Monitoring water depth in a well?

   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #31  
We appreciate your well experience. That doesn't change the physics though. I think the confusion comes from the OP wanting to know the amount of water above the pump intake. That can be done without knowing the length of the bubbler tube. If you want to know the depth from a surface reference point to the pump then you would need to use the bubbler tube as a measuring tape also. If you measured the tube length you could know the distance from the surface to the water level and from the water level to the pump.

I am not concerned with anything but the amount of water in the casing above my pump so I do not need to know the length of the bubbler tube.

If you wanted to get fancy, you could actually run this bubbler tube to the home and mount the gauge there. Pump air into the tube until the pressure stops rising and then calc the water column height above the pump.
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well?
  • Thread Starter
#32  
Here are some of the specifics for our well.

It is located 25 feet from the bottom of a pit-run hillside. The ground is as follows. 6" of peat over 25 ft of glacial silt. Beneath that is blue clay. As we drilled we hit 3 or 4 thin layers of sand, some dry and some with low volumes of water. If I remember correctly, all of these were within 100 feet of the surface. After that we drilled through over 200 feet of straight blue clay. At the end of the second or third day they quit at 340 feet of depth and it looked like they were starting to get into sandstone with a little bit of water. From what they told me, experiance in our area left them with little hope of good water. When they returned the next morning, they were suprised to find the water in the shaft was 13 feet below ground level. Since they couldn't reach me, they pushed another 20 feet of pipe to see what they would find. A foot or two past where they had stopped for the night they hit a sand/gravel pocket about 10 feet thick full of water. We set a 3 foot tail shaft into the clay below the gravel pocket with 10 feet of screen on top of the tail shaft and pulled the pipe back to expose the screen.

My pump puts out an unrestricted flow of 40 GPM (measured by timing the filling of a 5 gallon bucket). They conducted a draw down test with the pump for one hour and never got the water more than 100 feet from the surface. They left the pump hanging at 150 feet since that left a 50 foot buffer at full flow. I've never had an issue with running out of water, but I know others who have. With the depth of my well, and since my contractor checked and there are no other wells in my area anywhere near this depth (all are around 50 feet) we really have no idea where this aquafer comes from or what its charateristics are. I probably will never have a problem, but I figure that it never hurts to have a means of monitoring it since I have no way to reference it to other wells.
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #33  
Here is a diagram I found from Goulds.

14
Install 1⁄8" or ¼" tubing long enough to be 10' to 15' below low water level. Measure the tubing length as it is lowered into the well.
Once the tubing is fixed in a stationary position at the top,
connect an air line and pressure gauge. Add air to the tubing until the pressure gauge reaches a point that it doesn't read any higher. Take
a gauge reading at this point.

A. Depth to water
(to be determined).
B. Total length of air line
(in feet).
C. Water pressure on air
tubing.

Gauge reads in pounds. Convert to feet by multiplying by 2.31.
Example:
If the air tube is 100' long, and the gauge reads 20 lbs.
20 lbs. x 2.31 = 46.2 ft.
Length of tube = 100 ft.
minus 46.2 ft. = 53.8 ft.
Depth to water (A) would be 53.8 ft.
C
A
B
 

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   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #34  
Since the device can generate relatively large force it could be connected to large arrow visible from distance or operate switches etc.

The way to reliably and inexpensively turn this into an IP signal is to aim a web camera at it.

The web camera aimed at a pressure gauge would also let you monitor depth using a bubbler system.
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #35  
I think they meant I to P, which is an I&E term.

Since the device can generate relatively large force it could be connected to large arrow visible from distance or operate switches etc.

The way to reliably and inexpensively turn this into an IP signal is to aim a web camera at it.

The web camera aimed at a pressure gauge would also let you monitor depth using a bubbler system.
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #36  
I think it would be an PI pressure to milliamp current transmitter spaned to the range of the well lowest psi = 4 ma highest psi 20 ma.

I work with that type hardware at work.
you would need transmitter power supply and meter

tom
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well? #37  
I think they meant I to P, which is an I&E term.

I think it would be an PI pressure to milliamp current transmitter...


Go back & read the original post. He wants a signal that can be monitored remotely, over the internet. He already has a LAN (Local Area Network) connection.

The problem with anything fancy is the cost.
 
   / Monitoring water depth in a well?
  • Thread Starter
#38  
I think they meant I to P, which is an I&E term.

I think it would be an PI pressure to milliamp current transmitter...


Go back & read the original post. He wants a signal that can be monitored remotely, over the internet. He already has a LAN (Local Area Network) connection.

The problem with anything fancy is the cost.

That's for sure. My biggest problem is my champaigne taste and ice water budget. Even beer seams expensive these days. I like the idea of the camera, as I already have several spares and that portion would be easy. Idealy, it would be a monitoring system similar to home weather stations such as this: WeatherHawk weather station buyer's guide which can be displayed live or in graph form over time and accessed remotely.
 

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