# Home And Property Maintenance



## zimmy (Aug 17, 2012)

For those of you that have bought a house out in the country without city water and sewage you now become instant water and sewage treatment plant owner/operators. I have lived with a water well and septic tank almost all my life an I'm very familiar with the maintenance and operation of both. Keep in mind that if you do decide to buy that place out in the country these things require occasional service either by you or someone you pay to do the job. My advice is to do it your self and save some money.


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## camo2460 (Feb 10, 2013)

When I have Well problems it is well worth the money to have a professional do the job. Trying to get 400' of pipe out of the ground is no easy task, I did it one time, and never again.


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## Tweto (Nov 26, 2011)

camo2460 said:


> When I have Well problems it is well worth the money to have a professional do the job. Trying to get 400' of pipe out of the ground is no easy task, I did it one time, and never again.


Not every one has 400 foot deep wells. That sounds very deep. I do know of a few wells in New Mexico that are 2000' deep. I agree that when your well is that deep that it's smarter to use a professional.

I have 2 wells and both are only 60' deep. The deepest wells in this entire area are only 50' to 150' deep.


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## Tweto (Nov 26, 2011)

I have wells and septic tanks for 35 years and would not go back to a municipal sewer and water system.

I have had 2 wells struck by lightening that fried the pumps.

I get my septic tank pumped every 2 years and every 2 months I put probiotics in. That's about it.


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## zimmy (Aug 17, 2012)

My well is 70ft deep with the pump being 60ft deep. About 3 years ago I started getting air in the water and couldn't find the problem with any of the equipment above so I pulled the pump out of the well and the only problem I found was the spring was broken in the check valve above the pump, I don't see how this could be the problem because the check valve was vertical and the weight of the flapper was self closing. Being that the pump has been in the well for 30 years I just change everything, problem solved, no air in the lines. My wife and I did the job so the only cost we had was parts.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

We are blessed with abundant ground water at less than 100 feet, so most of our wells (or more importantly well pumps) are at that depth or less. I have worked on deep wells, and if I had to rely on one I would be sure that I had the tools and skills required to deal with it. There really isn't that much required, especially if the well and/or pump-house is set up for easy maintenance.

Aside from cost and depending on someone else, my issue with hiring "professionals" is that I have seen them make some decisions that, if not _wrong_, certainly were not in line with the particular application and certainly not with preparedness.

One example I experienced personally, was where an "expert" decided to save a few dollars by using a galvanized fitting between a pit-less adapter and a check-valve. The fitting rotted out and destroyed that end of the check-valve and the pit-less adapter, which eventually resulted in having to dig out the whole well (down to the adapter). So another professional got paid a huge sum of money to do a job that was 100% avoidable, and of course the original one did nothing actually wrong at the time.

I only EVER use brass or stainless fittings on a pump, and if I have to connect to steel pipe for some reason I use a throw away fitting in between that and the expensive stuff.

Another thing is pump sizing. Most professionals simply drop a 220V high flow pump with control box down the well without a moments thought toward efficiency or actual required capacity. I have slowly moved several of our wells over to either 12V pumps or 120V 2 wire controller-less pumps, neither of which our "professionals" would recommend. It has been working out great and was many times less expensive than a system that was installed by them that used a Grundfos sqflex, though that has worked fine despite being slightly higher maintenance in the short term.

So, my issue with hiring someone is that I have to basically be looking over their shoulder the whole time, trying not to tell them how to do their job, while at the same time making sure it is done in a way that works for my purposes. Then I get a bill in the mail on top of it all


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

Everything needs repair once in a while the hiring of a professional depends on our ability to fix the problems some professionals are nothing but crooks so is crucial to learn as much as possible to depend less on them but as we get older we may need the crooks or community utilities to make do. In my younger days it was nothing to dig our outhouses or wells or build our piping system from bamboo cane we also did it without power, all by hand just like this folks here; 



 ,it was tough and I really miss it but I do love my utility services and the minimum maintance required for it.


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## HardCider (Dec 13, 2013)

My well is only 190 feet deep out at our farm. We just had to pull the pump because the rod worked itself loose. Thankfully our static water level is much less than that and it was an easy fix. I can not imagine a static water level of 2000 feet. The well pump would be even much deeper than that.


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## terri9630 (Jun 2, 2016)

We have 2 wells. One is 260 ft down in the valley and the other is 400 ft up on the mountain. They are about average for our areas. We used to live in an area where you couldn't dig a hole down a foot before it filled with water. I hated it at the time...


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

It has been quite awhile since I've cleaned out our spring source, probably a bit overdue but we're still getting plenty of overflow, but I am going to have to get around to it when the weather warms up as there is probably a lot of silt and even some tree roots that need to be taken care of and on top of that I have to put in a new stainless steel cover to replace a plastic covered plywood cover, which by now is probably dry rotted. We're thankful to have a gravity spring supplied system that's all buried except for the collection box near the spring and the cistern at the top of our property, which is half buried in the ground. I even made sure that the spring supply pipe has a continual fall to it so that there is no pooling in case of an extra deep freeze. That pipe is over 400' up the side of the mountain behind us, I hand dug the ditch, some of which the pipe was placed under tree roots. The only real problem I had was a bad case of poison oak outbreak on the sides of my calves, never had any issues with poison oak before that, but having those oils from roots rubbing on the sides of my legs really did a number on them. Treated them with vinegar which did the trick. Thing is, no matter what kind of water system you may have, you can save yourself a lot of problems by inspecting them at least once a year.


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## TheLazyL (Jun 5, 2012)

cowboyhermit said:


> ... an "expert" decided to save a few dollars by using a galvanized fitting between a pit-less adapter and a check-valve...


The same "expert" installed my well 20 years ago. Used a galvanized fitting to transition form the PE pipe to the pit-less adapter. When the submersible pump was pulled we found that a large part of the galvanized fitting was gone and most of the water that was pumped was just falling back down into the well casing.

The new Expect replaced it with brass. :cheers:


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## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

readytogo said:


> Everything needs repair once in a while the hiring of a professional depends on our ability to fix the problems some professionals are nothing but crooks so is crucial to learn as much as possible to depend less on them but as we get older we may need the crooks or community utilities to make do. In my younger days it was nothing to dig our outhouses or wells or build our piping system from bamboo cane we also did it without power, all by hand just like this folks here;
> 
> 
> 
> ,it was tough and I really miss it but I do love my utility services and the minimum maintance required for it.


 Dangerous should have lines tied to them, just in case of cave in.

I had to haul water in a bucket from the well. Better keep tight grip on that handle.  it almost broke my arm and a wringer washer did break a cousins arm when he stuck it into the wringer.:dunno:


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