No water

[oldman]

Just started to fill the sink with water for dishes. The water ran a bit and quit completely.

I have a deep well (at least 120 feet) submersible pump (I think 1/4 horse), a water softener and a small air pump/air-pocket tank for bleeding off the sulphur smell. Nothing is leaking. The ground is a bit frozen but not nearly enough to cause the underground inlet from the drilled well to freeze or split.

I can't hear the pump running and there is no water. I'm not sure which breaker turns off the pump if it is running.

At the moment, I am limited as to what I can do physically. What should I be saying to and expecting to hear from a plumber?

Thanks for any suggestions and help.

[jproffer]

A better bet would be to call a well service, not a plumber. No offense to plumbers but most of them don't specialize in deep wells, a well service does that every day. Furthermore a plumber (or none I know of) have a pump truck to pull the pump if necessary.

Now as far as what you should expect. If you call whoever you're going to call and they immediately say "we'll have to pull the pump", and they didn't check the: tank, wiring, pressure switch, control box, etc. Tell them no thank you, and call another pump service. They MAY be right, but if they immediately assume the pump is bad, they're out to make the most money, not fix YOUR problem.

I would guess it's something electrical in the house, from what you described, but I can't be sure, and it may very well be the pump, oh which incidently, unless its VERYYY old (talkin 30 years or more..which is a rare lifespan for a pump) isn't a 1/4 horse pump. They normally are 1/2, 3/4, 1, or 1.5 for residential service, but at 120 feet i would say more towards the low end of that.

If you're up to it, you could check the breakers, see if any of them are tripped, not off, but tripped. If they're tripped you could safely assume they should be on, and turn them on. If they're off, they may just be out of service, or of no use, so that would take a little more investigation to determine. Also you could check the pressure switch, little (usually gray) box by the tank, about the size of your fist, take off the cover and make sure not to touch anything inside, in case it is still hot. Use something non-metallic and flip the contacts closed (which is probably whichever way they are NOT right now), see what happens.

If you do any of this, post back and let us know what happened, or what the service tech found, if that's the route you go. Even if they fix it, I'm interested in what was wrong, I may learn something new :D .

[nomind]

Hi Guys,
- I see lots of this and agree 100% with everything JProffer had to say. -Specially about NOT pulling the pump till everything else is checked ! -Just one thing JP forgot to mention - unless this is a comparatively rare 2 wire pump, there may be a Control box somewhere. (This a box about the size of 2 paperback books, with wires going into it. Often grey, sometimes red or blue) control boxes are a very common cause of sub. pump problems. -First place I ALWAYS check. :cool:

[jproffer]

Figured this may be out of his realm t check.....didnt really forget....but thank you :D

[oldman]

The pump is not old. Just passed 4 years. It has 3 wires to it. It must have been a 1/2 horse that I read on the bill. It was installed when we bought the house. They used a plastic-coated steel clothesline cable as a safety on the original install. It rusted out in 2 years and the pump quit.

The new plumber we called traced the electricity and pulled the pump by hand with an assistant. I stepped off the 120 feet on the pipe when it was on the ground. They found the clothesline wire had rusted through and draped around the top of the pump. Everytime the pump turned on it rotated a bit and the slack cable wore a hole in the wiring along the side of the pump. They rewired it and dropped the pump back down using the 1 1/2" flexible pipe. They discarded the clothesline wire.

It is not the same thing but it might be something similar.

We are in rural cottage country with a lot of wells and the plumber seemed to be quite familiar with wells and pumps.

There is a gray box with pump wires leading in and out. I opened the cover which separated the contacts inside. There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary to my untrained eye. There were a couple of electrical parts besides the wiring. They might be defective.

I'll check the breakers and the pressure switch in the morning when a friend comes over before I call for professional help.

Thanks very much for the tips, jproffer and nomind. The last thing I wanted to do was to sign a blank check and say fix it without some idea as to what might be wrong. I have a bit better understanding of what I might be up against.

[jproffer]

That was the control box, one of the "other parts" you see is a capacitor to start the pump. Round, about an inch and a half or so, look at the back of it (opposite the two leads coming in), is it blown out? Black in the center? (or for that matter any different color than the rest of the cardboard, anywhere).

If not....next step....

If you have or have access to an electrical tester with an ohm meter, with the power OFF(which won't be a problem if the lid makes the contact), check the resistance between the different combinations of contacts. There should be a chart inside the box somewhere to tell you what each combo SHOULD be (I think black to red is 3-6...umm :rolleyes: ...black to white is no more than 4...but don't hold me to it :) ). At any rate, the chart will tell you, if one of them is real high, and I mean, reaaallllll high, say 40 or 50 ohms, the control box is bad. There should be info somewhere on this control box that says what size pump it is made for, thats what size pump you (hopefully) have.

[oldman]

I checked the pressure switch (there was a bit of black inside the case but not much). The capacitor looked fine.

The plumber arrived. He replaced the pressure switch because of the black. Wasn't the problem. He tested the capacitor and the wiring for continuity. There was a break in the black wire down the well. He pulled the pump and found a bare spot on the wire along the side of the pump casing. He took the pump into the shop for testing and to put a new wiring harness on it. It's 5:00 pm here so it will be reinstalled in the morning.

As indicated in a previous post, this is the second time that a wear spot in the wiring on the pump has caused it to fail. What are the odds?

Thanks for your help guys. This is a great board. Lots of friendly and informed help.

[jproffer]

When he puts the pump back in, ask him to make sure he puts at least one torque arrestor on the pipe, and to tape (good tape...electrical tape will work, green well tape will work much better) the wire to the pipe at least at the beginning and end of every section of pipe. It will cost a little more but should help this from happening again.

If I was doing the install, I would overdo it on the torque arrestors and the tape. Say every...50 ft for the TA, and every 10ft for the tape...just to make daaaaaang sure the wire didn't get into the casing again and wear it.

A side note:
When I said last post that if the ohm readings were high the control box was bad....I should have said the wire. If the CAP is blown..its the box...over-resistance is the wire...sorry 'bout that :o

[oldman]

When he put it down the last time there was a torque arrester above the pump and he taped every 10 feet with electrician's tape. Some of the tapes were hanging loose when he pulled it up this time. The pipe is one long continuous piece of flexible black pvc pipe.

Where can I get some of the green well tape to make sure he uses that if he doesn't have any?

He took it back to the shop because a plastic cover over the wiring as it passed up the side of the pump was cracked and quite brittle. He wanted to work on the wiring in the warm on a bench to fix it right. He said he would use waterproof connectors to reconnect the wire leads before dropping it down the well again.

Hope all goes well with it. A Cold snap is forecast that's sending temperatures down to -16 celcius tonight along with another possible 30 cm of snow. Well work is cold work this time of year. As the plumber said this is when the breakdowns occur.

Thanks for your help jproffer and nomind, I felt I was able to understand what he was doing and that he was doing things correctly

[nomind]

If you ever suspect the control box start cap. a quick check is look at the end where wires are. In the centre there is usually a 1/4" round hole where you can see a flat beige surface, If the cap is blown, this 'telltale' will always bubble up and turn brown. (Unfortunately you can't buy just the cap. in boxes smaller than 2 hp.- you have to get the whole box) (which is maybe the best idea if a plumber is installing it anyway :rolleyes: )
I'll be looking for your post tomorrow telling us it's all working :)

[oldman]

Everything is back up and running. In -15C weather with a slight wind the 2 plumbers dropped the pump down the well. I mentioned using the green well tape but they had never heard of it. The wires were well taped with electrician tape every 10 feet or so. The slack on the wires at the pump were triple taped solidly to the pipe. The torque arrester was in place.

A faulty sticking valve in the house line was replaced too. Everything works better than before.

I watched the proceedings and was so glad it wasn't my fingers freezing. I think I have a good understanding of how the pump system works. Next problem I'm going to have a whole range of checks and tests to help isolate the problem. The biggest problem is the next thing to happen will be down the road a couple of years and I'll probably have forgotten most of what I have learned these last 3 days. Hope these forums are still here because they have been a real help.

Thanks again jproffer and nomind for your fast and very accurate tips and advice.

[jproffer]

If your worried about forgetting...(I KNOW i would...i have a terrrrrrible memory)...uhh...what was i saying?... :rolleyes: ....................................................................oh yea....you could copy n paste this thread to MS Word or something, or add it to favorites, and click the "make available offline" box..which essentially does the same thing as copy-n-paste without having to do it.

[oldman]

I already have. Thanks again for your help. :)