end-of-life of a water well?

[vanderlinden.robbert]

Anyone has an idea of how to tell if a well is ready to be replaced? I have a 30 year old well with a steel casing that is rusting at the top. Should I start thinking of drilling a new well?

[hallerb]

Hows its production water wise? is the rust surface rust or rusted out?

[vanderlinden.robbert]

The well production is still good: 13 gallons per minute. There are holes in the cap caused by the rusting (the holes are now covered). The question is, what is the best guess about the state of the casing in the well itself...

[dpb]

Best guess is there's no way anybody here can guess. Talk to you well man. Very little likelihood of having to drill a new well but might need some rework of this one at some point.

[Colbyt]

I know very little about wells. So before I popped off and said it could be relined I toured Google.

The good news is YES they can be. Sand and silt in the water supply are the first signs of failure. Here is a link for your reading pleasure:

Colbyt

[M Q]

Unfortunately, that article was about relining a 16" well with a 10" casing. Residential wells usually don't have any margin for such a size reduction.

[Meat Plow]

Is it the cap or the casing that's rusting and how bad is it? Can you break pieces of it off? I don't think you have much to worry about, my well is almost 40 years old.

[Pete C.]

6" seems pretty typical for a residential casing. Would seem you could reline with a 5" casing and still comfortably fit a standard 4" submersible pump.

[hallerb]

dig around casing at top if possible. how badly rusted is the outside?

the main danger is contaminates can get into your well from shallow sources.

like a dead animal or car antifreeze leak

[jmagerl]

Just had my well dug up yesterday to replace the pipe going into the house. Surprize, surprize. the well casing had been replaced once before. Looked like the casing had been cut off 3 ft below grade and a new one somehow attached. The well guy postulated that maybe the pitless adaptor had rusted in place and they couldnt get the pump out so they just sliced the whole thing off. My point: they can replace casings so maybe you don't need to do a whole new well.

[The Reverend Natural Light]

Perhaps the well was once in a pit and a previous owner extended the casing and converted to a pitless adapter.

[Chris Lewis]

According to jmagerl :

As the other poster suggested, this was probably a pit-type well - the well head was covered with dirt, and the owner got it extended above ground level.

We're in the throes of deciding to do this ourselves - digging up the head gets tiresome after the second time of having to replace a blown out fitting on the foot valve.

Here, above-ground well heads is mandatory, and the provincial govt used to (hopefully still is) issuing rebates for extending it.

[It's pricey according to one quote - ~$1500 - has to be welded and grouted. "You mean I can't just use a fernco?"]

[The Reverend Natural Light]

I did mine with a Fernco and a couple bags of concrete.

[Chris Lewis]

According to The Reverend Natural Light :

Man am I tempted....

[The Reverend Natural Light]

I have photos of the entire procedure if you're interested.

[Chris Lewis]

According to The Reverend Natural Light :

I'd love to see them. I tried emailing, but your DNS server returns FAILED for MX lookups, and that stalls most mail servers.

Let me know at [e-mail]

Thanks!