Success!

Last we saw, we were left with a broken one of these

and the guys had gone off on a search of a new one.

So here's the story.

This contraption is called a two pipe deep well jet kit.

The shiny silver part screws off and then it all looks like this

And this is what is inside that shiny silver thing:

Looks boring, yes?  Turns out that disc-thing in the middle is very important.  I'm not sure exactly what happens, but I'm assured that this disc-thing forms a tight seal to keep water in the pipes.  When the well pump turns on in the house, it generates negative pressure inside the pipes, which pulls the disc-thing up, breaks the seal, and more water is sucked into the pipes.  

When we took our shiny silver thing all the way apart (which you are not supposed to be able to do), it looked like this:

Okay, so first it comes apart, which it is not supposed to do, and then the pieces inside are broken!  The two smaller pieces are supposed to be stuck together, something like this:

But because ours was broken, it sat inside the shiny silver part like this:

Hmm.  No seal, so the water doesn't stay inside the pipes.  No water in the pipes means nothing to pull against, and the pump can't generate that negative pressure it needs to pull more water in.  So no water for me.  All because of a stinkin' brass shiny thing!

The guys put the new two pipe deep well jet pump back on our pipes, and repeated yesterday's action to put the pipes back in the well (lower the first set, put a new join between the deepest section and the next, hold in the air to dry for 10 minutes, lower the longer pipes into the well, put on a new join...  you get the picture).  This got finished around 8:30pm on Tuesday night.  Then we had to wait for two hours before we could start trying to prime the pump.  Something about drying glue...

So at 10:30pm Tuesday we headed to the basement armed with a few 5-gallon buckets of water.  We had 90 feet of pipe in the well and about 30 feet of pipe between the well and the well pump.  Did I mention this is a two pipe well?  So really there was twice that amount of pipe.  All full of air.  Sort of feels like we are back at the start, yes?

We opened the prime valve and off we went...  dumped a bunch of water in the pipes, got splashed as air came bubbling out, turned on the pump and crossed our fingers!  Almost immediately, we were greeted with this on the pressure gauge:

Okay, so 15 psi is way better than 0 psi, but it's not as good as 60 psi!  We stayed down here for an hour, priming and filling and waiting and filling and priming.  We played with valves, we dumped water all over the floor.

And finally...

At 11:30 pm Tuesday night...

Hooray!  We have water!  And water pressure!

I ran upstairs, bounced down the hall, and flushed the toilet.  Just because I could.  I never thought a flushing toilet would be my favorite sound.  But it is.

Oh, is it ever.

Part 1:  The well, teaser
Part 2:  Finding the well, witching water
Part 3:  Finding the well, for real this time
Part 4:  Down in the well...  90 feet down, to be exact
Part 5:  Whee!  Water again!  Success!