My Son bought a property where the house had burned down. The well has a 4" casing, the static water level is 22 feet and we believe the depth of the well is 75'. He finally got power to the site and we decided to test his well pump by direct wiring it to a breaker. When we switched on the breaker the pump ran and pushed out water for about 6-8 seconds then stopped running. After about 20 seconds the pump kicked back on for 5-6 seconds, again pushing water out of the pipe. This sequence continued and the breaker never tripped. Was there a problem with our test method or do we have a thermal overload being tripped?
Advice needed on well pump
- Thread starter fasteffie
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How many wires coming out of the well? Do you know if it was previously on a 115V or 240V breaker. Might need a control box, or wired to the wrong voltage.
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It's a 2 wire 220 system. The wiring from the pump is your two 220 legs and a ground. The power came from a pole mounted circuit box that fed the house and well. That not damage/affected by the fire. I just ran tree 10 gauge wires from the well wiring to the circuit panel and attached it to the original 220 breaker and the ground.
20 seconds off and 5 seconds on sounds like your pump is producing about 5 times more than the well can make. Surging like that usually means pumping the well down. Add a ball valve and try restricting to 3-4 GPM to see how long it will run. You can restrict down to 1 GPM without hurting the pump, which is still 1440 gallons a day.
Is there a pressure switch involved? I think you are saying no, but I wanted to ask.
Get a clip around AC amp meter and you can tell what is happening down there.
You are sure the pump was originally powered via a 2-pole breaker and it is not a 115 volt pump? How many amps is the breaker? I would expect a breaker to trip, unless the breaker amps is way high. What is the hot to hot resistance at the closest to the pump you have access to? What is the hot-to-ground resistance?
Breaker off when measuring resistance, of course.
The amps will be interesting. Remember to only clamp around one wire at a time.
Gotvto the property this morning, put a ball valve in line and cracked it open and turned on breaker. Pump still cycled as before. I watched water level in pipe and it stayed the same when pump was off or on. The breaker box had a 30 amp 230v breaker in it that was labeled well. Amp clamp initial reading on wires when the pump turns on is 47.8 amp on each leg and both drop to 45.5 amps just before pump shuts off. The resistance measured at the wiring in the well casing is 1.7 ohms. The wiring in the casing is a 12 awg 600v the insulated submersible pump cable.
