How to Remove Silt Mud Sediment from a Well - Repair and Clean
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- Mud, silt, and sediment removal and pumping from a shallow well. Sediments build up in a well and need to be removed. Dug well cleaning of mud can be a daunting task. First you have to repair any leaks in the well rings to stop the the silt from building up.
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Here on the west coast we have plenty of water in the winter months but it can get really dry in the summer. So having enough water for our expanding garden is a concern. We are fortunate to have an irrigation well in the corner of our property. It's a shallow dug well with a pump house. Over the years the well has silted up and there must be close to six feet of mud in the bottom. To expand our garden and have the water we need I knew I had to find a way to get the mud out.
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I'm so happy we found a solution for our summer garden water supply. The mud in the well built up to such a depth that it was limiting our irrigation well's capacity.
How much does it cost to get one cleaned up
I really like how well (no pun intended), you describe the process with step by step instruction. I wish all DIY videos were like this.
Love how you moved your lid.
" Work smarter not harder. "
Thanks!
I installed a "mystery pipe" in my home well (with foot valve inserted into it) and it does keep the mud and fine silt from coming into the house. Without it, the filters get clogged and dirtly fairly quickly. It basically suck water from up high instead of down low where the silt is stirred easily. I had the idea when a friend said his plumbers installed a sleeve around his deep well and the silt problem went away. Then I found your video and said "thats it!". Thanks for sharing. I made mine just like the one you pulled out (only longer) and it works great.
That's excellent! Thanks for your comments here!
Can you explain in a point form way, im getting my well improved with a pump out and wash in spring, would like have a system that reduces silt going forward
I used to clean and service hand dug wells exactly like this one in Mendocino County, CA. I have to say you did an awesome job here ! There are a few things I'd have done differently but you covered the main issues remarkably well. The wells we cleaned were mostly residential wells that are used for drinking water so sanitation was something we had to address. The concrete well rings are probably deteriorating because your water is acidic. You will want to do a good inspection looking for new openings in the rings every year or two so you can repair them before they get too bad. If you ever need to pump the mud out again you might see if you can rent a gas powered diaphragm type mud pump from your local tool rental yard and save on the cost of a pump truck. Thanks for the video !!!
The cadence of your words and the tone of your voice is remarkable. I could learn from you all day long.
Very intelligent and logical thinking and planning. Great information, great video and presentation - thanks for the share!
Bought a house from 1880 and the old well is about 25 foot deep and clear as day.
Crazy how something that old is still working without a problem.
New well is across the street. Old owners put it in thinking the old one wasn't going to last them. That was 25 years ago 😁
This was an excellent video. You were concise. You articulate well. You don't have non-necessarily details. You outline the problems, options and what you did. It is also something that I might do with my well.
Thank you so much for your kind words and support!!
Kent, as a teenager, I was hired to go down in a well like yours and dig out and extend it down. The homeowner had some concrete rings that came in 3 sections and bolted together which we lowered to the bottom with a rope, then I would climb down a wooden ladder. The key to the operation was to find a kid dumb enough and greedy enough to do the job. I think I made $4 an hour. Good luck.
Greg, thanks for your comment. That's a bit of a horror story hey?
@@MANaboutTOOLS Kent, almost 50 years ago and it still is memorable. At the time, my biggest worry was that I was mud from head to foot and my wallet in my back pocket was totally soaked. Your well is pretty different, how fast does it fill up in the summer? Gals per minute or gals per hour? Good luck.
@@gregbrown1083 Our irrigation well fills just fast enough to keep our drip irrigation system in the summer. Just enough tho. Not a lot extra. I'll have to work out the gpm as a reference. I think digging a pond might be a good additional source. Cheers
@@MANaboutTOOLS Kent, I'm always in favor of ponds. I have a number of year around springs that feed several ponds. Do you have a water source besides rain catchment? We get surprisingly little rain here in July, Aug. ans Sept. Good luck.
@@gregbrown1083 Thanks! We don't have a stream but we have some low spots in the back field that is wet(ish) most of the year.
The sewage vac-truck solution! Why didn't I think of that. I will be calling the vac-man tomorrow!
All that silt would be great soil builder. Great job.
Those vacuum pump trucks can be a lifesaver. Maintenance is tightening the screws occasionally, so to speak. Thanks for sharing.
Not quite the issue that I’m having.
( shallow jet pump well sediment)
But a very informative video in a short amount of time.
My father had a similar issue when I was a child. I remember he went down in the well. I think a ladder was built in.
I’m sure this information will be needed in my future.
Thank you.
A good method where the mud and gravel did not arrive from the water source itself. It is my understanding that vacuuming a well can accelerate the migration of sand etc. from the aquifer into the well and possibly even lead to a collapse of the casing. I'm told a better method is to agitate the well water and pump the water over a sluice box and back into the well. Sounds simple in theory but I was hoping to get more info on this method which is why I watched the video
Nice source of information 😊
Suck trucks are pretty powerful. They use them in the oil fields to clean tankers and whatnot.
Thanks for adding your experience. I just discovered that I have an abandoned 6" metal well pipe in my backyard. It is entirely full of clay mud. The well was in use sometime around 1960, but abandoned when city water hookup arrived. I have been here since 1997 and want to re-establish this old well, which I believe should provide irrigation water. But, how to clean the well? Your video gives a few more thoughts. Thx
I have seen a similar device like that drain pipe down a well before, but yours seem to be missing some parts.
The one I saw was a dual purpose device in a much larger well with automatic pumps.
First as you said for keeping silt from clogging the inlet to the pump. But it also functions as an emergency water saver.
The holes down the side were blocked by a 2nd pipe you could rotate or move to open the holes to the water at different levels. If there was lots of water in the well it would overflow from the top but if it was dry you could decide how much water was to remain in the well without the risk of pumping it completely dry saving you some water for rationing.
We've built a similar type of device for managing the waterlevel in one of our ponds on the property.
That one is made from a wooden box with the outlet pipe from the pond at the bottom of the sunken box. And one of the walls are made out of several wooden slats that can be removed from the top to then lower the waterlevel or they can be added back in to raise it.
Thank you so much for taking the time to contribute to this! I really appreciate that!
nice job! i was wondering if there a way to save the mud was sucked out in order to go through it? I have a deep well that i would like to see what is in the bottom in the mud. I have a feeling that things of value may have been thrown in it some time ago in its history.
Thanks! I'm not sure how to save the mud as mine went into a vacuum truck. If you used a trash pump it could be pumped onto a lawn, then left to dry and shovelled up later. Maybe that's an option to search for treasure. :o)
Very well delivered sir👍
I believe that scooplike foot alve was used to push the gravel out also revered you take gravel out in the same method in smaller wells
Can you clean it with a wet vacum cleaner? Or a compressor? Or a jet washer? Thanks
Thanks for sharing this. I have a similar situation but my only option is to manually remove the silt and all the mud that's in it which have accumulated for how long i couldn't remember! This project is in my bucket list and i will do all i can to revive this well.
Thanks! It seems like a very common problem a lot of us are facing.
I found something that looks sort like your well on my property. There are no pipes going in or out of it. It is about three feet in diameter and had no cap over it. This property has been vacant for at least 20 years. I was trying to find a septic tank a neighbor told me existed. I counted four rings deep and the water is in the fourth ring. Do you think it could be a well?
I opened my well today to discover couple of decomposed rodents, which I gracefully extracted with a fishing. That probably was the cause of organic decomposition boldly manifested in water coming out of pipes. I do have reverse osmosis filtration for drinking water, which also undergoes boiling before being consumed. My question would be how long did you wait for water to fill the well after draining it?
You need heavy stainless mesh, or hydraulic cement and find out how rats got in, dont spend money down stream, deal with root problem, you have a hole, above the water line somewhere? Patch and clean out like he did first, then i would shock that well after with peroxide or bleach, the bacteria needs be killed off Asap. Imo
@@daleval2182 Thank you for the suggestion! I did take a slightly different route. Sprayed the walls with chlorine, got an electric pump to suck out all the debris from the bottom, removed excess dirt on sides at the bottom (a lot of water started to pour in immediately). Finally, dropped a 13 Watt UV light into the well with weight added so it is submerged. I was thinking of adding potassium permanganate as an alternative to chlorine, but decided to skip that. I also installed a reverse osmosis for drinking untreared water. So far so good.
@@MusicClassicalVideos excellent, i use peroxide, was able to buy 35 % by the pail, but gov atuck6 nose in, so its harder find, more expensive, some spa and pool supply have it, or farm supply, its used to disinfect stalls, safer than all other, im also looking into ozone, and final stage UV, Take care
@@MusicClassicalVideos i like that Idea UV right in the well 👍
@@daleval2182 it's a real killer! They sell for about $15. You will need to solder a long wire for dropping into well.
This is great. Advise me please, I tied bottle filled with water and put inside my well with a robe and seemingly it hits a hard mud
Can you clean it with s wet vacum cleaner, or a compressor? Thanks
We bought an older country home upgraded in 1970 to city water/sewer. There is a well out back exactly like yours... 30in ID about 22ft deep. It hasn't really been used in 20 years or so. HF Tools had a very affordable pump that is now used to water a garden. Have done all the math to calculate the capacity for 475 available gallons. This well has about 3-feet of muck/roots at the bottom and I ain't getting down there to clean it out. I'm a brave tuff SOB, but not that tuff. Soooo....call up a septic tank pumper truck and get er done? I also have this wizzy idea to pump out the water to be replenished etc etc and store it in those white crate things like you had in the vid. THEN, a solar powered pump could cycle this cache water storage (tank to tank to tank) and filter maybe treat the water.
Poop truck for the win! I cleaned septic tanks for awhile. It’s a dirty, smelly business, but it pays the bills.
Nice work. Very informative
That was realy a good job! I have one question, what was the color of mud and silt you removed?
Thanks! The mud was grey/brown and clay-like.
Отличное видео , не всё понимаю по английски но наглядно всё понятно зачем и почему. Спасибо ;)
Loved that. Thank you!
What’s the name of the company that makes those oversized water containers with metal screen around it
used to store well water you pumped out, and how much do those cost roughly?
Thanks! I don't know who makes them or what they cost. I borrowed that tank from a neighbor..
Those water containers with the cage around them are called IBC totes.
They are called ibc totes and I paid 50 or 60 for mine from a guy on Craigslist.
Jessi Lasiter - thank you for saying. I feel silly that I wasn’t familiar with them & how common those ibc tubs are. -and SO affordable second hand. Thx!
@@suzocomo7707 get food grade ones is best, food plants often sell, I bought some at Coca Cola plant once 75 ea
best way to seal the pit is to presure wash it and coat the top 10 or 12 ft with while madusa comes with it little welbond in the mix
Thank goodness the suction was strong enough to get out all that packed mud.
Hi, wish submersible pump is good for a dirty mud water in a 240ft Well?
this one goes to 180'...maybe more with modification? Not sure if it will handle 240' www.brumbypumps.com/clean%20out%20borewell
I got my 25 foot well casing cleaned out but no water is coming back in so it’s dry even after a week of waiting. My next door neighbors well is 40 feet away from mine in a straight line & his too is only 25 feet deep but always has 65 Degree water with good pressure. Any ideas? I’ve heard of people using muriatic acid but not sure. Just bought this property so I don’t know the well history. We’re in Indiana 100 foot away from a river.
i find that very strange, i have a small well only about 20f deep, and were 120f from a shallow stream and that is only 1 inch wide yet keeps up with 16lpm. Only thing i can think is your neighbors well is more on a natural rock fault so the water can enter while yours is not, also the land could be deceiving, maybe you are on a gradient. If you can get down there maybe you could dig a side channel just to see what type of rock you have
I am having a very similar problem. My dug irrigation well just ran dry, and we're looking at irrigating our acre with City water. The well is 37 feet deep, and when we started using it, the water level was 13 feet below grade. Now the water level is over 30 feet down. And the well is only 37 feet deep total ( from the top of the silt to grade ). I never cleaned out the silt, and am now regretting that.
I had thought that my Sureflo 9300 pump was getting tired and had ordered a new $1600 pump. Gotta cancel that until or unless I get the well fixed. I'll be calling around to trash pumping services on Monday.
I suspect that the laws of physics are against me. No matter how potent a truck is, it surely
can't suck water up 30 feet - even if it pulls a perfect vacuum, it's only ambient air pressure pushing the water/silt/garbage up, right?
Yeah...30 feet is a long way. I would think that stirring the mud into a thinner slurry would help. If there was a way to really stir it all up and suspend as much of the sediment into the water. Then pump at all out in one go before it settled again. Let me know how you made out.
@@MANaboutTOOLS I have a tentative quote from a pump company for $2K. They proposed to send a man down into the well to scoop up the mud. But they have not come through with a written quote - maybe they are not really interested in doing this job. As it turns out, the well did not run dry. The water level is 20 feet below where it used to be, but it's still there...and the pump was still -barely- in the water. Water had leaked into the pump's electrical connection and corroded out one of the wires.
This does not change what needs to be done - the well still needs to be cleaned. If I can't get somebody to do it, I'll have to do it myself.
The depth is an issue. No matter how powerful a pump at the surface is - it cannot suck or siphon higher than 26 feet. Because stuff is pushed up to the pump with ambient air pressure, not vacuum.
I considered getting or renting a "full trash" pump and lowering it into the well. But all the full-trash pumps I have seen are gasoline powered. So I would need to gin up some sort of breathing hose for the engine, otherwise it would choke itself with its own exhaust down there. And such a pump is very heavy. I can handle the weight: I have a gantry above the well with an electric winch - the kind people put on their jeeps.
Another concept - instead of a "full trash" pump, lower an electric sewage pump. It won't handle 1-inch rocks like the trash pump would, but maybe I don't care. Lower the
electric pump, lower a wand of PVC pipe. Feed compressed air into the pipe, roil up the mud into the water down there, and pump it all out.
A third idea - make up a a little claw excavator - like a post hole digger. Activate it with an arm/bellcrank with a weight on it. Lower it down with two ropes, one holding the weight up - when it hits bottom, let go of the rope holding the weight - the weight comes down, the claw closes, I jiggle the tool up and down a bit, then raise it with a claw full of goop. Maybe hang also a bucket down there to receive the goop. Raise the bucket when it's full, toss, repeat.
@@MANaboutTOOLS I have thought up a new concept. I measured the well yesterday. The water level has recovered a bit. It's 27 feet below grade. The silt is at 37 feet below grade, and it is 2 feet thick. I measured this by making up a 40-foot pole out of PVC pipe and lowering it into the well. So here's the concept: I get a cheap Harbor Freight submersible sewage pump. It has a 2-inch NPT output. Make up a "U turn" out of 2 inch PVC pipe, and tie a mesh sock - fiberglass bug screen - to the end. Actually,
fasten the mesh sock to the pipe with a compression clamp. Lower the pump to the bottom of the well, jostle it around while it's pumping. It fills the mesh sock with silt, I lift it out and discard - lower it back and do it again. I can figure out when the sock is full by monitoring the pump current with a "Kill-O-Watt" meter. When the outlet is completely clogged, the current will go up.
The pump plus the filled sock will be quite heavy, and hard to pull out. No problem, I already have a wooden gantry up top and a power winch, the kind that people put on their jeeps. I needed it to get the well cover off. The winch is rated 3000 pounds and has a 49-foot cable, completely adequate.
How much did it cost to pump it out?
I think it was around $300
@@MANaboutTOOLS wow that's pretty cheap. Thanks.
How deep can a vacuum truck pull out the mud ?
15' was about the depth of my well
So how did you break up the harder mud?
We sprayed water down the well and kept at it with the suction hose. It was a load of work for sure.
🕳Neat; makes me wish I had the problem too. Sub’d!
Hi Mr Kent. Very much enjoyed your video, thank you. I'm wondering what kind of pump you used to extract the water from your well, prior to pumping out the sludge please?
I want to reverse model this concept in a way, to fill up my well. The problem I will face is a powerful enough inverter for the car. Thanking you.
PS. The wood cutting jig is just what I needed. Best
Thanks! If you pause the video at around 4:25 you will see the door to the pumphouse open and the black 1/2 hp pump with a long silvery pressure cylinder on top. That's what I use to pull water from this irrigation well and distribute it to hose bibs in the garden and around the house. This pump runs off a 220V line. I believe these pumps can also be wired for 120V though. It takes a lot of amps to start these pumps. A generator would need to have a peak wattage of 3000 or more I would think to kick one of these pumps over and get it running. But check into that. I don't know if an inverter to a car battery would do it. I would think not. Hope this helps! Cheers, Kent
@@MANaboutTOOLS High Kent, thank you for your reply. It doesn't seem possible after reading up on it.
I'll think of another way.
Thanking you again.
Anybody done this with a trash pump? There's an old stock well way up on a hill above where I am running hogs. I'm not sure how deep it is, but other similar old stock wells I've seen are 16 feet deep and there's about 6 feet of water in it. I'd like to pump it out, but I couldnt drive my pickup truck to within a quarter mile let alone a hired pump truck. Casing doesn't seem broken. I think it filled up because it was left imperfectly covered by a broken piece of well casing for 50 or more years, and is at the bottom of a draw. Upland soil flowed in slowly which is very fixable.
A trash pump was an option I was considering. It might just work too. Would help I think to really stir up the mud to thin it out with the water. Would be easier on the pump.
well done!
well done ;)
VT
How much did you pay for the pump truck?
Ryan Edwards I think it was around $300
Hand Bail ? OH HELL NO !!!!!
5 minutes before starting to remove silt
Hire a contractor. Got it.
I love the logic this guy has. He's like watch how I fix my well. Step 1. Hire a company to come out and do it. Total waist of time watching this. Lol
What if you just shoved a firehose and nozzle down there?