My house is on city water, however I'm fortunate enough to have a well on the property also. I can't switch between well and city water but I have two faucets outside. 1 is a normal turn knob the other is pictured with a leaver arm. I really don't know anything about wells other then the obvious. What I want to know is is I don't have power is there a way to connect a manual pump to this system to pump the water out? I know it's dirty and could use a cleanup but first things first.

I've seen a few of these styles on the web....Check out these sites

www.poweriseverything.com/product/simple_water_pump.html

www.simplepump.com

They report to pull water from over 300 feet. Hope it helps.

I'll be watching this one. I have the same scenario except mine is in my garage with a (electric) pump head on top. Last I checked, it still worked -that is along as I have power. I keep saying I'm going to have the water tested but haven't done it yet. The family that I bought from used to use it to water their garden, grass and grape vines.

The hand pumps I've seen require you to do some retrofitting so you may just want a small generator to pump the water. Our well pump surges to 3300 and runs at about 1800 just to give some idea.

Complicated question, complicated answer. I have lived off well water for more of my life than not, in Texas and in Kansas. Find a good well guy in your area -- the older the better. If he's not over 50, don't trust him. Practical reality. Folks that haven't had to live with them don't know them, and there are few that have had to live off a well that are under 50.

You don't say how deep your well is. It also looks a though your well is set up with a submerisible pump, a pressure tank, and no reserviour. So you have some down-hole rigging to deal with.

A good old fashioned cast iron hand pump is only good to about 20 feet down or so, and if you don't use it all the time, you will have to prime it. The 'leathers' as we used to cal them, the gaskets tht act as valves, dry our and lose their seal. Nowdays they are neoprene.

But those hand pumps have a stroke of only 8 to 12". A windmill can easily have a sroke of up to 4 feet -- 2 feet is average. If you are serious about keeping your well serviceable, and about a no-power option, get a windmill. Get a water tank to hold the surplus, and if your aquifer is good, water your grass or your stock with the surplus.

You cannot swithch readily between an electirc submersible pump and a hand pump or windmill, becaue they all depend upon different downhole gear. You'd have to pull the pump and drop in the rods to swith over to a mechanical pump. I've done. You don't want to. Pick one: electric or mechanical.

And, please, please get your water tested. Fecal coliform is an ever present threat, where you would least exepect it. At our home place there are 3 wells within 250' of each other. 2 are good, one was shut in [made non-producing]. It is the well nearest a septic tank and stock pens, and despite a 250 foot difference in depth, it got contaminated, due to very permeable soils.

I live in San Antonio now, which supposedly has be best water [Edwards Aquifer] in the US short of New York City. I miss the taste of the well water. Water should, I think, have a taste to it.

Sorry for the long post. Got me to thinking back.

Gimme an address. I'll Fedex you some Orlando FL city water. MMMMMmmmmmm.... sulphur......

MMMMM ... Monahans, Pampa, Sulpher [really] Texas. Trade ya. Sometimes wet is wet. This country is either real dry, or real flooded. Constant flowing creek? Yeah. Right.

Supplemet: My Kansas place had a hand dug cisterm lined with brick that dated to the civil war, 30' deep, and 10' in diameter. The hand pump in the kichen from that worked great, no matter what the weather.

You can do the same thing, almost, today with a boring rig and concrete preform. You can supply it with a windmill, easy. My well there was so bad it just supplied a trickle into the cistern, but it got us by for household use.

Does it have an odor or just taste? Down around Dale Hollow Lake in Middle Tennessee the water at the camp ground had either enough chorine or sulfur that you hollered eu-REEK-a when getting a glass.

Just an idea if you are wanting this for an emergency, Lehmans www.lehmans.com has a device that you tie to a rope and lower into the well, it fills with water and then a valve closes and you can pull it out. Holds 4 gallons I think. That would work fo emergency water and is inexpensive. You need to be VERY careful not to contaminate your well though, once you've got something down there there isn't any way to get it out.

In really old fashioned wells they just lowered a weighted bucket into the water and then hoisted it back out, I thought. No need for fancy gadgets with valves.

Mostly just an odor. It's worse in some areas of the city than others. I'm guessing it's a dissolved gas of some kind. I found that you can get rid of the smell by letting the water stand for 15 minutes or so. After that, the water's pretty good.

http://www.lifewater.ca/ndexdril.htm

This site will teach you miost of what you need to know. And then some.