Bad Pump or Bad Well?

[Ohio Guy]

My house is three years old. I use about 60 gallons of water a day.

A few weeks ago, for the first time, I ran out of water filling a bath tub.

I inspected the pressure switch..it was set for 40/30....I cleaned the pipe to the pressure switch...not really dirty at all and readjusted to 50/30.

Bladder tank is a WX-202, about a 6 or 8 gal capacity I guess. It is charged to 23psig.

Still can not fill a bath tub. I can only supply about 1 gallon/minute from my well and not see a gradual loss pressure.....So I surmise that is the limit my pump can supply.

A new well was dug down the street about 1000 ft away just before this loss of water started to occur.

My instincts tell me the builder got cheap on the pump and bladder sizing and the pump is now wearing out due to excessive duty cycling.

My question is how do I determine if the well or pump is the problem here?

What is my next step? What size pressure bladder should I have?


Thanks in advance for the advice

 

[Mike Swearingen]

If you've set your pressure switch to 30 psi cut-on/50 psi cut-off, the pressure tank needs to be two psi below the cut-on, or 28 psi.
Turn the pump off, drain the water pressure off, and check the tank pressure with a tire gauge. Air it up to 28 psi with a bicycle pump, or portable air tank or compressor.
If that doesn't help, you may have a well problem, rather than a pump problem.
Check these two sites for excellent tutorials on wells and pumps.
Ron (Pumpman) Peeks - www.peekspump.com
Jess Stryker - www.jessstryker.com
Good Luck!
Mike

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Speedbump]

If your tank empties and the pump comes on while filling the tub and the pressure goes down rather than up, your pump or your well could be bad, but my guess would be the well.

It could be that the water level in the well has dropped to near the pumps intake because of a draught situation or the well has just stopped producing like it used to.

Either way, you obviously don't have much capacity in the well from it's highest level to the pumps intake. No matter the size of the tank, because a bathtub doesn't hold that much water.

Try filling the tub after the well has had lots of time to recover from other uses. Watch the gauge, if it goes down to the point to where the pump comes on and keeps decreasing, it is probably the well. Simply because, a bad pump usually can't build much pressure, and yours is shutting off at the pressure switch's high setting.

bob...

 

[Ohio Guy]

Bad pump

I called the local well guy to come take a look.

He pulled the pump and found the intake clogged with iron. It was a cheap "resin composite" ( I call it plastic ) pump. I had them put in a stainless steel Gould pump......never in 18 months have I had pressure and flow this good..

I plan to install a smart tee after my wallet cools down from all the action.


This is a great resource for us city slickers who are clueless about wells.

By the way the Ohio Dept of Natural Resources a has site where every well drilled has its commisioning stats posted, depth, GPM rating, GPS location. A co worker's well was posted even though his well was over 40 yrs old. Not sure if GPS data was there however


Thanks again
Ohio Guy

 

[Speedbump]

You may have had a cheap pump, but if the screen clogged up with iron, I would suspect iron bacteria. If that is the case, you may want to address that problem or you will be back to the same problem again. The impellers in the old pump were probably just as plugged as the pump screen. The Goulds stainless steel pump also has plastic impellers and they will clog just like the cheap pumps impellers.

Was this iron slimy?

All Stainless is a great selling point, but in reality offers no benefits other than it may be a little tougher if the pump is hard to pull for some reason which happens very rarely.

bob...