You have a centrifugal pump. The motor turns at 3250RPM (revolutions per minute). This type of pump uses a impeller, which is a round disk with flutes, that creates a suction from flinging the water at a high velocity to pull water from your source. That source is unlikely to be deeper than 25ft.

So it is not possible to put a crank on the motor to pump water. You could put in a diaphragm hand pump inline and pump water but not up to a great deal of pressure.

The recommendations for getting a generator are good ones. Look at the motors label to get the wattage requirements and buy a generator that can handle the load.

 

Hurrah! Now I'm actually getting somewhere! Thanks for the information on my system. However, I would still like to figure out a hand pumping solution. I realize that a generator would get us water. However, besides the fact that generators here in Canada are about triple or quadruple the price of American generators, a generator would do me no good in a long term SHTF scenario. Once I run out of gas, I run out of well water. And I don't want to be travelling down to a lake and hauling buckets back when I have a well right here. It seems so silly that I have water available and yet can't access it without power.

You said:

"You could put in a diaphragm hand pump inline and pump water." I have no idea what that means. Remember, I don't know anything about this stuff. Are diaphragm pumps expensive? What is "inline"? Where do I start?

 

The tank you have in the photo has a rubber diapragm inside that "fools" the
pressure switch into shutting on and off. You will notice that it is not very large.
You need to know how deep your well is, and where the water level is inside the well.
in order to hook up a hand pump, you want to tap into the pipe coming from the well,
and you can fill up buckets for use, but you couldn't pressurize your whole water
system. A typical jet pump pressure switch is set to turn on when the water pressure drops to 30 pounds (when you run a tap, or flush the toilet) and will shut the pump off
at 50 pounds( when the toilet tank fills up or you shut the tap.) the pump runs until
the water pressure builds up enough to press on the pressure switch. (that is the
little gray box on the right side of your pump with the wires running into it)
If you look at your tank, you will see a black plastic cap on top. There is a tire valve
there that lets you check the air pressure in the tank. It is factory set at 30 pounds.
There is a rubber "skin" inside that acts like a balloon. It doesn't really hold a lot of
water, and it would take a LOT of hand pumpin" to pressurize all the water pipes in
your house!! Look at your hot water heater, too. It is probably 40 or 60 gallons itself.
I live on an island in Northern Ontario, and I use a pump system like this to feed
20 buildings!! I draw water out of the lake, not a well, so when the power goes,
I have to haul buckets out of the lake. You probably have a heating cable in your
well pipe to prevent it from freezing in the winter, so when the power goes,
every thing freezes up.. You need to check and see if this is the case, because if
you have a heating cable, you need to power that with electricity to keep the
well line from freezing. A generator would not help because the heater has to be
on all the time to keep the well pipe from freezing.
this

 

What is the water's source? You may be able to simply plumb in a separate intake pipe and foot valve to a dedicated hand pump. This would discharge not to your hydromatic tank but simply to a spigot.

You might google, hand well pumps to get some ideas.

 

toobboy,

That was incredibly helpful!!! So if I can't pressurize the system in our house, then what would I do about drainage? If I am going to fill up buckets, and some of it spills, then I would have to sop it all off the floor since the drainage pipe is several feet off the floor.

Also, how would I go about being able to discern whether there is a heated cable in the well pipe? If it is several feet underground, then wouldn't it be below the frost line?

I will take several more pictures of our system, including the well outside and the drainage that goes outside to the septic system.

 

Your pump room looks pretty frosty!! Do you leave the light on in this room?
Even though the well waterline does go below the frost line, there is still
a good distance the pipe has before it gets to the pump.The pipe on the
front right side of the photo appears to come from the well. it looks like
it has foam insulation on it. Check and see if there is a wire wrapped around the pipe. My system for my house has a wire inside the pipe, contolled by a
thermostat. Talk to your landlord about the system.. find out exactly what is
going into the well. The system is pretty simple, and I can walk you through
hooking up an auxilary pump, but like I said, it won't do the whole house!!

 

The pumps suction is facing the foam wall insulation. The discharge has some foam pipe wrap on it till it gets down to the floor area. The whole room is quite insulated (not frost). From the photos you can not see the outside suction pipe or whether heater tape is attached to it. (heater tape does not run inside the piping).

 

threehappypenguins

Check these installations out. Not sure if you could adapt it to your piping.

http://www.ericsprojects.com/?page_id=274

http://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=19410.0

 

Here are more pictures of the setup (and yes, the stuff on the walls is foam, not frost haha!):

The first picture is of the well. The last picture is of the drainage pipe. See how it is above the ground? The washer was recently hooked into it (there was no washer hookup in this place before we moved in... weird...), but it is able to drain because it the washer drainage is set up above the pipe. This is why I am assuming that no laundry tub is able to be installed. And if no laundry tub is able to be installed, therefore no sink to catch any water that spills out of the buckets that I would be filling with a hand pump. This is my other concern.

Oh, and lastly, I found this nifty thing. Is it possible to hook up a hand pump to this? What is it for? Drainage?

 

Aha! When I took the original pictures of the pump, it was dark and I couldn't see too much, I couldn't get the carpet peel off, and there was a big nasty spider on it so I didn't fiddle around with it haha! So I thought it was one pipe coming from the wall and into the pump. Well... it is TWO pipes. So I am assuming that this changes things (And I don't see any wires wrapped around them):

 

Yes it does. The setup you have is a 2 line system. The red bit sticking out of
the wall is actually the front of the pump itself. It has been taken off and moved closer to the well to improve suction. You will see this type of installation
in situations where the pump has to pump vertically a long way, or the pump
is too small for the vertical lift needed. This is where a hand pump should be installed. ( hopefully the water level in the well is not too far down.There are
no floor drains in the basement floor? that would be scary. What about a sump pump? I would hope excess water would drain into that!!

 

Looking at the front of the pump's suction and distance from wall, you do not have any space to attach a hand pump. The upper hose is your jet return. Jet pumps use a recycle flow to build up suction for achieving a bit higher suction lift. Do you know how deep the static water level is in the well?

Sorta surprised to see the piping being so flimsy. Not to mention that it looks like you could easily draw air around the hose clamps and lose prime. So based on the pictures if you want a hand pump I would recommend running new separate piping to your well and than placing the pump where it would be handy.

 

MattB4,

So based on the pictures if you want a hand pump I would recommend running new separate piping to your well and than placing the pump where it would be handy.

That is not feasible. We are tenants.

toobboy,

What about a sump pump? I would hope excess water would drain into that!!

No sump pump. The basement seems pretty dry. It doesn't smell musty at all. It was a completely open and unfinished basement and our landlord is putting rooms in and just put the washer hook-up. It used to be her mom's place, but her mom just recently passed away so she is renovating and fixing it up. I think her mom must have been pretty old school since there was no washer or dryer hook-up, and there is a clothesline outside. Supposedly this place was built in the 1980's.

 

Yeah Matt, the whole system is Macguvered up really badly. Pretty much
like the Lodge where I work.. Thankfully my boss is anal like me, and he dropped
about $20,000 to rebuild the pumphouse. Schedule 80 PVC, 2 200 gallon
expoxy coated water tanks, No stupid bladders inside!! they break down and plug everything. Everything in the pumphouse is double redundant, so pumps
and filters can be cleaned and replaced without shutting down the system.
Chlorine injection, .5 micron filters, ultraviolet, the whole 9 yards. I know far
too much about pump systems now!!

The pipe running from the well to the house is hopefully below the frost line!! I would build a shed over the wellcap and insulate it and install a handpump there( Depending on the water level in the well, of course!)

 

Hand pump and electric in the same well casing

This might be a good solution for at least some folks here. This is a hand pump that we installed in the same 4" well casing that also contains our submersible pump. By turning a couple of valves, we can switch from electric to hand pump.

Here is a series of photos of the system being installed. You could install it yourself, and the Bison pump comes with everything you need, but like many things in life, it's better to just get a pump company to come over with their truck and their equipment and get the job right.

At the same time this system was being installed, we also replaced a do-it-yourself system that I installed about 10 years ago. After seeing what it looked like after they pulled it out of the well, I would NEVER take the do-it-yourself route for something like that again. It was just waiting to fail, and you just don't want to take chances with your primary source of water.

It is possible to use the hand pump to charge the pressure tank, and I have tried it. However, it is so hard to build up sufficient pressure by hand that as a practical matter, it just isn't worth it. Just pump what you need when you need it.

 

hand pump

look up The Simple Pump company and Bison Pump company and tell them what you have. they have ALL the answers, probably, including dc powered and solar power pumps....but, mostly hand pumps that lower in and set alongside/inside your existing well, till you need it. it would go outside on your well casing, not inside your house, although they have a way to sometimes use their pumps with a pressure tank. : ) paisley

 

Busterbrown

This was always one of my concerns. I purchased a "Simple Pump". It is a super quality hand pump which goes into your well casing and does have the pressure to fill your pressure tank. It's not cheap, but will definitely keep the taps flowing during an outage. Go to simplepump.com. And no I have nothing to do with the company. I did a lot of research on hand pumps before deciding on this pump.

 

Wish I could remember where I read it, but some time ago...a few years, I was reading how someone made a water filter/purifier system using a pump like a manual hydraulic pump.
He would drop a hose in a lake/pond, then start pumping by hand, and the water would be pulled up the hose, forced thru a filter system, the the water would flow out another hose into a tank.
I've tried several sources, but for the life of me, I can not remember.
I even looked at some "manual" reverse osmosis ideas for de-salinization(sp)
of salt water, to drinking water.
If these ideas could be found, worked on, this might be of some assistance.......just wish this old-timers disease would slow down.....

 

I live in Amish country a quite a few of them use a 12v pump and run it off solar panels or a small wind turbine. I think the pumps run about $400.

 

I have a cousin who uses a DC pump (I think his is 24 VDC) to pump into a water tower that supplies his house. It works very well. I used to have one also, but it is now being used by missionaries stationed deep in the bush in West Africa.

Inherent in the design of those pumps is that they have a fairly limited life span. That is NOT a problem as long as you are aware of it and plan accordingly. Just be aware of that limitation. Check the manufacturer's information and it will give you the estimated life of the pump. I don't recall if just a parts replacement will work or if it is a sealed unit where the whole thing has to be replaced. Also, a key part of the installation is the power cable that goes down to it. There is a specialized type of wire that is used, along with the gland where it enters the pump and any splices that may be needed.

 

Hydrostatic test pump

You could try a hydrostatic test pump used for pressure testing piping. I don't know how much head they can pull but you can pump up to 200 psi no problem.

 

What about an elevated tank and gravity feed?

 

Simple Pump works great

I concur with the Simple Pump. I had one installed with a hydrant. The pump is easy to use and replenishes the inside pressure tank. The hydrant allows the water to flow in and not back out. It isn't cheap, but is less expensive than the Bison. Simple Pump also has a solar option if you don't want to pump it yourself.

 

I concur with the Simple Pump... It isn't cheap, but is less expensive than the Bison...

I have to agree completely with that part. I looked at both the Simple Pump and the Bison Pump. The well company that installed mine had already installed a bunch of Simple Pumps over the years, so they had plenty of experience with them. I had both of them to compare side-by-side: Handle them, work the pumps, see how they work, and see how they're built from top to bottom. Here's the bottom line - just like everything else, you get what you pay for.

If you look at this as something to pump water for a few weeks or months, or maybe a year, the Simple Pump should do just fine. It does what it's designed to do and it does it well. If, on the other hand, you're planning for a time when the electricity goes off and may not come back on for a long, long time - if ever - then the Bison is clearly the best choice. If money is tight, and the Simple Pump fits in with your budget and your idea of what you're prepping for, then the Simple Pump is going to be your best choice. Just make sure you understand what you're getting with each one. Simple Pump is a good deal for the money. You are NOT going to get the quality and durability of the Bison Pump, but then you aren't paying for it either.