Sorry to hear about you troubles. I had something similar happen about 2 years ago except my pump was also sucking up a lot of sand at the same time. I was afraid the my well might have been going dry. Turned out that my well was plenty deep enough but the pump was ancient and was not only boiling the water in the well it was also stirring up dirt and rust deposits in the pipe. My house is 37 years old and that was the original pump. When the new pump was put in they attached it to a new flexible black pipe instead of the original rusty pipe and lowered it a few more feet down. It ended up costing me just over a $1,000.

Kara

I can relate to the whole well/pump thing. I had "well anxiety". Too often I'd run out of water in the house and then all these awful senarios would run through my head...all of them expensive! My first line of action was to reset the breaker. Usually that worked, thank God. Sometimes I had ants that were gumming up the works. Being on a well had its good points but there was a price to pay. Before moving I did end up with a new pump and they were able to lower the pump a bit since the water level was lower than when the well was drilled.

Sorry to hear you had such problems, but glad you were able to get them resolved. :o)

I hear you about having someone around who can fix things. My dear grandmother absolutely fell in love with my ex-husband when I brought him up to the farm to introduce them, and he fixed her pump. The marriage didn't last, but I still respect his ability to fix things, and appreciate that he didn't think twice about heading out with a flashlight to do what needed to be done (when my grandmother was still a bit skeptical about him, and, until he fixed the pump, was letting him know it.)

My parents once had a king snake - they named him snavely - who would shed his skin in the pump house once or twice a year and tangle up the mechanisms. For that, mom was thankful she had a husband who could fix things, and wasn't scared of snakes. She bred her fear into me, though dad worked it out of me.

And these days, I'm on city water, and wonder about the old pump next to the house and if that well could be used again. Probably not.... but would be interesting to try.

N and V, I have city water but have a well and pump also. We use the well water for the sprinkler system. It saves a lot of money not using city water and the plants do better without the chlorine in city water. It might be worth trying to fix the old pump. ;o)

Good morning everyone ~ Well pumps can cause us anxiety that's for sure. We use ours for the gardens, got city water a few years back and that sure is nice for showers, laundry and dishes. When we moved in here, our well was only 25' deep. Later we had a new well drilled and it's around 300' I think. I wouldn't want to have to use city water for gardening.

Kara ~ Pumps do tend to get old and wear out, we just aren't prepared when they do so. They steadily do their work in the background and 37 years is a long time.

Laura ~ 'well anxiety', any of us with wells sure can relate to that.

N & V ~ Oooohhhh snakes in the pumphouse, yikes! Haven't found any shed skins in ours, and I hope we don't. I do find them around in the shrubbery though. ;-)

Kathy ~ It is nice having the pump back in working order again. You are so right about using a well for gardens instead of chlorine water.

Happy Gardening everyone ~ FlowerLady

the former owners of this house "drilled" a shallow well and hooked it to the sprinkler system. It turned everything orange before going dry. Now we have the pump in the garage (not hooked up) and a backflow device that needs to be inspected once a year at about $50 per inspection. I was talking to the people at the county trying to figure how I get around this...fill the well?? What do I have to do?? This is insane! The county and my plumber who did the inspection were in agreement: just pay the money and get the inspection.

Think twice about a shallow well and check with your county to see what it involves but if you do decide to go with a shallow well...I have a pump!

I'm actually wondering if I could use it for a pond...It would probably be too big. Whatever.

I suspect our well may have salt intrusion actually. I think that's why my neighborhood went to city water a good while back. We're very close to the bay, and this is simply too urban an area for everyone to have their own well (I live in the city limits of Miami - I, and the other half million or so people, can't all drill their own wells.)

But I do wonder about it every so often, usually when I'm tripping over the rusted out pump to get to the spigot for the hose.