Pump House Project

Last year I redid my water supply, pulled the old set-up out and drove a new point, dropped a smaller pipe down to the point for a supply line for the pump.  Poured a pad and laid up block for the walls.

This is how I left the pump house last fall.

 When I got back UP on the Tundra this year, I had problems with the pump not building up enough pressure.  Turned out the pump got wore out last year when the water had a lot of fine sand in it after driving the point and I ran it a lot trying to clear the water up.  Should have probably let it sit for a week or two to let it settle out.  Anywho, I bought a new pump, which fixed the problem.

The roof or lid for the pump house in progress.

Last week I started to make a cover (lid or roof or whatever) for the pump house.  So far the only money I've got in the project is for the hinges and the handle.  The wood is salvaged material I had and the tin roofing is part of the roof off an old house trailer I tore down 5yrs ago.  Bought the trailer (or shoebox as The Old Lady called it) in the early 70s and lived in it off and on until shortly after Y2K.  Had primer left over from painting drywall in the cabin and the blue paint has been here for many years and is still usable after freezing several times.

This is it with the first coat of paint applied.

Had some pieces of 2 inch foam and other insulation that I used to insulate the cover.  I'm going to buy a sheet of 2 inch foam to line the inside of the block walls and hopefully it'll keep from freezing during next winter.  I figure the only other thing I have to do to winterize it is to hang a 40 watt lightbulb under the line to the pressure switch.  Because of the small diameter of the line, that is the first thing to freeze in this type of pump. My past experiences have shown that a light will put off enough heat to keep the line from freezing.  By the time the bulb burns out there will be enough snow to cover everything and it will be good until spring when the snow melts away and I have to put in a new bulb.  This is the only way the old bulbs are better than CFLs as they give off a lot more heat!!

A Project from Last Summer waiting to be finished


This is one of the projects I worked on last summer UP on the Tundra. I decided I needed a better set-up for the water pump. The point in the ground seemed to be plugged as the pump would run as long as the water was running, instead of cycling on and off as is normal. Also thought I'd make a better pump house than the one I had made out of metal and foam panels. When I pulled it apart, I found an ant's nest in the foam core of the wall panels


Water pump after I removed the box around it.

  I tried to pull up the pipe and point to see if the point was plugged or what the problem was with the water supply. After several days of working on it with make-shift rigs to pull the pipe, I finally got the pipe up, but the point remained in the ground. So I went down the road to a town large enough to have several home improvement stores to get supplies. At Menard's(a Mid-West chain) I got a 2" point( the old one was 1 1/4" and I thought bigger would be better) and four 5' lengths of drive pipe, but they didn't have any drive couplings. Then started the search for drive couplings as the pipe was useless if I couldn't connect them together. After checking all the other places that might have drive couplings with no luck, I stopped back in at Menard's to see when they expected to get some in. While asking about the drive couplings, one of the guys said they were on the truck that came in that day and another guy said he thought he could find them. A little while later he came back with the required couplings and I was on my way. Then I stopped at a tool rental place and rented an electric jackhammer and the tool for driving pipe.


Ants had made a home in the foam core of the walls of the old box.


After getting home and having something to eat we started on the project. A friend of mine had made the trip with me to get the supplies and he offered to help with driving the pipe and point down. It wasn't easy as after adding the five foot length of pipe, you had to lift the jackhammer up on top of the pipe to drive it down so it was a good thing I had help lifting that heavy jackhammer while standing on a step-ladder. One of the tricks they told us about at the tool rental place was to turn the pipe in a tightening direction while driving and it will go down easier. In a couple of hours we had the pipe and point down in the ground and when I put my tape measure down, it came back with nine feet of it wet.





The pad I poured for the new pump house.

 After pouring the pad and letting it set up, I rigged up the pump. I used a 3/4" plastic pipe with a foot valve down inside the 2" pipe. I made it long enough that the foot valve would be a foot or so above the bottom of the point. This worked good and during all the time that I ran the water to flush it out to get the water to clear up, the pump would cycle on and off and it didn't run out of water.


The pump on the new concrete pad.

 Once I had running water again in the cabin, I worked on making a new pump house. I had a bunch of cement blocks that used to be holding up a mobile home I tore down several years ago. I used them to make the walls of the pump house. For my first attempt at laying block, I think I did pretty good.

The block walls for the new pump house.



I need to make a cover for the pump house and insulate it. That will be one of my projects this summer UP on the Tundra. For the winter I laid some 2x6s across the top and put a piece of sheetmetal from the roof of the mobile home over it.

The pump in the new pump house.

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