well went dry

Crap my well went dry today! its a shallow well. this is the 1st time this has happened...anyone out there with well water and have any input to share?

I have a shallow well, with all the rain this year do you have a foot valve on it..

yeah, I text the previous owner and he said he had a foot valve installed 6 years ago. I gotta figure out what it is though...google is my friend.

also i took the lid off the well and looked inside...there is no visible water where it should be.

There is some cheep foot valves out there I went with a SS one, but some I look at sure didnt look like they would make it very long.

You can try and prime it if that doesnt work the only other thing is the foot valve... Bet there still water there.

awesome...i just talked to the previous owner and he said basically the same thing you posted.

In 2006 on thanksgiving day in the middle of dinner our water done the same thing nothing scearer than running out of water but if you know where the well is a good foot valve ss is about 25.00 bucks. and couple hrs work.

thanks for the help jay...much appreciated!

Took a minitue to get that post right spell check went crazy...lol Wecome And hope its an easy fix! (should be)

Ran my well dry once by leaving the sprinkler running too long. Let it sit overnight and it recovered nicely, but it churned up a ton of fine silt that all gathered in my house filter and turned it into a cylincrical brick of mud.

But my well is 444 feet deep, so we're probably talking apples and oranges here.

My old well pump kept losing its prime until it finally quit altogether in a storm last winter, went on like that for a few years before it gave up. I thought it was the foot valve but has been working fine after the new pupm.

What kind of well & pump do you have??

Is that question for the OP?

Give us an update!

sorry guys I wasnt getting the notifications to responses.....The well is fine now. I think it was a similar experience to what mayhem posted.

We just let it sit overnight and it returned to normal.

Im not sure what kind of pump it is....its submerged but I dont know the model or anything like that.

Thats good news!

we had a well that on occasion became a "slow producer", went to a smaller gpm pump, and a 1200 gallon underground storage tank, with jacuzzi pumps, after that 2 or 3 gpm produced didnt matter if it refilled all night and day. Wasn't cheap at all, but highly effective

i have a fear of this happening to my well but the old owner states that there is more water down there than i could ever use. i filled my daughters above ground pool twice this last week for a total of around 8000 gallons and never ran out but it is always in the back of my head when i do something like that! glad it worked out for you!

A plumber I knew had done wells for years. When I switched over to a deep well, he strongly recomended I install a pump protective device called a Pump Tec

http://www.franklin-electric.com/business/WaterSystems/Products/Protection/ProtectionLanding.aspx

It shuts down the pump if it detects unusual operation.

Unusual operation includes running steady for long periods of time (hose left open), running long periods of time at low load (broken pipe), short cycling (bad pressure switch), low or high voltage and a bunch of other conditions. Its an install it and forget it installation and on my well pump it plugged right into the remote pump starter box on the wall.

It has never given me a problem, but having lived through a flooded basement from a shallow well pump with a broken sensing line, It was cheap insurance compared to buring out a deep well pump.,

Amen to Pump Tec.

I had a shallow well pump fail after some (several) low voltage incidents. It was the 2nd of January, windy and way below freezing. Got it changed in record time though !

My well has gone dry 2x in 6 years (2nd time was just a couple of weeks ago). Both times it was at the end of a hot, dry spell which lasted for at least a week, was running laundry, sprinklers & outdoor water toys for the kids all day. Luckily for us, our well only took about an 1hr to refill and was back to normal.