[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Dear QW: Thank you for your latest response. You may not have run across this, but installations using a DOLE FLOW CONTROL VALVE are routine on many domestic wells that are drilled in low-production strata. The DOLE has a deformable rubber washer in it; which resists plugging about as well as anything that you could install; is non-adjustable and therefore customer proof; and inexpensive. Using that, and a low cut-off safety pressure switch is the standard arrangement for low production domestic wells. Additionally, the DOLE will do the "thinking" for the user and will prevent pump damage from "upthrust" if he runs with an open discharge. Subs are especially vulnerable to damage by running open discharge; can sustain motor damage from electrical overload, and are almost always, as mentioned, mechanically damaged by impeller shaft upthrust. Since the motor and the thrust bearings are on the bottom of the impeller shaft, only the little "upthrust button" is available to take shaft end thrust in the upward direction. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] It MAY be that the poster's well is a "silter" and not much can be done except to re-develop it with a compressed air jet. Usually, once is enough to get rid of the loose material unless there is one heck of a void in the gravel pack. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]