Water pressure dropped to a trickle in whole house

Plumbing Forums

Help Support Plumbing Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Jul 2, 2017
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
Location
,
We went from having decent water pressure thru the whole house, to a very abrupt drop systemically. The downstairs sinks as well as the upstairs sinks, toilet, and shower all have a trickle now.

When we turn something on, especially something major like the shower or flushing the toilet we can hear a loud groaning/buzzing kind of sound for a little while, assuming it's the water pump.

If we leave the shower going for a while the pressure will come back mostly every once in a while for a brief time and then drop off to a trickle again. It's like the pump is trying to keep up but it just can't.

Either the pump itself is burning out, which I would have 'assumed' would have been an all or nothing kind of thing...or something (sediment or something flushed by the kids) is blocking something somewhere....or sediment finally breaking loose and blocking it...or some other issue I have no idea about.

How do I diagnose this to try and fix? I've attached some pics of the setup downstairs. There is a fairly deep well outside that has a wire going into it so I'm again 'assuming' there is a submerged pump down there. We just turned the kitchen sink on to let it run and I could hear a faint hum when I opened the top of the well cover, whether it was coming from the pump down there or just radiating from the connected blue tank inside I don't know.

Is it possibly the blue tank and whatever air/pressure bladder is inside? We looked for a pressure valve to adjust but could not find one between the outside well to the blue tank or anywhere in betwee, I'm not sure if it's one of the rusted out gauges at the bottom of that tank or not.

We recently installed a new washer so I'm not sure if that could have somehow screwed something up either.

Thanks for any insight.

PS- We are going to pick up a new pressure switch to see if that's it, hopefully, as the current one which you can't really see in the pic in detail is rather eroded. Will check the psi in the tank as well to see if the air bladder is still good too
 
The pressure switch and pressure tank have nothing to do with your problem. The fact that the pressure comes and goes makes me think the well is being pumped dry. I would do a pump test to see how much the well and pump can make.
 
If you stop using water for a while, check to see if the pressure switch actually turns the pump off like it's supposed to or if the pump is running all the time.
 
The pressure switch and pressure tank have nothing to do with your problem. The fact that the pressure comes and goes makes me think the well is being pumped dry. I would do a pump test to see how much the well and pump can make.

We thought about the water table as well, but it's rained plenty since the initial problem including a big downpour just today...I'll google how to do a pump test but 'assumed' it was an all or nothing thing, either the pump worked or didn't...very confusing

If you stop using water for a while, check to see if the pressure switch actually turns the pump off like it's supposed to or if the pump is running all the time.

I'll go down and wait for a while with the water off...not sure how long I would have to not be using water before it was full and no longer running, if it's working right that is. The pump is submerged in the well but I can here the click by the tank...

We thought about the water table as well, but it's rained plenty since the initial problem including a big downpour just today...

We just installed a new pressure switch but unfortunately nothing changed better or worse...

I checked the psi in the tank after draining it before and turning off the power, it read 12psi so according to the new 30-50 switch we got we added enough to make it 28psi in the tank before turning it back on...

A couple hours later the tank is still holding its 28psi so it 'seems' , unless I'm totally misunderstanding something, the tank/bladder is still good? And the switch is obviously good as it's brand new...do I need to adjust something in the pressure switch itself either way perhaps?

I'm going to take off the filter as someone else mentioned...it hadn't been cleaned/replaced in 10 or so years by the previous man of the house (gross not to mention lazy!!!) so I took that off, cleaned it up really good, and replaced the filter just a couple weeks ago before this happened. But I'll take it off again and see if something is clogged up...

A quick side note...when draining the water tank, at the very end it looked like a good bit of brown/orange sediment drained out of it with the last of the water...I had hoped that would help the issue but as mentioned it's no change...maybe it's still helpful diagnostically somehow?

Thanks for any other insight...
 
PPS - We are going to get another 50 (or is it 60) - 80 psi pressure switch instead of the 30-50 we just installed and hope that does it
 
I am the important thing is does the pressure switch turn the pump off. And if it does turn it off does it stay off or does the pressure drop back down even though you're not using water. I don't know what filter you're talking about but if it were me I would remove it.
 
it was the filter...totally clogged with sediment..took that out and immediately fixed the pressure problem
 

Latest posts

Back
Top