You all know how exciting those fishing shows are on ESPN? Well here's another one for you! We have pubished a video demonstration of Fishing for HydraSleeves. Please see the video on our website by clicking here. Or click the photo below for the link on YouTube.
Written details follow:
In the course of events you will likely, at one time or another, find yourself with items that have fallen into the well and need to be retrieved. It happens to us all from time to time.
Have you ever lost a HydraSleeve down a well? We have devised an effective method of retrieving them if this happens to be your dilemma. This method will work for any item that is flexible and has been lost downhole.
We keep several electrical contractor's fish tapes on hand to use in these emergencies. The one we depend on the most is made by Ideal. It's called the Tuff-Grip Pro and is 120-feet long with a stainless steel line. Other models can be found at your local hardware store which are shorter or longer.
Here are some samples of fish tapes. They are basically made for electrical contractors to fish wire through conduit in walls and such. However, they work extremely well for the purpose of fishing HydraSleeves out of wells.
A fish tape long enough to reach the bottom of your well will be needed and another person to go fishing along with you. Fishing is always more fun with friends, right?
You will want to bend the end of the wire open into a "v" shape or hook (as shown) and ensure that it fits inside the well. Then spool the wire out and lead it down the well until it reaches the bottom.
Once the fish tape wire has reached the bottom of the well you need to rotate the unit 10 times in the same direction. You do so by rotating the entire reel around. Ten seems to be the magic number. It may take another try and a few more turns, but eventually the wire will loop around enough in the well to snag the flexible HydraSleeve.
Bring the wire up by pulling it out slowly. DO NOT REWIND IT ONTO THE REEL. One person should be at the well gently pulling up on the wire and another should be walking away with the reel. This prevents jerking and possibly loosing your hooked HydraSleeve back down the well.
The HydraSleeve has likely been snagged by the hook created at the end of the wire and will come up out of the well. In this case the hook actually went into the check valve. However, you may find that the sleeve gets snagged from the side or the tether gets wound up on the fish tape hook.
Please be sure NOT to reuse the sleeve, the sampling integrity has likely been compromised. No matter how it gets hooked, even if it looks perfectly useable, we do not recommend using the HydraSleeve again. This is one fish you never want to toss back! Please dispose of it properly and use a new HydraSleeve to take your sample.
No matter how your HydraSleeve is hooked it's a great catch. We have happy fishermen with no sad stories about the one that got away.
Watch a video of the retrieval process here!
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