If you have read my last several articles on pitless adapters, I hope you got the feeling that I believe in these devices strongly. I think the pitless adapter, which eliminated unsanitary well pits here in the North, has been one of the great advances of our industry in the last 50 to 60 years. It’s in good company, along with:
As much as I like pitless adapters — and they usually provide easy access to a submersible pump or drop pipe — not every pitless worked as it was designed and some were really not very well thought out. When pitless adapters first became required in our area, we were still drilling 2-inch wells and we used some on 2-inch wells. At least one of these caused us some problems. This unit was of the large O ring type with a spool suspended from the top. In fact, the top of the “riser” pipe inside the pitless was bolted to the outside pitless pipe with three or four bolts like a companion flange or flange-type pipe. Now, the riser pipe for this 2-inch pitless was itself 2½-inch pipe. That size of pipe is one of the weakest metal pipes made, in that it is the smallest pipe threaded at eight to an inch. This coarser thread leaves little metal at the base of the thread and, therefore, the pipe is really weaker in physical strength than, say, 2-inch pipe, which has 11.5 threads per inch. At least, that is my experience.