When it is designated as “deep,” a well pump draws water from a depth of about 25 feet or more. The importance of deep well pump maintenance is therefore self-evident: When that mechanical device fails to function, the water required by your home, business or farm becomes virtually inaccessible.
How Are Deep Well Pumps Different?
To access groundwater, a well must intersect the water table beneath the ground’s surface. In Minnesota, the water table is typically located within 10 to 30 feet of the surface, although there are exceptions. The water table is often over 120 feet from the surface in Minnesota’s St. Croix River Valley. North Dakota’s Fargo Aquifer ranges in depth from zero to 160 feet.
When the water table is located within 25 feet of their land’s surface, the property owner only needs a shallow well pump. This device uses a jet pump, which may be mounted above the well within a nearby property or a dedicated well house. A motor supplies the power the pump requires to draw and store water in a nearby tank.
A deep well operates on a similar principle, but with an important exception: Its pump is not located above the well. A deep well requires a submersible pump, which is positioned at the end of a long tube in a watertight compartment. True to its name, a submersible pump operates underwater.
Why Is Deep Well Pump Maintenance Important?
As you have likely gathered, maintaining a submersible pump is not as simple as maintaining an above-ground jet pump, although it is well worth the effort. On average, a submersible pump lasts for about seven years. But with regular professional maintenance, the device can easily last twice that long. In effect, proper maintenance can reduce the number of submersible pumps you have to purchase and install by half.
We touched on the other reason why deep well pump maintenance is essential at the beginning of this article. Without it, your property can easily become waterless. We do not have to expound on why that is an unacceptable state of affairs.
How Do You Know if Your Deep Well Pump Needs Maintenance?
It is advisable to have your deep well pump maintained by a local water well contractor every three to four years. That said, your pump may offer one of several signs that it requires immediate maintenance or repair. These include:
- Pump short cycles
- Pump runs constantly
- Water sputters out of faucets
- Sand or silt contaminate water
- Water pressure is low or suddenly fluctuates
- Strange noises emanate from pump or pressure tank
Your electricity bill may also indicate that your deep well pump needs maintenance. When a crucial component of the assembly breaks or degrades to the point of near failure, the system compensates by working harder. That decrease in efficiency corresponds to greater electricity usage. That’s good for the electric company; for you, not so much.
If you have a water well of any depth in Western Minnesota or Eastern North Dakota, then we welcome you to contact Geo-Tech of Minnesota today. In addition to drilling new wells, our expert technicians maintain and repair existing wells’ pumps and other components. We keep the water flowing!
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