I knew that I would have to take part of the shed's roof off, but I ended up taking three-fourths of the roof off when I had hope to only take half or less. The pump ended up being under a stud and under the roof peak's stud. There was no way to "bend" the pump and pipe to miss the studs as I pulled them up.
The pump and pipe were much heavier than I anticipated. I don't know what I was thinking when I thought I could pull them by hand. I once pulled a 20 ft section of metal pipe out of a well by hand, but my pump and pipe were much heavier. And I discovered three metal pipes in the well and not just one. I could see two large pipes were connected to the pump. The third small pipe appeared to be connected as I could not pull it out and the pipe came up when I lifted the pump up.
Yes, I lifted the pump and pipes by hand. Immediately upon lifting the pump and pipes I realized I needed a tractor with loader to lift the pump and pipes out of the well. Wyatt was still at work so until he got home and was available I decided to lift the pump up off the boards covering the well. That way the pump would be high enough so I could wrap a chain or strap around the pipes underneath the pump. I also could get a look at how the pipes were attached to the bottom of the pump and also see down into the well.
I always thought the well was a concrete casing. 30 inches in diameter. When I pulled the pump up I could see better down in the well and discovered a metal well casing inside the concrete casing. It appears to be 6 inches in diameter. The metal casing is a foot or two below the top of the concrete casing.
I had measured the well's depth many years ago when working on the pump shed. I remembered the depth at 21 ft. I must have measured the concrete casing depth? Who knows how deep the casing goes and therefore how long my pipe is?
While waiting for Wyatt to drive his tractor over I readjusted the concrete blocks the pump sat on. I then heard a "scritch... scritch... scritch... scritch..." It sounded like metal sliding on metal. Then silence. I looked and the third (small) pipe was missing. It had disappeared down the metal casing.
Well... that pipe is gone.
Because we didn't know long the pipes were, or whether they could hook anything while pulling them out, Wyatt suggested I use a come-along to pull the pipes out of the well. We used the tractor's loader as something to hook the come-along on to pull the pipes out.
To allow me to readjust the strap on the pipes to a lower level Wyatt had a pipe clamp to hold the pipe while I released the come-along.
Then Wyatt left after bringing the tractor and tools over. He had a hot date.
I used the come-along and when it came time to readjust it I found Wyatt's clamp wouldn't work as I had two pipes and not one. Hmm... what to do?
My other neighbor, Curt, is a contractor so I asked him for ideas. He had a different type of pipe clamp and we were able to use his clamp to clamp one of the two pipes. So up we went higher and higher. When the pump and pipe rose above the tractor's loader I chained the pipe to the loader to prevent it from tipping over.
At one point Curt mentioned a third pipe. I looked over and saw the third pipe was coming above the boards. Huh? I grabbed the pipe and pulled it out before it could fall down into the well casing again.
At one point a faucet on the side of one pipe appeared and hooked on the boards over the well. Huh? What's next?! I don't see the use of this faucet so far down in the well below the static water level. I had to rotate the pipes as we lifted them so the faucet would miss the boards and later the concrete blocks.
We were a few inches of having the pipe clear the metal casing and then we realized the pipe was really tall, really top heavy, and at a height that if it tipped to the north it may hit the power line.
Not good.
It was getting dark.
By now I realized I did not want to reuse the metal pipes even if they were good and the problem was the foot valve. The pipes were heavy. I asked Kyle - my well/pump guy - and he said my style of pump used two pipes in an early attempt to be a deep well pump.
If the pipes were going I also decided - as much as I like my old simple basic bomb-proof pump, it also had to go due to its weight. I plan to get a submersible pump and plastic poly pipe. A whole lot lighter.
So, the plan for this afternoon is for Curt to use his sawzall and cut the pump off the pipes and if need be cut the pipes into shorter sections.
Here are 20 photos of the work so far: https://plus.google.com/photos/109566462412251958234/albums/6161790662456587825?authkey=CI3FuKfz4va83QE
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