I have a saga for you guys:
I changed my foot valve on June 8th in the afternoon. The pipes down to my well are 60' deep. I put the pipes back in and went inside to prime the pump. I poured water in and put the screw back on, then flipped the pump on. No dice. It turns out my horizontal pipes actually runs uphill to my well pipe...120' from the pump. That really makes priming a pain in the rear but it explains why I never lost my prime when my pump was off since my foot valve was leaking (it actually was bad). My solution was to buy a utility pump, temporarily disconnect the vertical lines, and push water from the pump side up to the well pipe, thus filling both horizontal pipes. After I did that, I put the vertical lines back on and pushed some more water in with the utility pump. The pump took that and ran great!...until it wouldn't push past 40psi even while continuing to run. After much frustration, I fiddled with the pressure switch to change it to run the pump from 20-40psi for the night so at least I could shower and flush.
Up in the morning on June 9th. I thought for sure the problem HAD to be the pressure switch so I changed that out and cleaned the tube running to it just in case it was clogged. I also bought two more pressure gauges because I thought the original one was incorrect, so I changed one out just to make sure. Nope. The pump still only pushed to 40psi and kept running away but not pushing past 40psi. I checked the air pressure in the pressure tank and it was to the tank's specified pressure.
Now I'm stumped. My well isn't sucking low because I checked while the pump was running. I don't hear the pump sucking up any air at the well nor do I hear air running through the pump either. I figure my pump has to be bad by now and I've got to work June 10th for 24 hours. The last thing I need to do is leave my 38 week pregnant wife home alone without water for 24 hours. It's already 4 PM and I need to do something. I can buy a new impeller for the pump and hope that fixes the problem or I can take drastic measures.
I went for the drastic measures. A quick stop at Home Depot and I came out with a 3/4 HP submersible pump (OVERKILL!), 250' of 12/2 UF wire, and various fittings and hose clamps and flexible pressure pipe. I enlist the help of my father-in-law and my wife's grandfather and we get to work around 5:30 PM. I dug up the outside of the well pipe to access the return line so I could disconnect it from the well pipe and use it to run my 120' of 12/2 wire as opposed to digging up my yard. At the time I didn't know the exact distance I was trying to draw the wire though, so I bought a 125' wire fish tape and thankfully it was just long enough. After I got the wire installed, I hooked up the pump to the 60' 1.25" plastic vertical pipe and a rope and the wire and was ready to drop it in the well. Before I did that, I wanted to get an idea how deep my well was. I dropped my old foot valve down in the well attached to fishing line. I hit water level around 30' down and after dropping over 100' more of fishing line in the water, I got tired of determining how deep my well was (especially since I only had 60' of pipe to work with for the time being). I was fairly convinced that my brand new submersible pump wasn't going to be sitting on the bottom of my well
A quick conversion inside my basement to switch from 120v which supplied the old pump to 240v to supply the new pump and some really quick simple plumbing to the pressure tank and pressure switch, and the pump was ready to go (so I thought). My father-in-law flipped the pump on and we watched it pump up to 50 psi and then my pressure switch shut the pump off. Perfect! It's a 30-50 switch. I drained air/water until the pump kicked on again and flew up to 50psi again. I love it! I don't hear my pump 120' away and 60' down but my pressure flies back up to 50psi in seconds. Ok, now I want it to operate 40-60psi. No big deal-I just fiddled with the pressure switch until it kicked on at 40 and off at 60. Around 52psi, the flexi tube I'm temporarily using inside the basement to go from the 1.25" black plastic supply pipe to the pressure tank manifold popped off of the fitting it was on and shot water at a high rate of speed down my rubber fire boots. Whoops. I guess rushing when you're near the end is a bad idea. I didn't tighten the two clamps down that well. Quick fix and all is well. The pump is extreme overkill for my application. It pumps me from 40 to 60 psi in about 10-15 seconds.
I'm happy with my submersible pump and it cost me less than $500 to do the conversion, including the $40 wire fish tape I had to buy so I could feed the 12/2 down 120' of 1" plastic pipe.
There may or may not have been anything actually wrong with my jet pump, but I didn't have time to mess with it any longer and I prefer the peace of mind knowing that the submersible pump should work well for a long time and I'll never have to prime 120' uphill again
At least now I have a nice 3/4 HP 110v electric motor that I can use for some other project such as a large air compressor in the home. My wife is happy that she doesn't have to venture into our basement to flip the pump on and off anymore as well.