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Weird Fibres Destroy My Water System (Can I Fix It?) - Bailey Line Life #18
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Feb 22, 2024
Last week my son Robert's household water stopped working. Watch the long string of detective work we did to identify and solve the problem. FREE WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: https://bit.ly/2T3USuy PREVIOUS EPISODES: https://bit.ly/2EVDuFg WATCH MORE BAILEY LINE ROAD: Winter Tips - https://bit.ly/2rpnUcm Product Tours - https://bit.ly/2L2H54Q Woodworking - https://bit.ly/2RN83jC Real Rural Life - https://bit.ly/2RI5dvY CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE: https://baileylineroad.com/ My Cabin Building Course: https://baileylineroad.com/cozy-cabin/ How-To & DIY eBooks: https://baileylineroad.com/shop/ SOCIAL MEDIA: https://www.instagram.com/baileylineroad/ http://bit.ly/BLRfacebook
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0:00
Well, there's never a dull moment here at the end of Bailey Line Road
0:04
A couple of weeks ago, Robert's tankless water heater wasn't flowing water as well as it should have
0:11
We checked the little filter just before the water goes in and there was some stuff on it, some white fibrous stuff
0:18
It's kind of strange because my son Robert gets his water from a well, completely sealed, drilled well, modern well, casing, sealed top
0:28
It's a completely sealed system. So the stuff kind of looks like, well, I don't know, like, well, like this
0:35
This stuff right here. This stuff right here. It's fibrous. Pretty gross looking is what it is. Well
0:44
And it's in my water. Well, and actually, so it was just a little bit before and we cleaned the filter and that was fine, but yesterday it really ramped up
0:54
So now Robert tells me how long can a tap run before the screen is plugged with it
0:59
About 30 seconds or so. I don't know what this could possibly be
1:03
This stuff I collected from inside my bathroom taps. Pulled the screens off those and this stuff had formed
1:10
So we've had some wonderful, warm, blue sky weather lately, but of course these things never happen when it's nice outside
1:16
It's now colder and snowing. So you're going to get to see us pull the pump out of the well
1:20
It's a submersible pump. You know, what we're doing here is the same thing anyone has to do to replace the pump
1:27
I really don't know where to begin. There's only two straws we're grasping at at this stage and they both seem kind of like long shots, but what else is there
1:35
Straw number one. All of submersible pumps are suspended by a rope
1:40
So I don't know, maybe the rope's deteriorating, although I'm pretty sure we put a yellow poly rope on
1:46
We did, yes. And this doesn't look like yellow poly fibers. Kind of a small straw that is
1:53
I'm wondering though, maybe there's some kind of synthetic bearing inside the submersible pump and maybe it's deteriorating
2:01
Maybe it's breaking down and admitting this stuff into the water. Now, the bad news there is that we have to buy a new submersible pump
2:11
The good news is that if that's the case, then none of this stuff is in the water of the well
2:18
It's just being generated by the pump itself and then shot into the house
2:23
So we'll see. So Robert's taken the bolts off this cap and you can see this
2:31
This is well sealed. I mean, there's a seal around it. This conduit goes all the way down to the bedrock and then over into the house, completely sealed wire chamber
2:41
We got that yellow poly rope there like we thought. So I don't know
2:45
Maybe when we pull this pump out, some light will be shed on it
2:49
Down there is the pitless adapter, which is like an elbow, a plumbing elbow that can come apart
2:55
And this thing here threads into the top of that elbow. We thread it in and then we yank and then the elbow comes apart
3:04
The elbow that would take the water supply from the pipe coming up from the pump takes it through the side of the casing
3:13
So that's called the pitless adapter. This screws into the top of it and then it comes apart and then we pull out wires and rope and the pipe with the pump on the end
3:25
If my hypothesis of the self-destructing pump is actually the case, then we should have no fibers coming out of this well if we put another pump on it
3:38
We're going to pump a bunch of water and see if there are any fibers in it
3:42
If there isn't, then absolutely 100% that tells me that the pump is self-destructing inside
3:49
If such a thing is even a thing, I don't know. Right now I'm just hunting around here
3:59
We certainly don't want to cross-thread this baby. We need more light. That's not enough light
4:05
So while I was at the house getting a trouble light so I could see the pitless adapter and get the pump so we could test this water, Robert got the T-handle on
4:16
Just got lucky. I guess, yeah. The trick now is to yank on this thing to pull the tapered part of the pitless adapter apart and then to pull it out
4:34
The water is within, last time we measured, 13 or 14 feet so we didn't have to put a lot of pipe on the pump
4:41
It's not like at our place where we have 130 feet of pipe. We only have 30 here
4:48
Oh, was that it? Yep. Wow, that was easy. I'm going to get my phone
5:24
So, how come the old guy is doing all the heavy lifting here? Someone's got to operate the camera
5:34
There it is. The pump. There's certainly nothing obviously unusual here. This deteriorating pump hypothesis of mine may be happening without any outward appearance
5:50
The only troubleshooting thing to do is just to start pumping some water out of here
5:54
I've got the pipe into the well for our exploratory pumping. There's a foot valve on the end
6:01
I filled this line with water. This is just my portable gas-powered utility pump
6:06
I put a union on here so the pipe can come off for transport and things like that
6:15
Now it's time to put it back on again. Okay, the only other priming we need to do is the priming of the pump case itself
6:39
Well, the water's pretty brown if nothing else. But, you know, yeah, but not naturally occurring I don't think
6:48
because we've shoved this pipe down and it's got a curve to it
6:52
and I think it's kind of scraped some of the sides of the casing
6:56
But I am noticing, well, you saw the sink full of stuff last night
7:03
If this was in your sink, would you have seen? Yeah, no, there's nothing in there
7:07
There's nothing in there. It's a pump problem. It could be. It could be
7:14
The one thing I want to do is to spend $600 or $700 on a new subversible pump
7:18
to replace the one that was working perfectly a little while ago
7:22
You thought that, didn't you? Of course. Robert is not as happy as I am
7:28
Before we start trying to pull this pump apart and determine for sure if that's the problem
7:34
I just thought I'd show you a bit of the setup here. I like to go to extra trouble when installing a submersible pump
7:41
and so there's features here you might want to know about. One of them is this thing
7:47
It's called a torque arrestor. You basically mount it such that it swells
7:54
So you move this down far enough when you're installing it so it swells and it forms a kind of a rubber bumper
8:00
Because when this pump starts, when any submersible pump starts, there's a certain reaction to the torque
8:05
and it causes the whole shebang to swing from side to side inside the well
8:11
and the pump can hit the sides of the well not hard but over and over
8:15
you know, thousands of times every time it starts and stops. Same with all the piping and stuff
8:20
So this acts as a kind of a rubber bumper, and if you look at it, you can see it's been working
8:27
I don't know if you can see it on the camera, but there's little flat spots here where it's been hitting the sides
8:32
so it's doing its job. I like to protect the wires because one of the leading causes
8:37
of submersible pump failure is not the pump at all, but it's just that these wires, if the torque arrestor isn't in place
8:45
or it isn't working properly, will hit the side of the well over and over again
8:49
and will wear through the insulation. So as soon as practical, we got these wires protected in a second pipe
8:57
and it goes all the way up. A pump like this comes only with short wires
9:01
and you splice on the length you need. These are special. So I soldered this
9:07
Instead of using crimp-on connectors, I soldered them. It's much more reliable
9:11
And then I use heat-shrink tubing, heavy-duty heat-shrink tubing with some goo inside
9:16
I was going to take off the bottom end of this pump here, but I realized this is the motor part
9:21
This is the motor, and this is the pump. Nothing happening down here is going to get into the water
9:30
because this is a sealed motor unit. The water intake is here, and the impellers are here
9:37
This is the thing that moves the water. So if we have a breakdown of parts, it's occurring in here
9:44
So you can see the water down there. It's not too far
9:49
We didn't hit water until 130 feet, but it rose quite high
9:56
So it's pretty close to the surface as these things go. We're going to do one last test
10:02
We've pumped this well with a gas-powered pump, not detected a single fiber in the water
10:08
We're going to put the pump back in the well, but not all the way
10:13
We're going to leave the pitless adapter, which is this thing here
10:19
We're going to put the submersible back in. We're going to leave this above the ground
10:24
and then we're going to energize the pump. Water should just come gushing out
10:29
We'll take a sample there. If my hypothesis about breaking up impellers is true
10:37
then we should see fibers in that water. Can you see those fibers floating around
10:49
That's water from the pump, from the submersible pump, put temporarily back down in the well
10:57
I'm putting my hand here so the camera focuses on the water instead of the reflection of the trees
11:03
But, yeah, there was absolutely none of this when we pumped water with the gas pump
11:12
So we have absolutely isolated this to that submersible pump. So we found a 120-volt pump, two of them actually
11:24
one quite cheap, $110 new, and another one quite expensive, $900 for that one
11:33
Before we take everything apart, just want to be sure we have fibers coming in
11:39
when the submersible's back in the well. You saw that. I don't know. I just want to be absolutely sure
11:46
We're examining this again. This is the stuff that keeps clogging. We're worried here that it might
11:54
maybe it's Teflon tape or something like that. We used a little bit of that for some of the fittings
12:00
but I don't know. This doesn't seem like Teflon tape to me. But, I mean, the last thing in the world we want to do
12:05
is to change that pump and find out if that isn't a problem at all
12:11
Short of actually seeing an impeller disintegrating, I don't even know what these impellers look like
12:16
They're just little propellers that push the water. But short of seeing one broken inside the pump
12:25
there's no convenient way that I've seen to get it apart. We can't actually be 100% sure
12:32
So I don't know. That's what it looks like. So there have been some developments
12:37
We were 95% sure that the pump was bad and that something was chewing itself up inside
12:43
something plastic, and sending these chunks of plastic through. No plumber we talked to today
12:48
and we talked to two very experienced plumbers had ever heard of such a thing
12:52
but we isolated it. You know, we pumped water out of the well
12:58
with a gas-powered pump, no chunks, no fibers. We hooked up the old pump again
13:03
We hooked up the old pump again. We pumped. We had fibers
13:07
Seems pretty straightforward. More difficult. We're actually pretty lucky to find this
13:13
I forgot that we had chosen a 120-volt pump for this. That is not standard. Standard is 240
13:21
We chose 120 so that we could run the pump off of a small generator
13:25
if need be someday. But that means that none of the hardware stores around have that kind of pump
13:31
and it would be a week or more before they brought it in. So we did talk to a plumber who had
13:38
this is it, a 120-volt submersible pump, half horsepower. It's going to move all the water we need, 10 gallons a minute
13:45
He's used this pump briefly at his own deer hunting camp. So it's almost new
13:54
It's not very cheap. It is a soft-start pump, which I'd never heard of before
13:59
but it starts slowly and gently, so it doesn't have a huge spike in current on startup
14:06
and that lets you run these things with an even smaller generator. So we're going to get this baby in
14:12
There's some wiring differences we have to deal with, but we also have to put on some fittings
14:17
It's interesting to me, you seem to know the exact steps to take
14:21
to figure out a problem like this, even if you don't know the solution right away
14:27
you know the steps. It seems only a life of experience can give you the experience you need
14:34
Yeah, logic too. I mean, these projects are always unpredictable. So really all you can do is take the next few steps
14:45
and it's never very complicated. Well, not usually. The next step is pretty simple
14:52
Drive to the shop, salvage the fitting, bring it back, and install it
14:57
Well, got the old fitting off the old pump, ready to head back to my place
15:03
So is there anything else that we need down there that we're only going to remember when we get there
15:07
No, no, there's nothing else. We will remember when we get down there, though
15:11
Yeah, I guess we can try to trick fate and remember ahead of time
15:15
but that never works. You're lucky you're only a three-minute drive away. You're going to use that overpowered hair dryer
15:20
to expand the rings here and the old PEX pipe and get that off
15:26
Yes, this is a pro-PEX connection. Not too many people know about this, not too many lay people
15:33
but it's a system that swells the end of the pipe, and then you put the fitting together
15:38
and then it just closes down by a slow elastic motion so that it grips the pipe
15:43
But of course you can't get it apart once it's together, so what you do is you heat it, make it soft
15:49
and cut into the ring, remove the ring. You'll see. You'll see what happens here
15:54
So this is a heat gun. This fitting might get too hot to hold before we get done here
16:03
but I'm going to give it a try. The second, I'm going to have to do something similar
16:12
to actually get the remnant of the pipe off, but I don't want to cut so far that I put a nick in the fitting
16:25
There we go. That's what we're after. Okay, let's get this baby installed now
16:31
Yeah, that's the right thread. I don't know, that other thing must be some weird metric thing
16:36
This is the way the pro-PEX system works. This ring goes on here
16:41
and then we use this tool to expand to swell it up
16:46
and it holds the swollen position, and then we jam the fitting in and hold it there for 15 seconds or so
16:52
and then it shrinks back down. And this tool is Milwaukee's pro-PEX expander. Right
17:12
There. I'm just going to hold it there until it shrinks down
17:17
It shrinks pretty quickly. Yeah, it's already fairly tight. I don't think I'd be able to get it apart now
17:25
Okay, we're going to have to make some connections here. Now, this is what they call a two-wire pipe, a pump
17:32
This is the 120-volt hot and the neutral, and then this is a ground
17:40
But the old pump was a four-wire, so we're basically going to have to put black to black
17:48
We're going to put white to red down here, and then we're just going to run
17:55
Well, you'll see later. We're going to run power right to these wires
17:59
instead of through the control box. Because this pump. This is a different pump
18:05
This has no control box. The control elements are inside the pump. I've got the wires strung through the torque arrestor here
18:11
I've routed them in these slots. It's never immediately clear. I've done a lot of these
18:17
It's never immediately clear to me how to run the wires, but I think they're pretty protected
18:22
They're between these pieces of rubber. The clamp is over top of them but not touching them
18:27
I mean, I can still move it. This one's kind of tight, but only because it's being squeezed by the rubber on the side
18:32
So I think we're good. We have to squish the torque arrestor like this
18:38
so that it becomes the right diameter. I'm going to aim for, like, this is 6 1⁄4 inch well casing
18:45
I'm going to aim for 5 inch. That'll give us room to get past the pitless adapter. Right
18:53
Now, the normal procedure here is to use some crimp connections just to, you know, it slips over, it squeezes in place
19:02
and makes the connection, but... You're not in there. I like soldering
19:08
I like soldering, so... Stronger and more reliable connection. Now, of course, we're going to have some guy in the comments
19:17
Excuse me, I've been a plumber for 47 years, always used crimp on connections, never had one let go. Right
19:25
Good for him. We're not going to do that. There
19:48
So now it's time for us to make up for the fact that
19:52
we cross-threaded into the pitless adapter and I really don't want to have that issue again
19:57
By we, you mean me. Yeah, well, I mean, it was happening when I started, actually
20:01
so the thing is, so this is the fitting that connects the pipe
20:06
and this is, like I said before, it's like half of an elbow
20:10
The other half of the elbow is in the well, it's going through the casing, it's bolted in place
20:15
and this just fits down inside and interlocks and now you have an elbow
20:21
So the water's coming up from the pump down below, turns 90 degrees, goes horizontally to the house here
20:29
There's fitting threads on both ends. This thread is for that handle that you saw us using before
20:37
and then this thread is for the fitting. It would be a really terrible thing to put the fitting in here
20:45
and to install the pitless adapter upside down because when you lower it down, why isn't that going together
20:52
Why isn't that going together? Well, it's because it's upside down. You see there's a ledge here, no ledge there
20:56
so it's got to go this way. So who do we have here watching us
21:04
My two girls. They seem to be in a pretty good mood at the moment
21:12
even though they haven't had water for a while. We've got that camping water cooler in there to keep us hobbling along
21:21
Well, this is shrinking. There's two more things we need to do before we put this pump back in
21:26
We have to figure out how to get the rope on that little wee substandard lug they've given us
21:32
and we need to tape up these wires on their way to that protective pipe
21:38
Let's do the easy one first, taping the wires. The tape's giving you some trouble
21:45
Yeah, it's not ordinary tape. It's this sort of stretchy stuff and it fuses on itself in time
21:50
so it actually becomes a sleeve of rubber. But maybe this roll is older than I thought or something
21:59
but that backing isn't coming off too reliably. You're supposed to tie a rope on this
22:13
supposed to tie a rope on this, but as you've seen before, a little wee lug
22:19
But I managed to get all three stands separately through the lug and now I'm just, now I'm weaving it back
22:25
It is saving the day. This thing back up again. We've got the new pump in place
22:32
The torque arrestor is adjusted, I hope properly, for the inside, taped up to protect the wires here before they go into that protective pipe there
22:42
So I'm going to feed it in. Robert's going to control the handle here
22:49
and then hope to get that pitless adapter interlocked properly with the other half
23:12
Okay, the last little bit of the lowering process here. There's the pitless adapter down there
23:17
Hold it right there, a little bit in. Okay, so with a little blunt force trauma in the back end of this axe
23:31
we got it to interlock. Phase one of the mission complete. Yes, we just have to fool around with some wiring and then flip the switch
23:41
So we've got one more step to do. As I mentioned before, the pump that we put in is what's called a two-wire pump
23:50
So there's two wires that come out of three actually, considering the ground
23:55
but they call it a two-wire pump. And the pump that was in there before was a four-wire pump
24:01
And those four-wire pumps make use of what's called a control box here
24:08
So the idea with the control box is that it puts some of the serviceable parts above ground
24:17
So if we have a problem with the capacitor or this thing, whatever that is, the relay
24:24
we can change that without having to pull the pump out. But with the two-wire pump, all of these components are in the pump
24:33
So I actually prefer to have the control box so we can service things like this
24:37
but we didn't have a choice today. So we have to kind of modify things
24:42
I don't want to take this control box off because we may want to put a four-wire pump on it someday
24:48
So you can see here, I'm going to make use of these terminals to essentially bypass the box altogether
24:58
So the white and the black, that comes from the pressure switch, which is over here
25:06
So we have the incoming power feed, which is unplugged right now, comes in here
25:12
When the pressure switch decides that the pressure is too low in the tank
25:18
then contacts close and the electricity can flow through this flexible cable, armored cable here
25:29
And so that's the black and the white. So we have power here
25:34
Now the pump that we have has three wires. It has a green, which is just a ground, which is connected to here, so we don't need to do anything with that
25:45
The black, this thick black one, goes to the black wire in the pump
25:51
And the red one goes to the white wire in the pump
25:56
And the yellow one is just sitting there doing nothing. The two blacks under one terminal, the white and the red under one terminal
26:03
which is the same orientation we had them out at the pump
26:07
The yellow not connected to anything because that was the excess of the fourth wire
26:13
And so that should be good to go, right? It's the moment of truth
26:18
Hope for the best here. Oh. What's going on
26:28
Is water coming in? Can you imagine? Well, there you go. Well, I hope you like this video about restoring some water
26:40
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