thompson1600
New Member
I have a shallow water well, 23 feet. We know it is in a good underground stream. It has been feeding another home for 30 years with no issues. We are not 100% sure we're deep enough but it has worked for the past 3 years got us. We have had drought issues here so low water could be an issue. However, the plumber that came over said we have great water pressure and volume, when he was hooking up some fixtures. No problems through most of the year, just a couple weeks out of the year.
This is a 1 1/2" pipe with sandpoint. Check valve in vertical position just above ground level. Pump above ground in heated pump house. Pump, pressure tank and pump house are below the level of the house by about 10 or so feet.
The system has worked good for 3 years for us, except last February/March and now the past week (February again).
Issues same both last year and this year;
- pump will lose prime and continue to run.
- pump them gets hot
- pump is easy to get restarted, just reprime the pump, the check valve has been holding water up in the well pipe. It will then work fine for a few hours/day until the same problem happens again.
- pressure switch seems to work fine, does not short cycle and other than when it fails (as I'm describing here) it works fine.
- the little tube from the pump to the pressure will eventually get hot and rupture spraying water all over the pump house (probably from heat). Only if it happens overnight, so we usually shut the system down overnight during this time.
- it almost seems like the system gets an air bubble that causes it to lose prime momentarily.
- system will seem like it is working fine again, work for a day, then randomly this will happen again during this February/March time period.
- Does not appear to be frozen lines, because it will reprime and work right up again.
Last year after a couple weeks these symptoms went away and the system worked again all spring, summer, fall and winter until now.
Why could the system work all year except for a short period of time during the year?
We are using a Red Lion RJS-75 (3/4 hp) on 110 for a pump.
Thanks for any ideas.
This is a 1 1/2" pipe with sandpoint. Check valve in vertical position just above ground level. Pump above ground in heated pump house. Pump, pressure tank and pump house are below the level of the house by about 10 or so feet.
The system has worked good for 3 years for us, except last February/March and now the past week (February again).
Issues same both last year and this year;
- pump will lose prime and continue to run.
- pump them gets hot
- pump is easy to get restarted, just reprime the pump, the check valve has been holding water up in the well pipe. It will then work fine for a few hours/day until the same problem happens again.
- pressure switch seems to work fine, does not short cycle and other than when it fails (as I'm describing here) it works fine.
- the little tube from the pump to the pressure will eventually get hot and rupture spraying water all over the pump house (probably from heat). Only if it happens overnight, so we usually shut the system down overnight during this time.
- it almost seems like the system gets an air bubble that causes it to lose prime momentarily.
- system will seem like it is working fine again, work for a day, then randomly this will happen again during this February/March time period.
- Does not appear to be frozen lines, because it will reprime and work right up again.
Last year after a couple weeks these symptoms went away and the system worked again all spring, summer, fall and winter until now.
Why could the system work all year except for a short period of time during the year?
We are using a Red Lion RJS-75 (3/4 hp) on 110 for a pump.
Thanks for any ideas.
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