well pump troubleshooting

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stuntborg

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We purchased a house with a well about a year ago. Come to find out almost everyone around where we live is on rural water which has dried up the market for people who work on wells. This basically puts us in the position of troubleshooting our own well.

Recently we have started having some trouble. We started to hear knocking when the pump would turn on. Not your typical water hammer knocking. Instead almost as if the pump was trying to turn on and then turning back off. The pump was also running every ten minutes.

The system design follows:
We have a well pit roughly five feet from the house. The pit is 26"s in diameter.
The water surface is 26 feet from ground level.
The water pipe enters the house roughly nine feet below ground level.
The bottom of the well pit is 40 foot from ground level.
There is a pre-charged LPT52 pressure tank on the system.
There is no relief valve in the house.
The pump is a Jacuzzi 3/4hp deep well pump that was installed in 2002.
The pump runs for two or three minutes when called to run. More if a shower is on. Seems like this is a reasonable amount of time for the pump to run.

I started troubleshooting the system by replacing the pressure switch. Easy and cheap. Didn't seem to do anything though. I also replaced the pressure gauge in the system.

Listening closely when the pump was not running I could hear water running when no house water was running. I installed a check valve near the pressure tank. (Not sure if this was a good or bad idea but it did seem to fix the symptom if not the actual problem.)

The system seems to be running better now except that at times when the pressure switch calls for the system to turn on the system short cycles very rapidly. The pressure gauge jumps around. I checked the pressure in the pressure tank and found it was very high. Lowered it to where it should be but it hasn't been long enough to know if the problem is fixed. Could that cause this type of problem?

lf the well pump itself is going bad I can replace it but would prefer to do it now than in the middle of winter. I purchased a pump yesterday but would love to return it and get my money back.

I also purchased a new pressure tank but haven't installed it. Prefer not to unless it will actually fix a problem.

In addition to this the water pressure in the house is lower than what we would like. What steps can we take to raise the pressure? There is hardly enough pressure to run a sprinkler through 50 feet of garden hose.
 
If you bought either the pump or tank at a big box store, do your self a favor and return them both.

The check valve install was a no no. I would remove it quickly. Sounds like your tank is bad. I don't know what you did by putting the pressure back to normal, but It may have been the wrong way of doing things. If it's a bladder tank, you can only check air pressure when all water pressure is out of the system. Then the tanks air pressure should be two pounds less than where the pump normally turns on. Example: 30/50 pressure switch settings, 28 pounds in the tank. If the tank feels heavy, like it's full of water, it's bad.
 
Pump coming on every ten minutes? You're losing water somewhere. Is there a valve in between the pump and pressure tank? If you shut it off does pressure still drop?
 
Sounds like you have a leak down the well. You will need to fix the leak or replace the check valve on the pump. Remove the check valve above ground as Speed says, because that is causing the pressure switch to bounce.

It also sounds like the tank is bad because the air pressure won't just increase by itself.
 

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