Products
Currently there are two Qwater Well Developer product lines available, the Environmental Series and the Production Series.
Production Series
While exhibiting at several large water well tradeshows, including the Florida Ground Water Association’s South Atlantic Well Drilling Jubilee, held in Myrtle Beach, and at the National Groundwater Convention and Tradeshow in Las Vegas, there were many requests for larger, heavy-duty well development tools; and plans for a Production Series began. These developers were designed primarily for small production wells in 4-inch and 6-inch diameters. After a year of design and well testing, the 4-inch, 5-inch and 6-inch Qwater Well Developers are now available.
The Production Series Qwater Well Developers are reusable. Both the 4-inch, 5-inch and 6-inch use the same tough ABS body and molded 1.5-inch steel female NPT pipe fitting for attaching to a weighted wireline or drill pipe. Although the casing/screen wipers are also made of tough polyurethane, there are four wipers on each ABS body to ensure that the tool only needs to go in the borehole one time. The wipers can easily be replaced in the field with a regular slotted screwdriver to remove the stainless steel bolt and slide the spacers on and off the ABS body to replace or change wiper sizes (4-inch or 6-inch).
This extra Spacer Ring may be used in place of removing two wipers (either 4-inch, 5-inch or 6-inch) to convert the well development tool into a less aggressive two-wiper well developer.
Environmental Series
The Environmental Series includes lightweight, inexpensive, disposable well developers that can be operated manually using flexible or rigid tubing (PVC, PEX or polyethylene). The Environmental Series includes smaller well developers ranging from 3/4-inch to 2-inch, and including 3/4-inch, 1-inch, 1.25-inch, 1.5-inch, and 2-inch. These tools work best in wells with water levels to 30 feet and well depths to 100 feet; however, the Environmental Series developers have been used to lift water from over 90 feet in wells with depths to 190 feet. Theoretically the check ball reciprocating method can lift water hundreds of feet; however, the weight of the water and tubing (1/2-inch) weighs about 30 pounds (lbs) per 100 feet, more than most people care to lift. Also, the deeper the water, the more rigid the pipe should be, transitioning from flexible tubing to rigid PVC or PEX pipe with increasing depths. Solvent-welded PVC pipe works well; however, if glue cannot be used, flush-threaded PVC pipe (1/2-inch or 3/4-inch) in 5-foot to 10-foot tremie pipe sections works well. PEX pipe, which is available at most hardware stores in 3/8-inch, 1/2-inch or 3/4-inch on a roll, also performs well to depths of 100 feet.
The Environmental Series was initially designed for 2-inch shallow environmental monitoring wells - a popular well size in Florida. After the first 2-inch Qwater Well Developer was manufactured in 2008, requests began to pour in for monitoring well sizes of 1-inch and then ¾-inch; and recently the 1.25-inch and 1.5-inch sizes were added to the Environmental Series. The five sizes currently available (3/4-inch to 2-inch) can also be used in air sparge wells and shallow injection wells that are used to inject fluids for chemical and biological oxidation remediation projects. All Qwater Well Developers are designed to fit snugly into schedule 40 PVC or steel pipe and stainless steel and PVC wire-wrapped production well screens.
