Hi Ewest and all, My name is Paul Ebaugh and Michael's brother and co-conspirator on the pond management. The original artesian well has a pressure head of approx 6' of water column. We had another well dug about 30' away and it only has a 1-2 foot pressure head. This second well we put a 3/4 HP pump on it and with the pump on it flows approx 25 gpm and the first well drops to 8-10 gpm. With the pump on we can acheive up to approx 30 psi of pressure if the flow is reduced. The second well with the pump is about 3' above water level so its flow churns the water quite a bit to get some aeration action.
Note for Michael: The reason you cannot put the pump inlet directly on the outer well pipe (2") is that if and when the pump starts sucking air, you lose the pump prime and if run for any significant time dry it will burn out the pump and notor. The inlet pipe currently has about 20' of PVC to get near the bottom of the well with a shoe valve (check-valve) at the end. This 20' column will always stay full of water and not allow the pump to lose its prime. As you found out when removing the pipe, it gets very heavy full of water. In future years we can keep this in place and when winterizing, pump out about 5-10 feet of the water column and cap off. At 5-10 feet down and with the well flowing around the casing at 5 gpm in artesian mode at 47 degrees it will not freeze.
