GET A HANDLE ON YOUR WELL
Installing a backup pump on an existing well, including diagrams and parts list.
If you install a hand pump on your well, you can do
away with power-outage droughts.
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By Larry Pina
A few years back, a severe ice storm knocked out my
family's electricity for a couple of days . . . and we
suddenly found ourselves without the use of our well pump.
As we groped about the candlelit house—unable to make
coffee, prepare meals, wash dishes, flush the toilet, or
even take a sip of tap water (yet all the while keenly
aware that just 15 feet below us was all the thirst
quenching liquid we could ever want)—we felt like the
shipmates becalmed at sea in the "Rime of the Ancient
Mariner", with "water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to
drink"!
I remembered then that when I was a youngster one of our
neighbors had attached a working hand pump to his electric
well pump . . . and I wished I'd had the foresight and
know-how to install a similar fixture on our unit. I made
up my mind — then and there — to at least
investigate the possibility. It's fortunate that I
did, too, because putting a hand pump on our well turned
out to be an easy task (even for an amateur
do-it-yourselfer like me!).
And if you're looking for a low-cost, nonelectric backup
design for a "juice powered" pumping system, my solution
just might do the job for you!
THE PUMPING PARTS
As shown in the accompanying diagram, our hand pump and its
related components are totally separate from the electric
unit. The two pumps merely share the same well casing (in
this instance, a 6"-diameter pipe that extends 125 feet
into the ground). In addition, because the water table is
only about 13 feet below the top of our well casing, we
were able to choose a simple, shallow-drawn hand pump for
our purposes rather than having to buy amore expensive,
deep-reaching machine. (To calculate the height of the
water table, I just lowered a string that had a small piece
of wood tied to the end of it into the well casing until
the wood floated and the string went slack, and then I
marked and measured the string.)
To set up the hand-operated unit, we gathered the following
materials: a Sears, Roebuck & Co. "pitcher spout" hand
pump (Model No. 42K2749C . . . currently available for
$37.95), 25 feet of 1-1/4" plastic pipe, one plastic
screw-type adapter (for attaching the drop pipe to the
pump), and two 1-1/4" hose clamps (I used one to secure the
drop pipe onto the plastic adapter and the other to
temporarily affix the drop pipe to the well cap so that the
tubing wouldn't "accidentally" fall down into the well
casing while we were putting the system together). The
total bill for these components, including the
pump, came to just under $50. And when you consider that
our original well setup cost us a hefty $2,000, this manual
backup system was quite a bargain!
