sanitizing a well will not clean up silt. People have not had drilled small diameter steel pipe line wells for hundreds of years. If your well guy says you need a new well you more than likely do

 

If excess fines are in your well water, talk to your well driller about having the well developed again. Well development can be done by surging, over-pumping, or jetting.

 

I can't tell you if it's time to drill a new well, but unless you've got some seriously acidic water and the thinnest well casing ever made, I can't believe that the steel "wore out" in 25 years and that's the reason it has holes in it.
And I can't think of another good reason either unless you periodically open it up and ram carbide shafts inside and bang them around.

Maybe there's another reason for the silt that means the well is no good now, but before I decided anything, I'd try inspecting it thoroughly with some kind of fiber optic scope. If there ARE holes in the sides you should be able to see it and if that isn't the case, then look for the real reason why.

Start by checking if the water coming out at the top has silt in it. Could be the "holes" are in the PVC buried in the ground between the well and your house instead.
A whole lot easier and cheaper to fix.

 

I'm suspicious about the leaking casing. Is anything unusual going on like a drought, low water level in the well, etc.? I wonder if the casing goes all of the way to the bottom. If you have the room you might consider putting a settling tank with a drain in the bottom before the filter. While it wouldn't be a settling tank in the conventional sense, a large enough tank would slow the water velocity enough to allow the fines to settle out. If you're getting a good water supply, the last thing I would do is drill another well.

 

I did find a link about well screens that may better explain what your well guy was talking about.

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-wb-dwehs-gwwfwim-section8_183034_7.pdf

And there are several repair options including relining the casing. Do some homework before spending any money though.

 

Well screens, even brand new well screens, will not keep fines out of a well. If a well screen actually filtered out fines, it would plug and you'd have no water. What will keeps fines from entering your well is to properly "develop" the aquifer surrounding the well screen. (unless, of course, the well casing has actually rusted through).

@cc-rider ==> Google: water well development

 

I have had several wells.

At my last farm we lived there 18 years. It had 2 wells on it. Neither made more than 1/2 GPM.
On The one tied to the house when I bought it, the pump quit suddenly. I set up a big home made tripod ND proceeded to pull it.....It would not budge. The shale had collapsed on it.
Typically wells are only steel cased down to a solid rock source or 40'. The point is to get safely beyond surface water.
I had a driller come out and set up on it and pull the pump, re drill it to clean it out. We then sleeved it completely with schd 40 PVC. We drilled hundreds of 1/4 holes in it. (It helps to have a couple of preteen boys who get a kick out of running cordless drills)
No more problems with collapsing shale.
And less shale silt in the filter.
A couple of years later when we built the house, I had a new well drilled. Same story low flow. I had them sleeve it up front.
To help with the low volume issue i set a 2000gal tank, and ran all three wells to the tank, and installed pump tech controllers on each pump. This allowed me to harvest all the water that the wells made. Inset a pump in the tank and used it to serve the house. This tank also served as a settling tank.

But to awnser your original question...Yes you can re sleeve a well. I've done it. And it did reduce the silt I had in my filters.

 

Yep, and I think the advice to the OP is still sound.........verify the problem before going any further.

 

Thanks for all the responses. I am definitely going to get a second opinion. It was a red flag when the guy kept saying, "I really want to dig you a new well!". I asked if he couldn't just line it since it is over 6", and he said no. I don't buy that. I have the previous ODNR well report so I know how far down it is, and what they hit and what the casing is and such. I can't believe a well would "go bad" in 20 years with nothing going on around here. No farming, we are in the woods. Acres and acres of woods surrounding us, too.

 

I agree 100%.
Past experience has taught me to thoroughly diagnose a problem first and I sometimes learn what others don't know.

 

I never bow to the status quo....Intake it all in, process, process and process, until I decide what's best for me...M sometimes I step in it.... But mostly I come out just fine.

Good luck...

 

is there an option of putting a smaller diameter casing inside of the old one? I asked them about that because they said they use PVC pipe now for well casing. They say they can’t put PVC inside of the steel well. I don’t know why, though.

I don't see why you can't put PVC casing inside of your existing 6" casing. There are small diameter pumping solutions, some down to 2".

How deep of a well are we talking here?

 

The well is between 55 and 65 foot. Not talking real deep here.

 

That's not a lot. You should be able to design something yourself to do the job.

 

We did put it down three wells.. there was no code issue here with it.

 

Here's the issue with sleeving the well in question. Let's assume there are rust holes in the outside steel casing that is allowing sediment-laden water into the well. The inside casing is going to have to be of a small enough diameter so the well driller get seal (grout) the annular space between the two casings. 4-inch Sch 40 PVC has an outside diameter of 4.5" That leaves only a 3/4" gap between the inner and outer casing. I am wondering if a well driller can even tremie grout through tubing that is less than 3/4" outside diameter?

 

The ODNR report shows a 6.62 inch casing?

 

Schedule 40 steel pipe has a 6" inside diameter and an 6.625 outside diameter.

 

You can also find PVC in other sizes, just think outside the box.

https://flexpvc.com/Reference/FullPVCPipeChart.shtml

 

That is true, but are you going to be able to find a decent submersible pump to fit down that size of PVC?

 

You can possibly get someone to run a camera down your well. We tried. Almost as expensive as the drilling and nobody in this county does it despite what is listed on the health department listings.

What usually happens is the weld fails, then water running in causes the hole to get larger. Once the opening gets large enough silt and sand start running in. Your well is about the same age as the one we had that recently failed. Back then most drillers used the thinnest and cheapest casing available. If they didn't get the weld just right it would crack as they pounded it down through rocky layers under the ground. Our old casing was very thin, no where near schedule 40 thickness.

The state of Ohio doesn't like linings inside the steel casing. Even if you could find someone to do the work they might not guarantee it. At least none of the drillers we talked to would guarantee the work.

Your local health department has a list of certified well drillers on their website or at the local office. Most of what will be on that list are companies that sell well supplies. If necessary call every contact on the list and first ask if they install wells. Get more than one estimate.

Most companies in Ohio now do only PVC casing. Very few have rotary drills which use steel casing. On the plus side, PVC can have you up and running in 2 days. The old rotary drills can take a week or more.

If you have infiltration, no amount of sanitizing will clear your water. No amount of pumping and flushing will clear your water.

 

Can you have it pumped out like doing a septic tank?
Might just be a sand pocket.
I'm expierencing same thing right now.
I had a 28' well now I'm at 24'
Had to raise the intake.
My well is 18" I'D.
Water table is low, going thru a drought also.
Just wondering about sucking the sand out.
Unless it's a mountain of sand!!!

 

My mistake, cable tool drilling is the method in which steel casing is used. Rotary is the one in which pvc casing is used.

Anyway, here are the rules/laws for wells in Ohio. Apparently now you can line them, under certain conditions.
http://www.odh.ohio.gov/en/rules/final/3701-20-29/f3701-28.aspx

Here is the homepage. All contractors have to follow the rules or they can lose their license. No license, no business. Wells in Ohio are regulated to death. The last I heard you aren't even supposed to change your own pressure switch unless you are licensed.
https://www.odh.ohio.gov/odhprograms/eh/water/PrivateWaterSystems/main.aspx

 

You should be able to insert a 4" PVC pipe inside that steel casing. Is that large enough for your pump?

 

I am not in your area so take this as my experience not advice. Our area brushes well casings think of a wire brush cleaning the inside of your casing then pumping out the bottom of the well. Camera inspection is then made to determine no holes up on the sides of the casing. (IMPORTANT) Ground water is what made casings required. Contamination is prevalent in ground water. Think neighbor buries dead cow three feet deep and contaminates ground water. Then installing a sand centrifuge is suggested. This is very low tech it spins the water leaving the well head and forces the silt sand gunk and grime to the outside and it falls into an area that is drained.
Taking no action other than what you have suggested means your pump is pumping a slurry of abrasive particles making the life of your pump in jeopardy.

NOTE every time we have a small quake very small in magnitude my sand centrifuge fills up and I have to clean all the aerator screens in the house. Good Luck and remember no one will take care of your money as well as you will.

 

Pretty good advice right there. You can always look for the cheapest angle to do what you want, try to outsmart what you can get by with. But at the end of the day what is doing what you should is up to you. All you folks that advise the folks to do what you think is right congratulations. You are the salt of the earth. BUT the fact of the matter is you are making choices and advice that affects a bunch of folks today and in the future. So carry on and rest easy

 

When I was studying up on wells I remember reading that if your pump diameter is too large it will cause the water (and sediments) rushing past the 'pinch point' to wear a hole through the casing.

I would look at cleaning the well screen and developing the well if possible. Cleaning the well screen on my well did wonders on increasing the volume.

 

before you start anything major,
check your check valve. you might have water running back down into the well and stirring up the sediment.
I had a problem with my submersible pump .
it sucked in enough sand and silt to completely plug the pump and it burned out.
the next pump I sent down the well stopped 4 ft higher off of the bottom that the first pump was.
no more sucking of sand and silt.
I have a 6" casing going down about 40 feet.
my well was drilled in 1967..
I have completely replaced all the copper inside the house because of countless pin holes that developed thru the years. the casing is still in good shape..

also look down the casing while the pump is running.
if the water is agitating, there is a 99% chance that you have a hole in the pipe somewhere between the pump and the surface of the water. that also happened to me..
I got rid of the segmented pipe and put a continuous one piece pipe in. every few feet I taped on pipe protectors. they keep the pipe from rubbing against the casing and wearing a hole in it..

I do believe that grout will fit down a 3/4" crack.
you have to have some sort of stop at the bottom to keep the grout from continuing down out of the space and filling up the bottom of the well.

 

That's one way to do it, for sure.
But as I said, I've learned more than one way to skin a cat.
If you get a liner that has an O.D. that is very close (maybe less than a mm) you can slip it place with some epoxy or a gasket of some type that they use for that purpose and seal it good enough.
As far as surface contamination, that's a different subject, he may or may not have that going on too.
I don't know, but a quick water test can confirm it.
If I read his OP correctly, he was looking for options besides having a new well drilled.
And this is a good place to get those other ideas from, that's one of the great benefits here.

Getting grout into a well to seal it properly needs a good inch or better for the grout to fill in and settle out air voids and so forth. (That means a 2 inch bigger hole so there is a full inch all the way around...)

You can seal the top inch of the lining to the well casing with a bead of epoxy, but that does nothing at all to seal up the old ruptured casing from leaking contaminants into the aquifer for the next century.

You totally missed the point, but hey you saved a couple bucks so carry on, no worries! Might as well throw the skinned cat down the well too, out of sight out of mind right.

Paul

 

I'm not sure why you'd say all that, as if ya knew me, my excellent well water or anything else for that matter, but I was actually taking note of points and trying not to miss ANY of them.

And I think the first one most people agreed on was this........

Yep, and I think the advice to the OP is still sound.........verify the problem before going any further.

It's great to know everything about grouting a ruptured casings, but the first thing I'd want to know is IF the problem is in the casing.
There's a lot of other things I'd need to know as well before telling someone about how contaminated their well is and wear the contaminants are coming from, but hey, that's just me.