I've had problems with capacity and flow rate of the well I have feeding my household now. I recently acquired an adjacent property that has a much higher flow rate well available for my use. I need to configure this well to feed two households with fairly heavy usage demands. The "new" well is approximately 11gpm flow and previously supplied 50 households in conjunction with a 14,000 gallon storage tank. I don't have access to the former storage tank and it wouldn't help anyway...it's located approximately 300 feet vertical drop from my house. The well in question is 400 ft. deep and located on nearly the same ground plane at the wellhead as my home is now. The other home will be approximately the same level as well. Distance is 600 ft. to the wellhead from my current indoor pressure tank. What do I need to do to configure this well to meet my needs? I'm thinking that I may simply need to relocate my industrial size pressure tank to the well building and plumbing it out to the two houses. Am I anywhere in the ballpark of being on the right track? The second house will actually be constructed closer to the wellhead than my own house is now, if that matters. The well itself has it's own electric service and meter, so I am assuming that control can/could be done through pressure switches...???

You guys know everything else....why not this too... Thanks for any insight!

This is a pretty deep subject





















for our shallow minds

Is this "new" well still feeding all of those other houses? If not, your existing well may increase it's flow because the other well is not sucking your water supply away from your well. Just a thought.

Other than that, my shallow mind will stay in the wading area.

Well.....................?

Yeah...thats what I'm sayin...


Seriously though...the "new" well has been disconnected from the community supply it provided previously. The county we're in here has recently provisioned the neighborhood with public water. I'm another 600 feet vertical rise on a mountainside from the last connection and the county PSA exempted me taking advantage unless I funded and provided the additional pumps and excavation work (1/4 mi.) to get it to my house. That o'tay with me since I don't wanna drink their nasty ass New River water mixed with Clorox chaser anyway. Both my current well and the new well are separate aquifers and don't seem to affect each other at all. My current one is less than 2gpm flow. We have fairly unique geology here...limestone does fun/funny things...like gaping holes suddenly appear in the planet for no apparent reason. Most recent one was the Coca-Cola truck pulled into the parking lot of a local convenience store. Driver went in to inform store employees of the delivery. Walked back out and only half of his trailer on the mini tractor-trailer was sticking out of the ground . HTF do you explain that to your dispatcher/supervisor/insurance rep? Uhhhhh... the Earth ate my truck boss. Another family in a nearby town walk out on their front porch one morning and immediately noticed that the front yard was now a 60' diameter by 35' deep meteor crater about 10 steps from the front walkway. Another oddity....in the neighborhood below my house is a well that is estimated to be 1000+ gpm....go figure . Lots of drill bits get lost off rigs around here when they punch into caves. That's an expensive fix...

I'm puttin a bump in The Pub to try and get some more views and advice...

horizontal drilling???? LOL

I will try to read better,,,later

If I'm understanding the situation correctly, you have two houses next to each other, one with a crappy well and the other with a good well which will provide enough water to both houses if you could connect the systems. If these houses really will be owned and sold together then the water systems could be connected by burying a section of ABS pipe and providing the correct valves etc. However, if there is even a chance the houses might be sold separately then I would avoid connecting these water systems as it will cause all sorts of headaches down the road for the different owners. Because of this I would suggest adding a storage system to the house with the crappy well so the cistern is slowly filling all the time but will allow for plenty of water when you need it. I installed systems like this in the past using a plastic tank which can be moved into the basement and which has a float valve to shut that water off when the system is full. The water in that system will be un-pressurized, so you woudl then need to add an additional pump and pressure tank to send water to your house. If you don't mind the noise this could be a centrifugal pump but we used a submersible pump with low pressure shutoff since it was silent, never needed to be primed and would not run dry. A benefit of this system woudl be you could also temporarily connect the good house to the storage system if that well ever ran completely dry and at least keep water in the house.
Sounds complicated but it really isn't. Good luck and feel free to drop me a line with any questions.

Aja,

Thanks for the reply. You have the general idea, but I'm not concerned about future owners having a problem. I own the "new" well and site and will "share" water service with the soon to be constructed house that my daughter is planning adjacent to my property. Is this the way to go...???

I'm thinking of installing a large pressure tank at the well control building/wellhead and operating it at a high enough pressure to feed two houses, one at 600 ft. distance but nearly level from wellhead, one at less than 300 ft. (my daughters' house), and using the pressure switching system that controls the pressure tank and submersible well pump/controller to regulate the "flow" to the houses ie: pressure drop activates the pump (well is 400 ft. deep and pump is hung at 370 ft. or therabouts). Do I need additional jet or pressure pumps, or another pressure tank setup at the houses? Is this the most efficient and economical way to do this? Will I, or how do I become capable of maintaining 60 psi average water pressure in both residences?