Due to the drought here in central Texas, I decided to get my old well working to fill the ever dwindling water supply for my livestock tank. The well stem is old, probably 30 years or older. It is 5" diameter and is 135 ft. deep. You hit water at approx. 65 ft, below grade. The well has not been used since 1997 or 1998. The pump was removed, and the stem was sealed off with duct tape and an overturned bucket. I cannot say for sure what yield the well ever made; it was only used for a farm house and a cattle trough.

What we did was buy a 2 wire, 240VAC, 1HP submersible pump with a 1 1/4" outlet. It was rated at 15GPM. We installed new "well" wire and a disconnect switch. We did not install a pressure tank or anything because all we just wanted was to run water steadily to the pond. We dropped the pump to 125 ft. and fired it up. The pump put out a steady stream of clean water for a couple of minutes, then dirty water for a couple of minutes. This repeated for about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the pump began to cavitate (spitting water intermittently). We turned the pump off for a few minutes, and restarted it. After about 2 minutes of pumping correctly, it began to cavitate again. The water has cleared up; however the steady cycles of cavitations still occur. We have experimented with it and basically it will run 2 minutes correctly, then if you turn it off for 5 minutes it will run correctly for 2 minutes again. We thought maybe we were not deep enough, so we decided to drop it further. It dropped only 8 ft before hitting the bottom. We raised it up to 5 ft and tried it again. The same problem persisted as before.

I talked to a friend who has some expertise, and he said the well was pumping the water out of the stem faster than it could replenish itself. Since the well is old, he recommended we remove the pump and have the well “jetted”. I believe means to add compressed air to clean out the holes in the stem so water can flow into it more quickly. My questions are these:

Does this sound logical to you? Have you ever heard of this “jetting” procedure?

How do you perform this “jetting” procedure?

We have already spent more than $750 and would like to get it going better, but do not want to spend any more than necessary. Any help would be appreciated.