Connecting a Shallow Well Pump

It is important to connect or plumb your shallow well pump so that it can be primed.   Occasionally, if you have a strong pump and a very high water table you can get by without proper priming but why risk it?  It is easy and for most wells, crucial.  It is important to be able to prime your well both above and below the check valve if your check valve is above the water table. 

 

It is simple but it is a little different than those connected to commercially drilled wells.   Consider the following well setup design with the check valve at the bottom:


This is a typical installation when a well driller puts in a six inch well.  The check valve is at the bottom of the well.  As a result, the priming plug in the pump itself will be sufficient for priming the pump in this arrangement.   This is because the check valve (called a foot valve when it is at the foot) is below the static water level.  If you put the check valve above ground at the pump level, an additional fitting is necessary so you can prime the pump.  The problem, for our purposes, is it is hard to get a foot valve down our two inch pipe and even if we can we probably don't want to.  Once the foot valve is installed and buried, it is essentially impossible to get out.  By putting our check valve up by the pump, we can get to it if we need to service it.