How Deep Should I Go With My Well Hand Pump?
How deep should I go with my well hand pump?
As a manufacturer of emergency well hand pump kits, we often get this question. Unfortunately, the answer varies as much as styles and water depths vary. There are multiple factors to take into account when deciding how deep to go with your hand pump. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you will feel well informed on how to decide how deep to place your hand pump in your well.
Our hand pump kit features a piston with a foot valve on the end. This piston takes in water from the foot valve and pumps it to the surface where the handle is. For the hand pump to operate, the foot valve on the very bottom of the piston needs to be submerged in water. To determine how deep you need to submerge the foot valve in water, you first need to know where your static water level is.
STATIC WATER LEVEL
Your static water level is the depth from the surface of the ground to the surface of the water level in your well under non-pumping conditions. When your electrical well pump is being used the water level will naturally be drawn down so this static water level is measured when the pump is not in use.
By knowing your static water level you can then decide how deep you should install your well hand pump. How do you determine what your static water level is?
WELL REPORT
The easiest way to know your static water level is to look at your well report from when the well was drilled. When wells are drilled the drilling companies will typically keep a record for the well. This record will tell about the different soil and rock formations that were drilled through, what the gallons per minute the well is, and what the depth was where water was hit. This depth is the static water level. A copy of these records is often given to the home or business owners, it will sometimes even be uploaded to the state’s database.
If you have a record of when the well was drilled, this can be the easiest and cheapest way to determine your static water level. Even if your well was drilled years ago, the static water level recording from when it was drilled should give you a fairly good idea of where it could be now. If you still have a record from when your well was drilled then take a look at the reading for your static water level. If you lost the record but still know the company who drilled the well, you can reach out to them as they may have their copy of the record.
If you can’t seem to find any record from when your well was drilled, there are still other ways to find your static water level.
DIY WASHER AND BOBBER METHOD
The next cheapest option for finding your static water level is a do-it-yourself solution that works best on wells shallower than 100 feet. You can take either some fishing line or nylon string and tie some washers or some other weight to the end. Then attach a bobber above the weights on the string. After doing this, lower the string with the weights and bobber on the end down into your well until you feel the weights lift and hear the sound of water splashing in the well indicating you hit water. You can then mark the string at the top of the well, pull it out of the well, and measure from the bobber to the mark to get your static water level.
This is a very cheap and easy way of measuring your water level, but if your well is over 100 feet deep this can be very difficult to get an accurate reading. On deep wells, the bobber can get caught and cause you to think you hit water when you actually did not.
If this method doesn’t work for you, then there is an accurate way of measuring static water levels even in deep wells.
SONIC WATER LEVEL METER
Another great way to determine static water level is to call your local well pump company and see if they have a sonic water level meter. This device uses sound waves to determine what the water level is even on deep wells. Most well pump companies will have one of these devices and can come out to measure the static water level of your well.
By using any one of these methods you should be able to determine what your static water level is in your well. Now that you know your static water level, you can decide how deep to install your well hand pump kit.
DEEPER IS BETTER RIGHT?
When it comes to well hand pumps deeper isn’t always better. Some people want to go 100 feet deep with their hand pump when their static water level is only 25 feet. Going deeper does give you insurance if your water level ever changes, but going much deeper than the static water level just increases the depth of the hand pump piping which makes it heavier and harder to pump than it needs to be.
We recommend installing your well hand pump 10-25 feet below your static water level. This gives plenty of a buffer in case the level is drawn down from the electric well pump or if the static water level changes through the seasons. Going shallower than 10 feet from your static water level could leave a concern where the water level decreases from drawdown and your hand pump is left inoperable. Going deeper than 25 feet does gain even more insurance in case the water level were to decrease over 25 feet, but this is unlikely to happen, so we don’t recommend going much deeper than this.
With all that in mind, if a well had a static water level of 76 feet deep then we would recommend installing the hand pump at 86-101 feet deep. This will leave the hand pump operable and with plenty of water above the piston in case the level is drawn down from the electric well pump.
Hopefully, this helps as you decide what depth to set your hand pump kit. If you have any specific questions on what depth to set your emergency well hand pump kit feel free to reach out to us.
