Our water pressure was low yesterday and this morning we had none at all (yes, I kinda smell from not having a shower). My wife called a plumber/well guy out to look into the problem and it seems our pump is gone. He's quoting us a price of $2200 to replace it. We live in Southern Maryland, not too far outside DC. We built the house new three years ago and I think the well is fairly deep, 300-500 feet I think, I wanted them to go extra deep since there was a drought that year and some of the neighbors 100' wells were running dry. The pump was probably a contractor grade machine and was a 1 hp, 5 gmp machine. I've done a little research on the net and think that price is kinda high, although I understand the area of the country is a big determining factor. I'm assuming this job is beyond my ability to handle as a DIY project even though I'm fairly handy......so I've left a message with the well drilling service that initially drilled the well and installed the pump to get a quote from them too. My questions are:
What's a realistic price? I assume that since this system is so new I won't need to replace anything other than the pump...so they'll have to pull it, replace it, and drop it.
What brand of pump should I be looking for them to use as the replacement?
Isn't this somewhat unusual for this pump to fail so quickly, the well was dug and pump installed in Apr 2001?
Is there anything I should look for regarding the old pump and it's condition? The reason I ask this is when they initially drilled the well they dug it in the wrong place (in the middle of the back yard where the kids would be playing), even after I told the on site supervisor they were in the wrong place.....so they had to cap that one and dig another one in the right place. I'm a cop and kind of cynical so I can't help but wonder if I got stuck with a used pump or something like that in an effort to make back some of what they lost by drilling two wells.