help.. well newbie

i have recently purchased a home with a deep well jet pump. i put in a new flint and walling 1/2 hp. i removed all existing plumbing from the pump on to the house. at the pump i just have a brass spigot. if i run the pump to a hose that goes outside...sometimes it will pump for 20 minutes before it just losses pressure and runs dry until i run downstaris and turn off the spigot and wait for it to get pressure again.

when i first turn it on it holds at about 40-38 psi. i can open the spigot slowly until around 20 psi if i open it more the pump losses all pressure like explained above.

a few questions:

will this go away witha pressure tank on?

i have a 30/50 pressure switch, how do i know if i need a 20/40 etc....

what does it mean 30/50 on at 30 off at 50 ? like i said this is my first experience with a well.

You may be running the well down so the pump is sucking air. It then takes a few minutes to recover. You might want to find out what the static water level of your well is and where the pump is set. The actual well depth may be useful. You also may want to know the recovery rate of the well. This will help determine if it might be prudent to lower the pump or not.

The pressure tank holds some water under pressure to act as a buffer so that the pump doesn't need to run all of the time each and every time you turn on a faucet. If you are running water faster than the well can recover, unless you have a big storage tank, eventually you'll get to the point where the pump must run all of the time. Running the pump when it is no longer sitting in water in the well will wear it out and might overheat it (probably has a safety overload/overtemp reset, but not sure).

The lower number of the switch is when it turns on. The higher number is when it turns off. The choice in pressure is up to you and is sometimes dependent on the type of pump you have.

You said you had a deep well jet pump, so we will assume it's not in the well, but up top.

If you bought a new 1/2hp, you bought too small a pump for today's standards.

However, on any deep well jet pump is a back pressure control that controls the pressure to the jet in the well. Some pumps come with an automatic valve and others come with a cheap gate valve (for the lack of another word). These valve are almost useless in a deeper water setting. If you got the automatic variety, which has a bolt (screw) that can be turned in or out, you need to adjust this valve so that the pump maintains enough pressure to keep the pump from sounding like it is full of marbles while running an amount of water steadily from a hose bibb no matter how small. This is the backpressure the jet in the well needs to operate properly. If set too low, the pump will quit pumping when the pressure drops below the required setting.

bob...