss it one bit. PEX or PVC is the way to go in my book.

+1 on getting a well specialist, but not whoever installed this one. There are three different pieces of iron (ferrous) material there; the well head plate, that hopefully galvanized fitting, the non watertight electrical box, and I don't see any isolation. Not ideal, and a recipe for corrosion. That said, it has made it 23 years.

At 23 years, if the well isn't super deep, I would be inclined to pull the pump, and replace it, and the foot valve while you are at it. You could then redo the well head in something noncorrosive...and I would redo that wiring box in something water resistant...

All the best,

Peter

 

[PILOON]

I have rigged and maintained a fair number of pumps.
One thing I learned early in that game is to not mix match fittings.
NEVER use common steel fittings, galvanized or not, in the mix.
For sure that steel one is the one that'll always fail.
I've seen them totally rotted out to completely clogged from rust growth.
For me it's all brass but also OK with HD poly B for the piping.
Also always use a safety 'pull cable' attached directly to the pump.
Then there is a 'pitless head' that makes removal simple if the need arises.

 

[Valveman]

That tee is holding your pump up. It is probably on the top of a 20' joint of pipe. You will have to remove the entire 20' joint of pipe to replace the tee. As was said, you probably need a pump hoist truck. Less than 100' deep on plastic pipe you could pull up by hand. But not knowing how deep you could be pulling on hundreds or thousands of pounds.

That hole was caused by electrolysis from two dissimilar metals. The brass hose bib screwed into the iron tee caused the hole in the iron fitting.

23 years is a long life for a pump that was designed to survive 7 years of on/off cycles. But it could still be better than some of the new stuff they have cheapened up over the years. Gonna have to pull it up to fix the tee. Might as well have a look at the pump and be prepared to replace it while you are at it.

 

[turnkey4099]

I have rigged and maintained a fair number of pumps.
One thing I learned early in that game is to not mix match fittings.
NEVER use common steel fittings, galvanized or not, in the mix.
For sure that steel one is the one that'll always fail.
I've seen them totally rotted out to completely clogged from rust growth.
For me it's all brass but also OK with HD poly B for the piping.
Also always use a safety 'pull cable' attached directly to the pump.
Then there is a 'pitless head' that makes removal simple if the need arises.

For sure. Galvanised pipe here whether in a well or buried in dirt does not last I had to replace almost a 1/4 mile of galv swith PVC when the old stuff rotted. It was about 40 years old at that time. Then I had a new well drilled at my lot. It made about 20 years before the 'down' pipe in the well sprung a leak. Well outlet pulled it and was sready to put it back in when I stopped him and told him to replace that black pipe with the special plastic sstuff used for 'down pipes'.

 

[LouNY]

It sounds to me as if everyone thinks you have a submersible pump, do you or do you have a single pipe jet pump.
Shallow well or deep?

 

[JJT]

"Also, the well pump is 23 years old. Was wondering if I should replace it as a preventative measure rather than it fail at an inconvenient time?"

You're on borrowed time. I had the pro's replace my 25 yr old pump, pressure switch and bladder tank this summer. A well spent $2,150. I did the original 200' install by myself 25 yrs ago. Mow that I'm almost 60, I'll spend the money and watch the pro's.

 

[bcp]

"Also, the well pump is 23 years old. Was wondering if I should replace it as a preventative measure rather than it fail at an inconvenient time?"

You're on borrowed time. I had the pro's replace my 25 yr old pump, pressure switch and bladder tank this summer. A well spent $2,150. I did the original 200' install by myself 25 yrs ago. Mow that I'm almost 60, I'll spend the money and watch the pro's.

Neighbor has the same done here, about 140 deep. It was over $6000.

Bruce

 

[gary49]

Submersible pump because there’s a junction box on the top of the well seal. Tee is supporting pump and drop pipe. Would be good to know how deep the well is. Might be galvanized pipe in 21’ joints all the way down or could be black polyethylene pipe or even 20‘ pieces of 1” PVC pipe with glued joints. What I do is to try to loosen the bolts that go into the sanitary well seal, they sandwich a piece of rubber with another steel piece that is tapped for the bolts And that squeezes the rubber piece to produce a seal. They are usually seized, unfortunately, but the seal will usually pop out if you pry it up at the outside edges with a wonder bar or something like that. If you get it popped up, you can move it aside and look down the well with a good flashlight. If you see black poly pipe, it’s probably not terribly deep, no more than 300’. in any case, to change the tee all you need to do is to raise the pipe and pump enough to get something below the seal to hold everything up while you unscrew the tee. I use a small bench vise, a pipe vise would work, too. Just make sure the vise is tight, you don’t want it to slip. You’ll need a pipe wrench on the fitting and another one below the seal to keep the pipe from turning. This is the old way of putting a pipe in a well. Pitiless adapters are much better, both in ease of installation and service as well as keeping surface water out of the well, the pit often will fill with enough water to cover the seal, and they aren’t that good at actually sealing, not to mention that the electrical connection such as your system has, could end up underwater. A brass tee would hold up better than the galvanized one you have. You don’t actually need the tee, normally there would just be a 90, that is, unless you need the connection for a hose.

 

[JJT]

Neighbor has the same done here, about 140 deep. It was over $6000.

Bruce

I had 3 quotes, one was over $7,000, one was TBD, "should be under $3,000", I took the third - a firm fixed price of $2,150. Fortunately I have two wells so this was not a 911 situation.

 

[bdhsfz6]

That tee is definitely supporting the weight of the feed pipe and pump. As previously said, the right thing to do, if you have the $$, is get a well specialist to look at it. In the mean time, a cheap fix would be to try drilling out the pin hole a bit and use a sheet metal screw & rubber washer to seal the leak. Might last a week, might last 10 years but worth a try. I've used this idea many times on air pressure & water tanks.

 

[ning]

The nuts you see on top of the plate are providing compression on the rubber gasket below it (the entire unit is the well seal).

If you loosen the nuts, you may be able to pull the whole system up (disconnect the pipe from the well to the house first - it looks like you may need to cut the PVC first; if you're lucky you'll be able to simply patch in a union so you can reconnect things afterwards and if you're not lucky then you'll replace a bigger chunk of that PVC; also disconnect the wiring. THROW THE BREAKER FIRST!).

There may also be a lifting ring - like an eye bolt - on the well seal.

My pump is 180' down and I'm able to loosen the nuts and pull the thing up a couple feet on my own. There's a nylon rope leading to the pump as well that you should be able to support the pump with if you disconnect the T.

I replaced the pump on my well on my own about 15 years ago; I rigged up a set of rollers to transfer the force 90 degrees and attached the T to my truck trailer hitch and slowly pulled the whole thing out of the ground. I'd use my tractor now, probably, but the truck was fine. This only worked because my well has poly pipe in it; if PVC or galv was used obviously my pulling method couldn't work.

If my well was much deeper however the length of pipe + the column of water in the pipe going to it would've been too heavy for me to even get started and lift up, but things were just right and DIY was sufficient; something like $700 for a new pump and that was it.

 

[Alien]

I just replaced my pump with new electrical cable and bore iron treatment as well. Pump is a 1.5 kW and total cost was Au$3700.
The old pump was smaller and only 8 years old but the foot valve was leaking so I decided to just do the lot.
It was at 180 feet depth. (60 meters)