need advice

We are having trouble with our water well system. I don't know too much about water well systems so forgive me if I ask any stupid questions. What I do know is we have a 300 ft deep well, 1hp submersible pump, and the tank looks to be somewhere around 500 gallons (tank is close to 4 ft across 6.5ft tall) and the pump is down 120ft. There is a total of 8 houses on 30 acres currently tied into the well. The problem we are having is the well shutting off. The switch we have is a 40-60 psi switch(1yr old). We replaced the pump yesterday by hand (pain in the behind) and the pump has lost pressure twice today. I am thinking of calling someone out to check it out, but if anyone has any suggestions I would rather get hear them before doing so. do we need a bigger tank? My uncle thinks that if the tank was raised 10-15 feet it would help feed water more efficiently. Any suggestions?

You don’t need a bigger tank. Raising the tank won’t help anything. What kind of pump did you take out, and what kind went back in? What is shutting off, and how do you reset it when it does?

ben_w said:

What I do know is we have a 300 ft deep well, the pump is down 120ft.

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This could be the problem, the well driller drilled a well 300' deep to provide the water needed for the entire subdivision, and the pump guy only put it deep enought to provide water to what was there at that time.

ben_w said:

The problem we are having is the well shutting off. The switch we have is a 40-60 psi switch (1yr old). We replaced the pump yesterday by hand (pain in the behind) and the pump has lost pressure twice today.

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What was the pump hung on? Galvanized steel?, you could have put that on poly down to 280' by hand with out much effort, and you probably should have. I would listen at the well head when the pump is pumping, you can hear it suck air when it runs out of water, it then gets air-locked and you need to turn it off and back on to resume pumping.

ben_w said:

do we need a bigger tank? My uncle thinks that if the tank was raised 10-15 feet it would help feed water more efficiently.

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No your tank or height of tank are not the problem.

Rancher

Did you replace the pump with a like pump or did you go to the big box store and get a ten gallon per minute pump which probably can't keep up with demand?

bob...

It sounds like you are running out of water, the water level is drawn down to the pump's inlet and it sucks air until it gets hot and the thermal overload opens, it cools the motor and turns on. While it is off the well recovers a bit and there's water to pump.

The pump should be sized to be set at like 390' in the well. There is no sense letting all that water under the pump in the well; like 300-120=180' of water in the well.