Re: Well pump upgrade??
.....My thoughts on a submersible water pump are not good. They seem to wear out fast.....
Au Contrair. Submersibles last for 20 years. Pumps are also better at pushing water that sucking water. At 90 feet you are definitely at the outer limits of a surface jet pump, even a two stage one.
Do not mix 'hardness' up with 'iron'. They are two entirely different minerals. Hardness is nothing but dissolved rock (limestone) and you never see it until the water evaporates away from it. It will not create any problems with any pump.
Iron, on the other hand, is, well.....IRON. It can be found in wells in two different forms. One is refered to as clear water iron (dissolved) and the other is iron oxide (rust). Dissolved iron will eventually turn to rust once exposed to oxygen. If that is the type of iron that you have, it will create no problems with any pump.
On the other hand, if the iron in your well exists in the already oxidized form a signifgant amount of it could eventually plug up the intake slots on the pump. However, I have seen submersibles operate in fairly heavy iron oxide laden water with no short to mid term problems.
Any purveyor of submersible pumps will be able to help you with sizing. You just need to tell them what GPM you want at ground level, what the placement depth of the pump will be (you don't want it on the bottom of the well cavity) and what GPM flow your well will sustain.
You would be best off if you had a bladder style pressure tank. You want one big enough to give you at least two minutes of pump run time during pressure tank refill. (submersible pumps love to run, they do not like stopping and starting) As an example, an 86 gallon pressure tank operating between 40-60psi, will give you 22 gallons of draw down water between cycles. That is assuming that the tank is properly precharged at two pounds below the pump turn on pressure (in this case 40 psi). If your pump pumps 10 gpm at ground level, (common residential size) that means it will take 2.2 minutes of run time to refill the 22 gallons of drawdown water.
