Well quit - trouble shooting

Topside relay is an obvious place to start. Wait, breaker 1st.

Could be the pump is fine and the pipe is holed 'tween hither and yon, or even in the well.

If the well cycles on and off, you may be able to tell it's doing so from the top of the well with the cap off.

Dave

Need more info.

What type of pump? Two wire or three?

What symptoms? No water flow is obvious, but is it drawing current or not?

Obvious stuff like power to the leads heading down the well.

Resistance of the leads heading down the well to each other and to ground when disconnected from power / control.

Etc.

Wayne

...

In a way, no big deal. I just learned the pump has overloads, they had tripped. Got water again. Now, for the bigger question, this is the first trip in 22 years. Should I investigate something while its running?

I replaced the electric service to the sales barn. It had momentarily lost a leg last year. Glad i did, when I dug up the line i found a splice that had almost burnt in two. its in conduit this time and no splices.

I guess i should have sold out two years ago when i had a great offer. Now stuff seems to break all the time that i put in 20 - 25 years ago.

Karl

Had the same problem this summer, pump was running, can hear it from the well cap. The hose burst ( 1/2'' split )about 2 feet above the pump, below the water line. Replaced the hose, problem went away. This hose has been in the well for nearly 30 years. Rick

Is it drawing current?

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Maybe my other post didn't go through. The overloads had tripped. First time in 22 years. Should i check anything while its running?

Karl

The troubleshooting pages at red Jacket and Franklin pumps have some very good troubleshooting procedures to go through: amperages on each leg, voltage drops, etc. Suggest you just run through the whole bunch.

I'd be look>> Is it drawing current?

On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:32:36 -0500 in rec.crafts.metalworking, "Karl Townsend" wrote,

Yeah, check the voltage going to the motor. Low voltage due to too much drop in the supply wiring will cause a motor to overload.

First check that the pressure switch is commanding the contaftor to turn on, and that the contactor is actually sending 240 V to the feed at the house (If I remember how you had this set up the new way.) If all that is well, then :

Disconnect the wires at the top of the well and short the hots together. (Umm, shut off breaker first! but, you knew that.)

Then, at the house, check for continuity to earth ground (there shouldn't be any) and a very low resistance between the two hots (You've got them shorted). If the hots don't show something below an Ohm or two, then gophers chewed the conduit and the wire burned up.

If all this checks out, it indicates you should have 240 V power all the way to the well head. Do you have a starting control still in the well head? (Most likely so.) If the starting cap wasn't getting put in circuit, it SHOULD blow the breaker after a second or two.

If you still can't find anything wrong, check for continuity to ground of the well pump wires. Most of these systems eventually get small leaks, so a little conducance isn't too unusual, but something like 10K Ohms or less might indicate a fried pump winding. Of course, continuity should be a couple Ohms on the

240 V terminals of the pump motor. If it is near infinity, then the wires have come loose or the pump is fried. Either way, it will have to come up.

Jon

Yup, excellent advice. Other than that, it could possibly just be a dirty contact in what I suspect is a thermal overload. Having it trip and resetting it may put it good to go for another 22 years. Also, well heads seem to be prime sites for heavy corrosion, so the overload itself may be going bad.

Jon

Check the starting and running current, and get a capacitance meter to double check the run and/or start caps - or just toss 'em on General Principles if they are the 22-year-old originals, they are cheap.

If the pump is old and used heavily, the bearings could be going just from age. The load will go up a bit from the extra drag, and if it gets sticky and fails to start fast enough the locked-rotor current will pop the overloads.

Now you know why direct buried splices and/or splices pulled through into the conduit are Strictly Verboten. They will go bad.

And you always put a pull box or handhole ever 200 - 225' because the longest (normally available) fishtapes start at 240' and gradually get shorter.

And a witness post (or a big rock) near every handhole that isn't in a concrete driveway, because it will get buried and "lost" over time.

Been there, knew "It has to be around here somewhere because the pathing tone goes this way", probed for that stupid handhole with a trenching shovel...

-->--

Thanks for the good advice

My son's best friend is a union electrician. He showed me that tying a plastic bag on a string, called a kite, and sucking the line though with a vacuum cleaner is the way to go. I may never use a fish tape again.

Karl

I was doing that with a shop vaccum, a paper towel and a roll of 22 gauge wire over 35 years ago. For one job I had to use and air compressor to clear the dust & blown in isolation out of a 150 foot run of 1'2" EMT I got a gallon bucket full, then had to pull the pair of 14 AWG rom the sound room to the speakers in a new church. Those tapered rubber plugs from the pre charged freon lines were laying around the job site, so i cut a hole in the tip and forced it over the nozzle of the air gun. YOu could hear the pressure building up in the conduit for almost five minutes, before the crap started blowing out the other end.

Vacuum cleaners work OK on most jobs, but I have run into a few that got plugged with the paper of plastic and had to be either rammed out, or a cut at a bend.

I've seen this done, truly awesome. Well, nobody ever said pushing a rope was going to be easy! Pulling works so much better.

Jon

When I was pulling wire quite often I had a set of plugs made out of soft foam rubber, that the electrican that tipped me off on them, called mouses. String went through center, generally tied to a small washer. Insert plug into conduit, attach vacuum cleaner to other end. Worked like magic.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Is the vacuum cleaner named Monica?

mOnica Gerry :-)} London, Canada