Clean the well

clean the well

dates: 6/10-11/2020

condition

The well consists of four 2' diameter x 2' tall clay tile sections. The top edge of the top tile is badly damaged with 5"x2" section broken clear off allowing critters plenty of room to get in. There was some evidence of a prior repair in this section with silicone caulking on a broken piece that had fallen away. Approximately 1/3 of the circumference showed significant damage with 1/2 the thickness of the top edge having split off about a third of the way around. Below the top rim, approx 1" down the inside of the top tile is a hairline crack that goes about a third of the way around the well. All indications point to the damage being caused by the heavy concrete cover. It is a 2 person job to remove the cover. One person can only lift and slide, likely causing the damage to the rather delicate clay tile.

initial treatment at well

There was one unidentifiable floating thing in the well that I scooped out. The well was filled to where the outlet pipe comes in, there was 4' or 100 gallons of water in the well. It looked clear, though I could not see the bottom. I dumped 1 gallon of bleach into the 100 gallons of water.

filling the indoor piping with 1/100 bleach

First I bypassed the filter; I was going to take it out but it did not easily unscrew with the special tool so I just bypassed the filter instead. Starting from the closest fixture (to the pump and proceeding to the furthest I ran the water until what come out smelled like bleach. Then I repeated the same process for the hot water side of the fixtures after adding another 1/2 gallon of bleach to the well. It took a while since first the 40 gallons in the hot water tank had to go down the drain before the bleach smell appeared. So now all the pipes feeding fixtures including showers, washer and dishwasher were full of bleach + water. They stayed like that for 18 hours. The well was now 1/2 full, so 50 gallons + maybe 10 gallons of recovery water got pulled into the house piping.

dumping the remaining well water and cleaning the sidewalls

I lowered Shaun's pool pump into the bottom of the well connected to a 5/16" rope and began pumping out the remaining 50 gallons into the woods about 30' away. Meanwhile I set up Shaun's sump pump alongside the dock and started pumping water to the well. I used theis water in conjunction with a scrub brush on a pole to clean the interior walls of the well. Mostly it was just rusty deposits but there was some unidentifiable small brown masses that came off pretty easily.

cleaning the bottom and repeated flushing

At the bottom of the well were some rust covered masses that turned out to be a number of critters. They were a big challenge to get out of the well by pressing them between two 8' pool cleaning nets on 8' poles and slowly lifting them up while exercising some unknown muscle group. It took a long time since I would drop them before I got them out and they would disappear as the water seeping in quickly rose. Luckily they were intact. After 2 or 3 hours they were all out and given a proper burial.

Once the water was filled about 50 gallons with combined seepage and lake water, I dumped another 1/2 gallon of bleach in, recleaned the sides of the well and then pumped it empty.I repeated that two more times adding less bleach then no bleach and emptying the well. I pulled up Shaun's amazing pool pump and added 2" of clean river rock to the bottom of the well. <iframe src="https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=A86C35E35224F898&resid=A86C35E35224F898%2173099&authkey=AHi2tZzhIyO5E5I" width="320" height="180" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen></iframe> <html5media>https://onedrive.live.com/embed?cid=A86C35E35224F898&resid=A86C35E35224F898%2173099&authkey=AHi2tZzhIyO5E5I</html5media>

While all this was going on I formed up a new rim for the part of the well top rim circumference that was damaged using mostly roof shingles and strapping, reinforcing by embedding perforated strapping. Once the pump was out I mixed up and poured the concrete. It was now 7:15 pm and the mosquitos back there were terrible. I left the lake water on into the well for an hour while I swam in the lake with Uli. Day over 8.5 hrs including trip to Home Depot.

flushing the pipes and fixtures

The next day I started by emptying the bleach laden hot water heater's 40 gallons into the woods. Once that was done I repeated the process of the day before, running the water at each fixture for a little more than I had the day before to get the bleached water out. That means that I ran somewhere between 10 to 20 gallons of 1/100 bleach laden water into the septic system. That is the equivalent of somewhere between 13 and 26 oz of bleach added to the septic system. I don't know if wee need to have it pumped or not. Total 3 hour including cleanup and putting tools away. Both of Shaun's pumps are in the shed.