Looking for information on building an air lift

[Ragnor]

I found a couple of posts on here with references to specifications for building air lifts, but I didn't find those specs yet. There is an old hand dug well here on our property. It's situated between a church and a cemetery and I just have a sneaking suspicion that a coin or two may have been tossed in there back in the old days (1800's). The hole is probably 50 feet deep or so with maybe 10-12 of water in the bottom as I recall. I haven't been down in there in years to look through the floor. My granddad capped it with concrete years ago with an access hatch in the floor. To be honest it was always pretty scary looking in there. These days I would wear a harness and line for sure before dropping down onto the concrete floor.

I figure I should be able to work it with a few lengths of 4" abs sewer pipe and shop air but I really don't know the requirements for that kind of lift.
Hoping someone on here can direct me to the required information to gain a proper understanding of that operation.

 

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[T.C.]

Why would you want to use 4" ?? Just my SWAG, there are not any coins bigger than 2", unless you have something else you think you might suck up. Try Google...

 

[Jason in Enid]

An airlift might be more trouble than it's worth for this. Don't use a lift pipe any larger than needed, the larger the pipe, the more air you have to feed it. Also, the shorter the pipe, the more air you will need since there is not much room to expand and create the lift. A small home compressor isn't going to cut it. If the well is 50 feet and it has 10 feet of water, you don't have a lot of room for the air to generate it's lift. It could be doable, but longer pipe = stronger suction. How are you going to capture whatever comes out of your pipe? You can't run it up to the surface, only to the surface of the water or a tiny bit above. So how are you going to keep all those coins from just falling back down?

I'm not really expecting you to give me the answers, but these are things you have to consider.

 

[1320]

Airlift won't help much....look at the attached thread to visualize the muck that's at the bottom of every well I've every been down. It's about the thickness of wet concrete, hard to push that crap....

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/today-s-finds/13982-finds-well.html

 

[1320]

A good discussion regarding airlift pumps....

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/shipwrecks/1146-shipwreck-sand-moving-tools-air-water-5.html