Manual Well Pumps

• Wind mill working

The best ones are good to 28 feet.

You need one that has the piston down at the end of the pipe, with a rod up the middle. They cost more, work great. Can go 100 feet down easy, can go 400 feet but then you get into the weight of the rod/cost issues.

Solar electric low-flow can work too, look into remote livestock watering companies for more on them.

You likely need 20 feet or more of water to draw down to make the well useful, so if you see water at 30 feet, you would want the pump intake at 50 feet anyhow. Deeper is better, depends on the refresh rate of the well of course.

--->Paul

As others have mentioned - any hand-driven pump can work at any depth - but the pump mechanism itself goes down the well - and gets hooked up top with linkage. There are hand pumps in Africa that goe down 400 feet. I've got one at another property with a 220 foot well with the water "head" 80 feet from ground level. We have an Oasis hand pump that is all PVC. Lehmans sell them. Built kind of crappy, and costs over $300 but it does work. We don't have electric there and don't need much water. Otherwise, I'd install an electric pump of some sort. I've been considering installing a solar-pump - but they are real pricey.

Sounds like a good place to use a jet pump. If you use check valves in the up pipe then you won't need to prime the pump each time. After sitting for a long time with out use, most any pump will need primed.

Another pump choice would be submersible pump.

T_Bone

What I CAN answer is- they won't freeze up if the static water level is below the freezing depth of your soil. On our windmills we always file a little groove on the check valve in the plunger so the water can drain back down if the wind quits during freezing weather.