running out of water or something else?

[iluvatar]

I looked thru several of the earlier postings on the forum - found some similar ones, but not quite the same. I have a Craftsman 1hp deep well pump and captive air tank. These are both brand new - installed in December. I talked to the previous owner of this house - I think he said the well is 200' deep and the static level is 60'.
We think our problem is that the well itself is running low on water but want to be sure. The pump will run, but only gets up to 20# - keeps running until we unplug the pump. When we plug the pump back in, it will not start again until we run some water. The pressure switch is set at about 12 for on and 38 for off. The past few days, after we unplugged the pump, we could see the pressure dropping on the pressure gauge - got down to zero a couple of times. Although we live a in rainforest in SE Alaska, this has been a very dry winter. So our theory is that we are going to have to wait until we get some good rain and the aquifer fills up.
Is this a good theory or are we missing something? How would we be able to tell if it is the foot valve? Looking at the book that came with the pump, it shows a jet with a check valve inside the well casing. How would we know if that is the problem?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Gary Slusser]

You need to check the air pressure in the tank with no water in it and make sure it is 1-2 psi less than the turn the pump on switch setting but, the 12 psi is too low. It should be a minimum of 20 psi and then the switch needs to be adjusted. See the Stickies at the top of the front (index) page of this forum for instructions.

Since you have a pressure loss while no water is being used, you have a water leak. Shut off the water to the house past the pressure tank and watch the gauge for like 30 or more minutes and if the pressure holds, the leak is on the house side of the shut off valve adn if teh pressure falls, the leak is between the pump and the foot valve in the well.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[iluvatar]

OK...I don't want to drain my tank right now. Actually yesterday we were able to get the pump to cycle like it supposed to...except that we had to set the pump on switch to 18 and the pump off to 22. If we try to increase the pump off pressure above that, it simply stays on. Would this be a sign of low water in the well or something wrong with the pump itself?

I did the leak detection that you described above - the pump didn't come on when I shut the water off to the house, but then again after I opened the valve back up, it the pump didn't come on then either. I took this to mean we have a very small leak - we do have a leak where the lower pipe goes into the pump housing - I think there is another thread with this exact same problem. Like I said, it is a very minor leak - the pump didn't come on for several hours yesterday while I purposely did not run any water.

It's raining hard today, so maybe the problem will resolve itself.

Thanks for your input