Using The Right Equipment To Remove The Water Pump From Your Drilled Water Well
Pulling the water pump out of a deep well is often a bigger job than you initially think. The pump is sitting far below the ground, and the waterline and pump are filled with water, making it extremely heavy. Using a water pump puller is often the only way to pull the pump up and out of the well without causing injury to you or damage to your water pump.
Lifting The Pump
If you need to remove the water pump from the bottom of a drilled well, you need a way to hoist the assembly to the surface. The pump is attached to the end of a polyethylene pipe and suspended just below the water line inside the well's casing.
A brass fitting called a pitless adapter is used in the casing to connect the pump supply line to the water line outside the casing. It has a threaded top the pump technicians use to attach a t-bar to, and the adapter supports the pump and line inside the casing. When it comes time to lift the pump out of the well, the technician will use the t-bar to grab the pitless adapter, separate it from the casing, and raise the pump line high enough to attach a water well pump puller to the line.
Extracting The Pump
Once the polyethylene line is high enough, it is attached to a water pump puller, often called an easy up, and an electric or gas motor on the puller turns a set of wheels that the poly pipe runs through. As the puller runs, the pump is slowly and carefully extracted from the well until the pump makes it to the surface.
Without the pump puller, the technician would have no way to remove the pump except to pull the pipe up, hand over hand, until the pump reached the surface. That option is not possible in a well with a pump set four or five hundred feet down without several men pulling the line. Still, with the water pump puller, one man can do the entire job without damaging anything and with maintaining their safety on the job site.
Pulling Your Own Pump
If you are going to try and pull the water pump out of your well yourself, you can rent a water pump puller from some equipment rental shops to help you. Be sure you have the rental company go over the operation of the puller with you to ensure you use it correctly and get a t-bar that has a top wide enough that it will not fall into the well.
Once the pump is loose from the adapter, there is nothing, except the t-bar, to stop it from falling to the bottom of the well until it is secure in the water pump puller.
Contact a supplier near you for more information about water pump pullers.