Hand Pump Well , off-grid, self-reliant water, everything you need to know

[Music] how's it going everybody my name is dave whipple and you're watching bush radical earlier this summer i shot a video of driving a hand pump well at our remote property in the upper peninsula of michigan if you haven't seen that video yet the link is in the description of this video from that video i got hundreds of questions about driving a hand pump well and in this video i'm going to answer all of them stay tuned for starters all of the equipment that you see here all came from menards if you're in the midwest menards is like a lows or a home depot i believe ace hardware also sells basically everything that you see here for starters you're going to need a hand pump well this pump is made by a company called water source this pump costs about 47 at menards it's made overseas it's all cast iron it does work fine but you may get better quality if you buy an old american pump now here's the same pump but this is an old made in the united states hand pump that came from a flea market all the guts inside this pump are exactly the same as that new pump the biggest difference you're going to find is on these older american pumps the bore that's the area inside this cylinder the older american ones will have a smoother bore which might make your leather pump gaskets last longer you're also going to need well pipe you have two options you have two inch pipe or inch and a quarter this is all inch and a quarter pipe all of the hand pumps that i've seen have an inch and a quarter thread on the bottom as you can see this pipe states right on it it is well drive pipe it's a heavy duty inch and a quarter pipe and it's built to withstand being driven into the ground with either a well driver or a sledge hammer one question i get asked a lot is how deep of a well can you have with a hand pump how far will it lift the water now the best explanation is right there on the box the claim is that it will lift 25 feet and it's showing 25 feet being from the top of your drive point to the lower gasket in your well will the pump actually pull water 25 feet i don't know but that's what the claim is this is an old technology surface mount pumps can only suck water a certain distance and then it just becomes uh physically impossible i don't think you could ever expect it to do any more than that so if your water is deeper than 25 feet well maybe you're gonna have to go with a different style of pump now this guy right here is what i get the most questions about this is the drive point of the well if you look on the package of the pump it shows the drive point at the very bottom of the well pipe now what this is this is a three foot section of steel pipe and it's filled with holes internally so that water can get inside of this pipe now this also has a heavy cast iron drive tip so it can be pounded down into the soil basically like a gigantic nail when you get right up close to this you can see there is a stainless steel jacket that goes over the pipe and between the jacket and the pipe itself there is a fine mesh screen now this fine mesh screen keeps sand particles out of your water the stainless steel perforated jacket holds the screen in place when it comes to a well drive point you can either get a three footer or a four footer i don't have a preference get whatever you can find in a standard pump installation you drive your pipe down until your point is one foot at least below your water table and you can check that with a tape measure in the diagram on the box it shows the water table right here at its highest point right at the top of the drive point what you want is you want one foot of water at least over top of the drive point if you don't get this drive point at least a foot below the water level underground you run the risk of possibly sucking air into the point which will make all your water fall back down the column say you have a three foot point put your tape measure down into the pipe itself and once you hear it splashing in the water you know where the water is at if you have a three foot point you want to be able to take your tape and put it four feet farther down that pipe before you hit the bottom of the point that way you know you've got three feet in the point and you've got one foot above the point this particular unit is a three footer and it costs about forty dollars now when it comes to pipe what you're probably going to want most is five foot sections get four or five five foot sections you can always take back what you don't use and then get yourself a three foot section or a two foot section or an 18 inch section that way when you're driving the pipe down into the ground once you've hit water and you've got a foot of water over top of your drive point you can stick whatever else on the top of your pipe to make your well pump about the right height that you want it you might as well go ahead and figure you're going to pay about five dollars a foot for your well pipe and about ten dollars a piece for your couplings you're going to want to buy six or seven drive couplers now this is a drive coupler it's just a joint between two pipes the only difference between a drive coupling and a regular pipe coupling is this is made of steel this is a standard pipe coupling and it's made of cast iron now the cast iron it's more easy to break a cast iron coupler like this is not going to stand up to the abuse that a pipe coupler needs to take to be driven into the ground there's the two side by side you'll notice the drive coupler has a much longer set of threads these are about four dollars a piece but they're not gonna do it these are closer to nine or ten dollars but this is what you need now this is an inch and a quarter ball valve you want a threaded ball valve that's got threads on both sides inch and a quarter ball valve threads on both ends this is about a 25 part but it's definitely worth it and i'll explain more about that in a minute and then you're gonna want an inch and a quarter pipe nipple about four inches long in these pictures here you're seeing that we're using a homemade well driver this well driver weighs about 90 pounds it'll pound the well in at about an inch of stroke when you're going through good clean sand if you don't have a well driver your other option is what's called a drive cap now a drive cap is a heavy duty cast iron cap and it's meant to go on your top piece of well pipe you would take this cap and pound on it with a sledge hammer to drive the well in once the well is far enough down you'd remove the cap you'd install a drive coupler with pipe dope install a new piece of pipe on top of that let's say a three foot or a five foot piece also with pipe dope you would get the whole thing as tight as you could with two pipe wrenches and then on the new pipe you'd put the drive cap back on now you're ready to start pounding again like the drive couplers the drive cap is about ten dollars for an inch and a quarter it's probably half again that much for the two inch version i can't recommend a two inch well i've never driven one common sense would tell me it's harder to drive than an inch and a quarter and if this was just a hand pump well i would just stay away from the two inch stuff people asked about that homemade driver and where they can get one well unfortunately you can't get one it's homemade if you want one you can make one yourself maybe go to a scrap yard find the materials that look the best take them to a welder that's not a piece of equipment that's commercially available when you're pumping this handle this leather cup is going up and down in the bore of the pump and it sucks the water up and then when you push the handle back down the valve on the bottom that little leather valve is closed and the water that's in the column forces this little weight up like this and it comes through that gap right here and it fills this column above the plunger and it's coming out the top of the well it's a very very simple apparatus when your leather cup gets wore out you simply take it apart and you put another one in it's a very very easy operation you can put a new pump leather in and you're ready to go same thing goes with the bottom leather this leather acts as a check valve it'll get wore out over time and dry rotted and you just take the bottom off the pump take this little weight off which is just a screw machine screw goes through the weight put the little weight on a new leather put the new leather back where it goes and then bolt the pump back together very very simple old technology very easy to work on anybody can take this apart and anybody can put it back together when your leathers stop working or they get crusty and cracked and dry rotted from sitting over the winter time with nothing in them you can buy a new set of pump leathers for around nine dollars from my own personal experience this brand is water source this particular brand of pump leathers the lower leather has a very narrow section that connects the outer ring to the inner seal area also it's fairly thin if you look at the picture you can see that that little connection between the outer and the inner part of the leather is extremely wide all the old leathers were made this way with a really really wide connection this one has a very narrow connection which will allow it to kind of wiggle around now evidently these work or they would change the design but on the well we put in this leather failed immediately because it got off center and it allowed the water to get past it this one does look better than the leather that came out of the original pump where it failed but it does not look like the leather on the picture which of course would not have any issue with floating side to side because of that really wide connection take a look down inside this new pump you can see that weight and it's sitting on a leather check valve just like the old style pump and here you can see the pump guts on a brand new pump it's the same exact operation there's that weight that lifts up to let the water pass by the plunger here's the leather plunger that's going to suck the water up and down the new pump has the same leather check valve in the bottom with a little weight on top of it technology is exactly the same now a lot of people asked about priming a well what the well pump needs to operate is it needs water inside of the pump so you'd take a gallon jug of water and you would fill the inside of the pump generally give it 15 minutes so the leathers the cup leather and the check valve leather have a chance to soak that water up and swell up then make sure your well's topped off and you put your hand in front of the pump so that the water doesn't spill out and you just start pumping and what that will do is it will start bringing that water up the column little by little after i don't know 30 seconds once your water column is full it'll just start running out the top and at that point your pump is primed it means that the top the pitcher itself is full of water and the water column underneath of it all the way down to the drive point is full of water the plunger goes down to the bottom it pulls the whole water column up just a little bit and water spills out the chute what will happen is over time that water is going to leak past that leather check valve just a little bit at a time and it's going to lose its prime which means all the water that's in your pipe will drop back down into the water table and then you're gonna have to fill your pitcher pump again and you're gonna have to prime the well again you can avoid this with the valve that we talked about and a standard installation once you've got that pipe to where you're good you've got the water you want you'd put your pump on top of your pipe if you want to never have to prime it again you take that pipe [Music] drive it down an extra six inches or so put your threaded ball valve on top of it put a three or four inch threaded nipple on top of the ball valve of course all this is pipe doped and then put your pump on top of that what this will allow you to do is you can prime your pump until your water is coming out the pump and there's water all the way down the column and then here at your ball valve you can lock that ball valve once that ball valve is closed the water will not seep back down the column whenever you want to use the pump you just simply open the ball valve and start pumping the handle and the water will come out when you're done pumping shot the ball valve with the addition of a 25 valve you'll never have to prime the pump again now let's talk about pipe dope a lot of people have asked me about using teflon tape i've done a fair share of plumbing and i've never bothered with teflon tape other than maybe with a shower head installation i generally always use this oatly great white pipe joint compound i've never had this kind of pipe dope leak on me it always works it's easy to use it's non-toxic which is of the utmost importance for anything that's potable water now when it comes to using this pipe dope compound pipe joint make sure you stir it up really good and it's just a white i believe it's a teflon based paste but the application itself is fairly important you want to get right down into the very bottom of the pipe threads that you're coating you don't just want to put it on like this to where you can see gaps you want to work it right down to the bottom of the threads like so i also had a subscriber tell me i don't know that this is true but i would follow this advice subscriber told me don't put pipe dope on the first two threads or you'll taste it for a long time in your water now i think that's sound advice i would stay away from those first two threads because the well we drove we had a pipe dope taste for a long time i was probably a little bit too liberal with my application of pipe dope i probably had some of it squeeze into the the well itself and even though it's non-toxic you don't want to taste anything but water in your well so i would take that advice and stay just a little bit back but make sure everything is coated very well all the way down into the bottom of the threads if you're going to use a homemade well driver you're going to ruin one of these drive couplings you want to take the drive coupling that's going to get ruined and that's the one you're always beating on when you put on an extra piece of pipe you take that coupling off put on a fresh coupling your extra piece of pipe and then put the beat up one on top where you're actually going to be pounding on it if you're using a drive cap and a sledge hammer you don't have to worry about that you can get as many of these as the job calls for if you're going to use a homemade well driver you're going to beat on a coupling itself you're going to need one extra here's a little nugget of wisdom take off the cap on one of your pieces of pipe go wash your hands and make sure they're nice and clean now carefully rub your finger on the inside of this pipe there could be burrs and of course these threads where they the threads have been cut that's very sharp be careful with it rub your finger inside that pipe now taste your finger if there's any kind of an oil residue or a waxy residue or or anything that's obviously like wow that's that's horrible i'll clean the inside of your pipes get yourself a small brush like this it may be a little bit of ingenuity to put it on a five foot piece of rod or a piece of pex or something and take some hot soapy water and brush the inside of that pipe [Music] when brooke and i put in our well with our friend scott initially there was a very bad taste to it it wasn't the water it was either oil from inside the pipe itself it was the taste of the pipe compound which i may have put a little too much on or it's very possible it was the cutting oil that's left on these threads once they cut the threads they have an oily residue from the machine that cuts the threads into them by taking a bucket of hot soapy water and a stiff brush and cleaning those threads out really good before you dope the pipe and put the couplings together you can eliminate the chance that you're going to taste the cutting fluid that's used to cut these threads by staying back from the edge a little bit when you apply the pipe dope hopefully you won't taste the pipe dope either there's any taste in the inside and you clean the inside of the pipe if you can eliminate those three things you should have great tasting water right from the get-go when i put the video out about driving the well one of the questions i got asked the most was how did we know where to drill for water where to drive the well itself in this particular case in the upper peninsula of michigan we were on a little high hump of land and there's swamp all around us all the ground is sand all of it's about 10 foot above the water table itself and it's good water everywhere all we had to do was drill straight down there was no way we weren't going to hit water that's not the case everywhere some people talk about using divining rods or having somebody come out and look for the water i don't know anything about that world it's not something i've had to do i don't have any experience in it i'm afraid i can't answer that question i do have a cousin in the area he said the water's 10 or 12 feet down and it's good water and it's everywhere when we put the well down we just picked a spot we drove it down and we knew that we're about 15 feet above the water table where we were located and that anywhere straight down we're going to hit water another question i get asked all the time is how do we keep the well from freezing well if you install your well pump with a ball valve like this make sure as soon as you're done using it if it's freezing temperatures that you open the ball valve and let the water drain out you would do this by opening the valve then lifting the handle all the way up on the pump when you lift the handle all the way up on the pump and leave it it will open that bottom leather check valve and let the water go back down the column if it's going to get below freezing at night make sure you go outside open that valve and let the prime down by raising the handle all the way up now when water freezes it expands with an unbelievable amount of pressure everything in this system would break underneath the ground just a little ways probably nothing is going to freeze so if you did happen to leave your pump primed it had a real real hard freeze your pump would probably break your first section of pipe would probably break and you would be at a point where you'd have to pull one piece of pipe off change the pump change the ball valve change that one piece of pipe you'd probably be back in business it's not going to freeze that far underground until the middle of winter and at that point you're probably not going to be using the hand pump anyway another question i got quite a bit is can you pull the well let's say you drive well down and you hit a big rock yes you can pull it back out pull it as straight as you possibly can and it's it's going to be either difficult or not so difficult depending on your ground mostly once you first put a well down you can still turn the whole well by hand the fact that the point on the well is bigger than the diameter of the pipe it's going to leave it a little bit of wiggle room and you would probably be able to pull it out it might have to build a tripod and put a pulley on it to really get the right amount of force straight up and then take it apart start driving it at another spot or if you drive one down and you don't hit water you could pull it back up take it apart section by section try another spot out but once you do hit water and the well's been in for a year year and a half or so i've heard it's quite a lot more difficult all the ground has had a chance to settle in around the point around each one of these couplings which are going to stick out everything's going to grab that soil and it's going to be difficult to get the pipe back out of the ground after it's been in there for a while well there you guys go when it comes to driving a hand pump well that's basically everything that you need to know or at least everything that i know that i could pass on to you i want to say special thanks to scott harriman he's taught know about me wells and how the whole operation works i want to give a shout out to scott on this video if you like this video but you need more information and want to see the process done from start to finish click the link right here on the end screen and it'll take you to the original video where you'll see a start to finish installation of a hand pump well thank you for watching bush radical be radical eh see you soon

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 1,480,879

Keywords: Hand pump well, hand driven well, off grid well, off grid water, cabin water, off grid cabin well, off grid camp well, self reliant water, self reliant well

Id: kIKkSeltuGY

Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020