For a time, copper tubing was a solution to drop pipe problems.
The last couple of months, I’ve written about both
steel and polyethylene material for drop pipe. In the late 1940s and actually
through the 1950s, we were installing mostly jet pumps. If you read my two
previous articles, you will understand that either galvanized steel or black
polyethylene had its own problems. Sometime in the early ’50s, my dad came up
with what he thought was the solution to drop pipe problems, and that was
copper tubing.
All of you, I’m quite sure, have used copper tubing in a number of ways, and
understand that it does not come with threads and, in fact, can’t be threaded.
To be used as drop pipe in a well, we needed to have lengths that could be
threaded together. The answer to this was very simple: We soldered a male
thread adapter to one end of each length and a female adapter to the other end.
Now the sections could be assembled as we needed, and tightened with ordinary
wrenches. Copper tubing had a couple other advantages. First of all, it was a
little lighter than steel pipe, and it was very, very smooth – both inside and
out.
Copper had a couple of disadvantages in that it was quite expensive, and it
could not be tightened into a so-called well seal, so we had to stop the copper
just below the seal and run through it with either steel nipples or, better
yet, brass. Now it seemed like we had the perfect solution, albeit a little bit
expensive one, but copper would take the pressures that early
polyethylene would not, and we did not have the problem of scaling and plugged
ejector nozzles. In some waters, on the rare occasions that we did have to pull
the drop pipe, we found a heavy growth of minerals that had been deposited on
the outside of the copper – I believe a result of different metals in water –
causing a battery-like action, thus the deposits. We never did find these
deposits on the inside, and copper that had been installed for many years came
out just as clean as it was the day it was new.
I have talked with a couple of fellow contractors in the area, and they
simplified the use of copper even further by using threaded adapters only at
the ejector body and the pump itself. To connect sections of the copper tubing
together, they used regular solder-type couplings, and the sections were
connected right at the well during installation. If they did have to pull one
of these, they had to drill a small hole in the pipe or else cut off the pipe
completely, as one cannot unsolder copper with even a little of bit of water in
it, which I’m sure you readers understand. Copper was a little bit pricey and a
little easier to lift, but we finally had licked the problem of a good drop
pipe for jet pumps, and we even installed a couple of submersibles using the
same material. Of course, as years went by, polyethylene became more reliable,
and we’ve had good success with it after about 1960, which led to end of using
copper as drop pipe.
In an interesting side bit, I once attended the North Dakota Drillers
Association Convention in Bismarck, N.D.. They were a great group, and I had a
fine time with them, especially trading stories, or networking as it is known
in 2012. I talked to a driller from South
Dakota, and he cased his wells with 4-inch copper
tubing. He told me that they had a serious mineral problem in his area, and the
water was too warm to use PVC material, which had become popular at that time.
It must have been expensive, but it worked for this fellow, and I would say
more power to him; he did what he had to do.
Incidentally, I had a grand time at that convention, and the entertainment
after the traditional dinner was a casino night using “funny money.” A lady
contractor from out there who had her own license and rig (her husband had a
license and rig, too) kind of took me under her wing, and saw to it that I had
a good time. They were a great group, and I enjoyed my trip to Bismarck very
much.
With the advent of submersibles, and as the years went by, we found a new
product to use as drop pipe, that being PVC, or polyvinyl chloride. In Michigan, we are
required to use Schedule 80 PVC for drop pipe, although, I must admit, I have
used a couple short pieces of Schedule 40 with male and female threaded ends
glued on just like we soldered those ends on copper. Schedule 80, of course,
can be threaded if we are not using full lengths; however, I have learned that
one needs to use dies made specifically for
PVC threading, as I have found that dies for steel pipe just don’t do a very
good job.
I have found only a couple of things about PVC that can be a problem, and one
of them is not really the pipe itself, but the couplings. Some of the early
Schedule 80 threaded PVC couplings just would not hold up, especially when we
old boys, used to steel, over-tightened them. The result of this
over-tightening would be a split coupling down the road, and I guess this could
cause the pipe to come apart, although I never have had this happen. The early
solution to this seemed to be to use steel couplings on PVC pipe, which really
does not make a lot of sense, but it worked. Eventually, brass couplings were
preferred, and in the most recent years, stainless steel couplings, as brass
sort of has gone out of favor with our health authorities and the
environmentalists.
A second minor problem that I occasionally have experienced using PVC on
submersibles is a tendency for the pipe and the electrical wire taped to it to
contact the casing on pump start-up, and if the casing is steel, to eventually
rub away the wire’s insulation. I never have used centralizers or spiders on my
drop pipe; some folks swear by them, some swear at them. These, of course,
probably would eliminate the rubbing of the submersible against the casing. I
only have experienced this bare-wire phenomenon twice in my life, and it only
happened to a very short section of the wire. I never have installed a jet pump
using PVC, as jet pumps are pretty much a thing
of the past here in Michigan.
With all of the trials and tribulations over the last 50 years using different
drop pipes, I would have to say that using PVC works very well in this area. If
we had really deep pump settings, I think I might have a different opinion.
Since my last article, I successfully made it to the NGWA Expo at Las Vegas. This was my
36th in a row, and I believe 45th overall. To see the change from my first NGWA
Convention/Expo in 1959 in Milwaukee,
to today really is amazing. I got a chance to see a lot of old friends and a
number of new and interesting products. NGWA is to be complimented on the
choice of the keynote speaker – he was just plain
outstanding.
This is written a week before Christmas, and we have no snow here on the ground
in southern Michigan; we have had some very cool nights, but nothing really
cold – not very Christmas-like. As you read this, it will be getting spring in
some parts of the country, and I hope you all are busy and working safely.
ND