purifying water question

[Jay]

If just the pump (speaking lightly here) couldn't you order a replacement pump? I don't know but could you gather the equipment to do the install? What would it cost to just have it fixed properly? You don't need to answer but I would be weighting my options.

5
My well is 350 ft deep, and because it's behind the house they can't get a truck to it. Prefab home was placed after the well was drilled. due to the fact that the pipe is pvc and not that flexable stuff I was told that they don't even want to do the job. Probably have to figure how to effectively pull it myself. a normal replacement they said would cost upwards to 25 hundred to replace the pump. don't even want to know what it would cost to have someone pull it by hand. I realize that I would have to have a couple come-a-longs. one to hold the pipe, and the second to get a new bite.

 

[UrbanHunter]

Wow, I watched a guy pulling a 200' pump, lots of work and lots of detail.

 

[The Lazy L]

excellent water, pump needs replaced. thinking about a hand pump.

Hand pump will not work on a deep well.

 

[Cascadian]

I agree Berkey for the short term solution. We lived off spring water for 4 years with a Berkey light. Yes they filter a little slow. We just got in the habit of topping it off before bed. We rarely used more than 3 gallons a day for drinking, cooking and pets.

 

[Peanut]

To clarify the issue of spring water (pardon the pun). Before 2010 when city water got out here my family drank from the same spring over 120yrs. Not a single drop was ever filtered and NO one ever got sick. Its still great tasting water. I make a point to stop for a drink every time I'm down in that holler. We actually have 4 springs here on the farm.

 

[Homesteader33]

I've replaced well pumps before. Anything over 100 feet is more than a one man job. Now a piece of equipment like a 4 wheeler or winch and stand could also work.

I don't have a well but my neighbor does, we used my tractor (forks) and put an angle iron across (stitch welded for temporary but sturdy holding) the forks to anchor a snatch block to. We then used my side by side winch to pull it up, well depth was 195'. Took us a day but we changed his pump, had to let the winch cool down after each pull to reduce risk of burning my winch up (costly). I will add we used a cable grip anchored to the tractor (love shackles) to hold everything while we choked up on the winch line, worked like a champ!

 

[Morgan101]

Wow. We have more opinions here than Great Taste/Less Filling. Here is a link that explains boiling pretty thoroughly.

https://www.outdoors.org/resources/...ould-you-boil-water-to-make-it-safe-to-drink/

 

[SheepDog]

Hand pumps are practically worthless for a deep well. Even if you use a submerged pump you still have to lift that column of water to get the pump to accept the next stroke. It takes a lot of work to get a water column of 100 feet or more to move.

 

[Jay]

Haven't figured out my well situation yet, so just ordered a berkey filter to get by, by using my rain water. boiling which I have been doing kind of sucks, although I still boil for non food usage.

 

[SheepDog]

If you are in an agro area boiling may not be healthy. High nitrogen content just gets worse if you boil.
Distillation works but it is either fuel intensive or time intensive.

 

[Aklogcabin]

Our cabin is remote so water was always an issue. It's heavy. We bought an MSR water purifier for 350 bucks near 5 years ago. It can freeze and never needs cleaning. We no longer have to carry water. It takes about 20 minutes to pump the 5 gallons of pond or creek water we drink . And it's portable so you can take it hiking n such. This has worked well for us

 

[Spikedriver]

If you are in an agro area boiling may not be healthy. High nitrogen content just gets worse if you boil.
Distillation works but it is either fuel intensive or time intensive.

People forget about chemical contamination. Where I live, surface water is never safe to drink unless it's from one of the very few springs in the area. Personally, I'm not real confident about those, either. Between fertilizer, (both chemical and natural, i.e. livestock poop) and herbicide/pesticide contamination, water here has to come from underground. I suppose in a pinch you could boil some of it to drink for a day or two, but I personally would not do it unless I was staring death in the face...

 

[PopPopT]

We have a ZeroWater filter, one of the bigger ones that goes on the countertop and has a spigot on the bottom of it. We end up using that quite a lot. You can get the thing for maybe $30 or so, BUT, those filters don't last forever and they're not cheap either, I think typically around $20/ea, though I've seen some variation. All of our drinking water goes through that even though we have relatively clean city water. I haven't tried it for rain water but I'd bet it would do a decent job.

Ultimately, I'd rather have a Big Berkey type setup (not necessarily that name brand) as I'm thinking it would actually be cheaper to run per gallon.

We thought there was a well on the property when we bought here but the previous owner destroyed it. (The well casing is laying out behind the barn.) It's not uncommon for a well to run $10k or more here though not necessarily that much. Just depends on how deep they gotta go. There is usually lots of rock to go through, though, no matter where we'd try.