Well Pump Replacement

Upon arrival at your home, your well pump plumber will want to get a lay of the land both inside and outside. If you’re all set with water for the next several hours, we will properly shut down the water to your home and disconnect all power to the well pump for our safety during the work. We will also likely want to walk the yard with you if we will need to cross it during our work.

Well pumps are typically hundreds of feet below the ground and heavy, which means it takes a crane to pull them out. Our specialty well pump truck has a well pump crane mounted on it to assist with removal of the well pump. If we have to cross grass or landscaping to access the well, some (although typically very minimal) damage to the yard can be expected and is unavoidable. In extreme situations where a well is inaccessible by truck, we do have remote puller equipment.

Once the truck is in position, we will start to set up the well truck. This is a cool thing to see if you haven’t seen it before. The well truck crane extends about 40’ in the air!

Once the truck is all set up we will begin by pulling up the old well pump. The pump will be pulled by the drop pipe, typically 20’ at a time. During this process the wire is also removed.

After the successful removal of the old well pump, we will evaluate the existing system, looking for any potential modifications we should make during the new well pump installation. The water level in the well will be verified as well as the depth, if we are able at this time. Also during this step we will disinfect the well to help with any bacteria that may be intruding into the well during work.

Specialty waterproof connections will be made between your new well pump and special well pump wire and the installation will begin. The new pump will typically be installed down the well 20 feet at a time with new PVC piping and any corrosion couplings. Great care will be taken during installation, as many premature pump failures occur because of sloppy well pump installation.

If there is any inside work around the well pressure tank that is needed and included in your installation, that will usually happen after the new pump is installed in the well. In larger jobs, there are often two well pump plumbers on the job so the inside and outside well work can happen at the same time.

Once all final connections are made and pre-startup checks are complete, we start up your new well pump!

During the course of well work, lots of debris gets stirred up in the well. For this reason, we will need to run water for a while into the yard until the chlorine has dissipated and the water is clean enough to restore to the home. In extreme cases where the well isn’t cleaning up, this can take several hours.

Once the water has cleaned up, we will restore the water to your home.

Wisconsin DNR requires us to take a water sample post pump installation. The sample is collected from the well tank and sent to a state certified laboratory for testing.

Six to eight hours. Austin Plumbing, Heating & Air has been replacing well pumps for over 80 years! Everyone of them is a bit different and depends greatly on many factors we don’t control. Once we get the old pump on the ground, our well pump plumber can provide an update on timing!