I just purchased a house about two months ago. So far the plumbing has been a completed disaster and I’ve needed to replace the boiler and the ejector pump already on top of some maintenance on the septic system.
My current problem is a mystery for me because I know nothing about wells and I am so remote the well people will not come and help look until next year!
I know I live with a slow recovering well. It’s about 400ft down and the submersible is around 350. I don’t know any specifics on the pump but the pitiless is about 10 yards from my front door. We have 4x 110gallon bladder pressure tanks in the utility room + a 40 gallon that the pump is fed into.
The first major problem was when my wife and I were in the hospital having our baby. My parents were at the house and they said the water pressure dropped and then it eventually ran out. For 5 days the house never recovered any decent amount of water. That was until I instructed them to turn off the power to the pump for 6 hours and then turn it back on for ~10 minutes (when the pump started sucking air) . This process began refilling the tanks. We eventually got back up to 65 psi after doing this for 2-3 days at which point I just left the pump power on relying on the pressure switch to control it.
Well… about 4 weeks later we’re back in the same situation. Pressure dropped down to 24 and I’m currently power cycling the pump every 6 hours to build it back up.
Leaving the pump on seemingly does nothing. I’m not sure if it has some internal pump saver that puts it idle so it doesn’t burn up or what… but I can hear it whirrring but no water is making it to the house.
This leads me to my second observation. 50 yards away, DIRECTLY DOWN HILL from the well my lawn is just completely saturated ALL-THE-TIME. Unwalkable without trudging boots it’s so wet EVEN AFTER 20 days of no rain. Photo attached shows the water running down a large rock. Directly up grade from that rock is the well. I talked to the previous home owner and he said he thinks it’s a natural spring and it’s always been like that. So last weekend I installed a French drain to fix the lawn. It seems to be draining close to about a gallon or two per minute.
I’m very skeptical that these two situations are not related.
Our water usage is low/average. 1-2 shower per day. 1 small bath per day. 1 dishwasher run per day. And maybe 1 load of laundry every other or 3 days.
I tried to test my theory but the results seem to prove it wrong. I got the pressure to 50psi and then turned off the pump and closed the valve after the first pressure tank. After 24 hours the pressure was still 49-50psi and didn’t seem to budge. Does this prove my theory that there is a leak from the well to the house wrong?
Second - why would power cycling the pump like I am doing rebuild pressure when leaving the pump on does not? (This pump has been left on for DAYS — maybe 10+ while the well has been in this depleted state — I would imagine it would have already burned up if it didn’t have some sort of thermal or low volume protection.
Lacking a true well contractor I’m at a loss but willing to DIY whatever to try to solve this. I would love any advice or things I could try.
My current problem is a mystery for me because I know nothing about wells and I am so remote the well people will not come and help look until next year!
I know I live with a slow recovering well. It’s about 400ft down and the submersible is around 350. I don’t know any specifics on the pump but the pitiless is about 10 yards from my front door. We have 4x 110gallon bladder pressure tanks in the utility room + a 40 gallon that the pump is fed into.
The first major problem was when my wife and I were in the hospital having our baby. My parents were at the house and they said the water pressure dropped and then it eventually ran out. For 5 days the house never recovered any decent amount of water. That was until I instructed them to turn off the power to the pump for 6 hours and then turn it back on for ~10 minutes (when the pump started sucking air) . This process began refilling the tanks. We eventually got back up to 65 psi after doing this for 2-3 days at which point I just left the pump power on relying on the pressure switch to control it.
Well… about 4 weeks later we’re back in the same situation. Pressure dropped down to 24 and I’m currently power cycling the pump every 6 hours to build it back up.
Leaving the pump on seemingly does nothing. I’m not sure if it has some internal pump saver that puts it idle so it doesn’t burn up or what… but I can hear it whirrring but no water is making it to the house.
This leads me to my second observation. 50 yards away, DIRECTLY DOWN HILL from the well my lawn is just completely saturated ALL-THE-TIME. Unwalkable without trudging boots it’s so wet EVEN AFTER 20 days of no rain. Photo attached shows the water running down a large rock. Directly up grade from that rock is the well. I talked to the previous home owner and he said he thinks it’s a natural spring and it’s always been like that. So last weekend I installed a French drain to fix the lawn. It seems to be draining close to about a gallon or two per minute.
I’m very skeptical that these two situations are not related.
Our water usage is low/average. 1-2 shower per day. 1 small bath per day. 1 dishwasher run per day. And maybe 1 load of laundry every other or 3 days.
I tried to test my theory but the results seem to prove it wrong. I got the pressure to 50psi and then turned off the pump and closed the valve after the first pressure tank. After 24 hours the pressure was still 49-50psi and didn’t seem to budge. Does this prove my theory that there is a leak from the well to the house wrong?
Second - why would power cycling the pump like I am doing rebuild pressure when leaving the pump on does not? (This pump has been left on for DAYS — maybe 10+ while the well has been in this depleted state — I would imagine it would have already burned up if it didn’t have some sort of thermal or low volume protection.
Lacking a true well contractor I’m at a loss but willing to DIY whatever to try to solve this. I would love any advice or things I could try.
