Well water hand pump?

I remember way back when i joined this site lots of talk about hand pumps for a well. How deep can you pump water from? How big of casing is needed seperate pipe from whats in the well now?

What do i need to know?

You can pump a looooong ways depends on how strong you are. I heard people pump it from 100 plus ft.whats in the well now?

How strong are you and how many gallons per minute do you want to pump ? As for depth I've set cylinders or working barrels anywhere from 25' to close to 800' or somewhere around that depth.

It's best if the well casing is at least a 5" lined casing with a 3" cylinder hung on 1 1/4" galvanized pipe with sucker rod inside it .
The 1 1/4" galvanized pipe comes in either 18' or 21' lengths 7/16" sucker rod is the same .
This isnt something you'll be setting by hand so get someone who has a service rig for setting pumps and pipe .

Generally a pump can have a suction lift of approximately 22 feet. Discharge is a different story all depends on pressure you must overcome, like distance up and how far because friction in the pipe costs energy and the weight of the water itself must be overcome. A hand pump will probably not be able to pump much higher than 20 feet. They do make pumps that work in stages so each section pumps with less than 20 feet suction head but I don't think they are available for hand pumps.
Gary J

Two kinds of hand pumps for wells.


"Pitcher"pumps draw water up under vacuum. These are the pumps that are completely on top of the well with a drop pipe that dips down into the water. Those pumps typically have a 1-1/4" threaded fitting for a pipe. Hand pumps don't move a lot of volume so 1-1/4" pipe is overkill. Mine is reduced down to 3/4" black poly pipe and works fine. These can only pump water about 25'. The weight of more than 25' of water causes the column of water to separate as you're trying to pull it up the pipe.

There are pumps that are at the bottom of the well with a drive rod that runs from the pump handle on top down to the pump. Instead of pulling water up with a vacuum, they push water up from the bottom. I guess there is no limit how far they can pump except that water is heavy. The farther you pump it, the less volume you will be able to pump. I've seen setups for 300' but I suspect it wasn't pumping much more than a trickle.

Ill pull my well paper work and look at what is there. It would just be for an extream emergency for drinking water. Its got an electric pump in it now and its working just looking into a back up .

generator big enough to run the pump might be an easier option.

Ive got that was more worried about the pump going out i guess.

nv and mtc guy spot on

Then you will need to get more well and setup information. including what your static water level is- that is more important than how deep the well is as you are only trying to lift the water from that far. Are you using a jet pump or a submersible?

You can push water much further than you can suck it, That is why submersible work so well, with a jet pump you loose half of your water volume because half of the water goes down the well to push up the water.. I get about 4.O gpm at 80 feet.