1940's Well Reconditioning

I have a 1940's era well that has not been used in at least 20 yrs. It has a 8" steel casing going down 40' w/ water down 12'. I have had it covered for years an now decided to try to revive it. I went out and got a 4" 1/2hp submersible pump and sent it down and pumped for 4 hrs. The water level dropped 4' but stayed there for the duration of the 4hrs and recovered a few minutes after stopping. I did notice the walls of the steel casing flaking off in small chunks when I hit the sides pulling it up though. Thus led me to go a buy 40' of 5" PVC casing. One solid and one with the filter slits the entire length. I put a hard cap on the end and sent the 20' filter piece first then the 20' of solid pipe. It went down ok but there was some slight resistance the last few feet. So now I was thinking of filling the annular space up with 1/4" screened pea gravel next. Still debating if that is a good idea or not. This is not a potable water well and will only be used for irrigation. Does this sound like a good plan or is there another option I should have considered. After the gravel I was going to send down the pump again and verify the GPM and loading then onto the cap, bladder, flow control, ect...

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

If the steel casing is good, I wouldn't put a liner in it. The liner makes it impossible to clean the steel casing if it rust over and won't let water in.

The liner, using much smaller than pea gravel, would be a good idea if the well is making sand or sediment. But if the well is making good water, I would just clean the rust off the steel casing and not add a liner or gravel.

They make stuff to clean rust off the casing. Find Cotey Chemical. They will have what you need.

If it is regular well casing it will be thick enough that a few flakes of metal won't hurt anything. If it is really thin wall stuff, I call it "stovepipe" casing, then you might want to use the liner and some really small gravel. This will only hold the well open if the steel casing rust through.

The casing is about sch10 it appears to me. About 3/16 thick. I was concerned of it crubling away. The gravel was more to hold up the original casing as long as possible. what problems could occur if the old casing just rusted away?

If the casing gets a hole or a break in it you may start getting sand or rock in the pump.

It's hard to tell in your pictures, but that looks like a flange on top of your steel casing.

I agree with using it as is. If someday in the future it starts pumping sand, you can always add the liner. If you get a sample of the sand, you will know what size screen to use. 20' of slotted pipe either 10 or 12 slot would probably work fine.