Two pumps on the corral well

With all the recent cold and wet weather I have not been able to work much on my corral well.  A little here and there but not much.  Today I was able spend the afternoon working on the corral well.

Last week I came up with a solution to my ladder problem.  The well is so small I can't work with the ladder in the well, and while I am in the well I can't reach the top of the ground to place the ladder.  I put a really long nail in the corral fence to hang the ladder on while I am in the well.

Last week I had placed a couple sturdy metal screens in an effort to hold back the gravel from sloughing off from the sides.  The tin sheets I had been using were not sturdy enough to do the job.  The metal screens were an odd shaped item I found in my pile of treasures.  I cut the screen in half and the two pieces fit perfectly in the well.

As you can see I cut the ends off so I could drive bars through the metal pieces and into the ground to hold the pieces in place.  Otherwise as I dig deeper the gravel and sand shifts and so would the metal pieces.

While water flowing into the pit to replenish the water supply is not a problem, having screens makes the water flow even easier.

Today was dry and the temperature actually was in the 50s, a few degrees above normal. Time to work on the well again.

One pump only lowered the water level a three or four inches.  Today I used two pumps.  The second pump was the one with the bad bolt I had repaired.   However, I could not get that pump to suck up water no matter what I tried. 

So I switched to using the pump that will eventually be the well's pump.  Wyatt completed the latest brazing work and I put the pump back together.  The seal between the chamber and the motor was gone and it had leaked water when I used the pump earlier.  To solve this problem I cut a rubber ring from the leftover shower pan liner.  This worked.  And Wyatt's last brazing job worked.

I fashioned a crude screen from another small scrap piece of metal from my treasure pile and used that to filter the rocks and gravel from being sucked into the pump.

The second pump worked great.  So good that the old garden hose was partially collapsed from the suction.  So I switched to using a combination of solid metal and plastic pipes I cobbled together.  I am not sure what the problem was, whether the pipe was too large or more likely an air leak was somewhere in the piping, but I couldn't get the pump to suck up water.

Back to Plan A - or a variant of it.  I found another garden hose, a longer hose, but a sturdier hose.  This one didn't collapse from the suction.  Both pumps now pumped a good flow of water.

Yes, the pumps were pumping the water into the corral.  It was time to stop pumping the water into the back yard / driveway.

The well's water level dropped more but the water flow into the pit was enough that I could not pump the pit dry.

Sometimes I wonder why I insist on having a pit of water two feet deep when six inches will do.

Now that I got both pumps pumping it was time to get to work inside the well.

Then it began to rain. 

I spent most of the afternoon getting the pumps to work - I'm not quitting now.  Down into the well I went.

First I had to fix the metal screens I had placed there last week.  Some more gravel sloughed off against the metal screens and they did what they were suppose to do - hold the gravel away from the water.  However the tops of the screens leaned in instead of standing straight.  *sigh*

So I searched another treasure pile for rods, bars, pipes, whatever I could use to brace the screens upright.  I was able to find some pipes the right length.  I was out of metal screens or sturdy pieces of metal to brace the other sides of the pit.   I was able to find several sheets of tin the right size that I could brace against the side of the pit.

Two sides of the pit had sloughed back a foot or two beyond the concrete casing.  On those two sides I had placed the sturdy metal screens under the concrete casing.  The other two sides barely went beyond the casing and I placed the metal sheets of tin against the sides.  The two pipes went between the tin and sturdy metal.

Now that I had that done I now was in a smaller area again.  I was able to dig up some gravel and rocks before it got too dark to see well.  The gravel and rocks I placed behind the study metal screens.  A win-win situation.  I don't have to haul the gravel and rocks out of the well and I can fill in the area behind the screens to stop the sloughing.  Those areas go out so far that sloughing from above happens and not just the sides.  Not good.

My learning lesson is that in hindsight, when Wyatt was here with his tractor and we removed the top concrete casing, I should have dug out and removed the second casing.  Even though I would have had to dig more and the pit wider, it would have been easier and quicker to do.  Then I could have lowered the concrete casings back into the pit along with new casings.  I didn't realize the sides would slough off as much as they did once I hit water.

On the other hand, the concrete casing has held the gravel walls in place behind the casing.  So I don't know what is the best option for digging.  I so close to the corral fence that I can't go wider on that side, and I do have a tall pole on another side of the well which could be affected if I had to dig wider than the casing.  So maybe I am making the best of a difficult situation.

At the end of my day of work it was dark and I was wet.  I got some done though not as much as I had hoped.