John Flanagan wrote:
Is that how those things work! I've always wondered. So that steel
rod you see goes all the way down to the bottom. I assume there's a
limit as to how far down a system like that would work. I guess the
rod at the top is thicker than the rod at the bottom otherwise
eventually the rod would pull apart wouldn't it?

John


1" steel or fiberglass "sucker rods" are good for the first mile or so.

Remember that the rod is lifting column of fluid as deep as the well.
which puts far more strain on the rod than weight of the rod itself .
Making it thinner at the bottom doesn't solve this problem, actually
make it worse.

In REALLY deep wells, you use multi stage pumps, where the lowest pump
lifts the fluid the first mile, and feeds it into a second pump
(powered by a second rod) to lift the next mile, and so on until you
reach the surface.