Well Pump Questions

[ThePetPage]

For 3 years in the old house I bought, I had no water problems. Then, one day, all was gone. (pump failure, drawing too much current). I had a plumber replace the pump, wire and control box. (Turns out the well is 100 foot deep).

Since then, I run out of water when using just the clothes washer. I also run out using other combinations. (NEVER did before except when I had the total pump failure) . When I run out, I go to the basement and hold the reset switch (the lever on the presssure switch assembly) and it recovers.

This keeps happening and the plumber won't call me back so I would like to better understand what is happening. If I turn the "house" off and the tank off so that the only thing that is hooked up is the pipe from the well coming out a spigot thru a hose and into a 5 gallon bucket, I get 38psi at 10 gpm. That seems good to me.

If I now turn the valves so that the tank is back on..(pipe comes out of well, goes into pressure tank only..no water being drawn by the house). If I do this, it takes like 8-10 minutes for the pressure gauge to go from 0 to 60 psi ( I am set for 40 cut in and 60 cutout). That seems very slow to me. (This is with 22 psi precharge on what I guess is a 15 gallon tank).

Now the questions:

1) Will raising the precharge to say 30 psi help? 2) Will replacing the 15 gallon tank (it has a bladder but that tank looks pretty old) with a 30 or so gallon tank help? 3) Is it possible that I got a defective pump that pumps OK but not against pressure? 4) Any other suggestions?

Thanks..John

[Greg]

Your pump is sucking air or losing pressure some way.. The "reset" is what over rides the "no pressure shut off". Are you sure he set the pump low enough in the well?

[PAUL100]

First thing I would do is up your precharge. it should be set approximatly to 2 psi below your cut in pressure. So for your pump set it to 38psi. You of got a defective pump or the plunber set it to high in the well.

[ThePetPage]

[Greg]

I am not sure how the precharge will fix this but a bad switch can also cause the no pressure problem.

[Tom]

No one else has suggested this, but I had a similar problem. Pump wouldn't kick in, so I replaced the pressure switch. Still a problem and discovered a loose wire in main box. Fixed that and now I would have pressure but only for a few minutes and then no water and pump wouldn't kick in. I had replaced pressure switch with one that was 20/40 and apparrently the old one had higher settings. Like you I would have plenty of water at the outlet before the tank but nothing after. Turns out I had a whole house filter that I was unaware of as I had only moved in two years ago. At the higher pressure, water was being forced through the clogged filter but at the lower pressure it wouldn't go through. I would have presssure in the house from water that had worked its way through the filter but when I had used that, it would take several minutes for any more water to pressurize the house part of the system. Replaced filter and problem solved. If you have no filter, perhaps you have an obstruction in the pipe somewhere after the tank that was caused by disturbing the water lines when the pump was replaced. Perhaps even a water softener that is clogged. Should be able to check that by bypassing it.

[Harry K]

That shouldn't have any effect on the problem. The precharge only controls the cycle time of the pump, i.e., how much water it pumps before shut-off. 2psi below cut-in is the optimum run time for the tank/pump set-up.

Harry K

[Jimmie]

Dont know how common this problem is but I have seen it too.