Thank you! Our biggest problem is not being able to afford over $2000 for the hand pump itself!! Yikes!

To answer your question, yes we did use PVC pipe. My husband first
watched the on-line videos at the Bison site. Then he took our
measurements of the well and emailed Bison. They told him what he
needed to do the job. We ordered from Lehman’s during their one day sale. It shipped to the house 3 weeks later. He read the instructions (yes, he READ the instructions first). He asked if I
wanted to raise the height of the pump (my back sometimes gives me fits.) He unboxed the pump and set it up on a few cinderblocks and I would go through the pumping motion. He measured exactly how much
higher I wanted the pump and asked a welder from our antique car club to make an extendion platform that raised the heigth about 14 inches.
This cost us $150 to customize. Husband primed and painted the extension piece made of steel and assembled the whole thing in one hour. Piece of cake! If you want to email, I’ll privately give you our phone number where you can speak with my husband about the ease of installation. Also could email you pictures of it installed.
This pump has been a joy! Hope this info helps!

Thank you so much for your info! I have checked out a Bison, but it looked to me like I’d need a professional to install it. Do you know if you used PVC pipe instead of steal to go into the well? Also, your well is much shallower than mine. I think that is going to be my main problem. Thank you for sharing what has worked for you though! I am still looking.

We live in a 104 year old house (built before Okla. became a state) and our old house has a hand dug well and the walls are brick lined.
Our well is about 33 feet deep. We are on city water but use our well to water the fruit trees and the garden…and this is pumped from the ground using electricity and a Little Giant submersable pump that we dropped in the well years ago.

I wanted a way to hand pump water in case we ever lost electricity. We know of two families who bought the Bison brand (Made in Maine). They have on-line video demonstrations/info. My husband emailed our specifications and questions to the Bison manufacturer and found out what parts we needed. About 10 days later, Lehman’s sent out a one day sale email and we ordered all of the needed parts from Lehmans at a 10% savings (direct from the manufacturer priced out the same as the everyday price at Lehmans…so the one day email 10% off sale was nice). My guys installed everything in one hour and we were pumping H2O!!! I felt a sense of relief to have this in place. It’s a beauty!

This pump has a “nail” on the spighot that holds a bucket OR you can thread a garden hose onto the spighot and pump water thru the hose to where you want it to go. At age 48, I can pump for 10 minutes straight before I need to take a break. I think I get one gallon of water to every 8 stokes, so maybe that is about 4 gallons per minutes, or about 40 gallons in 10 minutes.

Hope this info helps.