Well pipe leak

This afternoon, after I put out a large hay bale for Mama and Haynes the bull, I discovered a leak in my well for my house.  Lots of water in the shed protecting my pump.  So I had to fix it.

The plastic pipe coming out / going into the ground has a ribbed fitting on the end.  The pipe pieces coming from the pump are threaded.  The connection to the plastic ground pipe is odd and not really a decent connection.  Why it took many years before getting a major spray link is unknown.   But I now want to have a decent connection to the plastic pipe's ribbed fitting.   So I asked my neighbor Curtis for ideas on how to fix this.

Curtis came over to look at the problem.  He had a short piece of plastic pipe that would fit over the ribbed fitting.  And I had another ribbed fitting in my supplies.   The other end of this ribbed fitting was threaded.

So this shouldn't be a problem to fix, right?   I wish.   Everything took a difficult path.   It was very difficult to unscrew a few of the threaded pipe pieces.   The plastic pipe coming out of the ground had an angle.  The new plastic pipe section was very firm and also had a slight angle.  So I had to  replace a short thread section with a slightly shorter section.  Then I had to cut the new plastic pipe section.  I thought I cut the section a touch longer than needed,  But when I tried to connect the new section, it was a touch shorter.  It appears the new pipe section fit on the ribbed fittings more than I thought they would.   I had another ribbed and threaded fitting that was a touch longer.  But I couldn't get the pipe off one of the ribbed fittings.   You'd think it would slide back off.   I had to put the fitting in a vice and work on removing.  And work on removing it.  Over and over.  It would not slide back off.  Eventually I had to use a blowtorch to heat - but not burn or melt - the pipe.  With great effort pulling I finally got the pipe off and I went flying when the pipe came off.

I tried connecting the new pipe back at the well with the slightly longer fitting.  It was too long to screw into the connection.  Then it was too short.  What?  What is going on?!!!   Let me pull out the ribbed fitting again.  Again the fitting didn't want to come out.  Again I had to use a blowtorch.  Again I finally got the pipe off the fitting.

I tried it again in the well and this time the length was right.  It took a lot of effort to get the two threaded pieces to screw together.  It should have been easy.  But no.

Once the pipes were together I added metal clamps on each end of the plastic pipe to squeeze/fit the plastic pipe on the ribbed fittings.  Just because I had great difficulty pulling the fitting out of one end of the pipe doesn't mean that water pressure wouldn't have an easy time separating the fitting from the pipe.

It was starting to get dark when I was finally done.  Everything looks good.  I'll see tomorrow how things are.

It was getting dark when I checked the cattle.  Apparently Sugar and Little Red each had a calf this afternoon.  Both are little bull calves.  Tomorrow I'll band and tag them.