Need Advice! Two Pipe Deep Well Jet System in Crawlspace
I bought a house about 5 years ago that has what I assume is an old deep well jet system in the crawlspace. The house was built in the early 50s and has since been converted to municipal water and sewer. The well has exclusively been used for irrigation and the spigot on the exterior of the home.
The past few years I have started to take lawn care seriously and have come to realize the underground irrigation system was a DIY special and has some obvious flaws. 4 zones ranging from 5-7 heads per zone and had 3-5gpm nozzles in the rotors. When activating my system this spring the tech mentioned that I would likely benefit from a newer, higher flow/pressure pump. So I started to look into it. I asked the landscape company for a quote and I crawled under the house to take a look for myself. The old pump is a Water Ace RC5 Tank Mounted Jet System with a 7 gallon diaphragm pressure tank. I was quoted roughly $1300 dollars and the pump they included in the quote appears to be a flotec thermoplastic 1hp sprinkler pump (model #: WBB2225035). After some more research I shared concerns with the company about that pumps compatibility with my current well system and was assured by the manager of the irrigation team that it would work perfectly. The manager has personally been out here to perform work on the existing system. After some more pushback about the compatibility I was told if it was not compatible I would not be charged for it, as he was certain it would work.
I did some more digging and found out I was getting 10gpm at roughly 25psi from the spigot right off the pump. I decided to hold off on the replacement and instead replaced every single cheap orbit sprinkler head with hunter pgp ultras and 1.5gpm nozzles. That alone seemed to improve the performance of the system pretty well and I figure if I needed a new pump down the road at least I have quality sprinkler heads.
Fast forward to today and I have hit that crossroad. I noticed the irrigation would not turn on, and the spigot would not produce any water. I crawled under the house to find the pump not making any noise and is at 0psi. I believe it is cooked.
I want to improve to system to run at least 12gpm and 45 psi. Do I go ahead with the flotec replacement from the landscape company since I am not out any money if it doesn’t work? I have not been able to find any well records for my property. I checked with the township, the county, the health department, and the state. There are numerous well records from properties within a 1-2 block radius that have the static water level between 7-15 feet, and total well depth from 20-36ft. If this is truly a deep well jet system with the ejector in place can I cap the smaller drive line and use the larger suction line to run to the flotec pump if the static water level is indeed that shallow? If it is indeed being ran as a deep well jet system to I replace the pump with the same make and hp and keep the ejector assembly since it would be almost impossible to pull up from the crawlspace? The last thing I want is to convert my irrigation to municipal water and get bent over every summer on my bill. I’d almost rather drill a new well if that would make more sense. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!