Intermittent low amperage on submersible pump - troubleshooting suggestions.

[Hardyh]

In the mean time I made a pressure monitor to keep track of what's going on, the last week had no problems at all (the pump didn't shut off, there were no pressure drop events. The average daily usage would look like this:

The yesterday, while the house was empty (there may have been water usage at the second house but same as any other day) the pressure took a sudden drop to zero and then, with the cycle sensor resetting itself every ten minutes it was still unable to rebuild pressure. Even once I got home, isolating just the pump and pressure tank I can't get it above the mid-40psi range:

I just checked the well depth this morning and I'm still hitting water at about 40ft down. Could it be anything other than the pump at this point?

 

[Valveman]

The last water use event looks like someone was using quite a bit of water for a couple hours. Then the pressure dropped to 34 PSI which is a lot of water being used for a few minutes. The next climb to 60 makes me think it pumped the well dry after the water was turned off and the pump was trying to refill the pressure tank. But I don't know why after being off for a couple hours the well did not recover and the pump build pressure when the system was reset manually? Not building more than 40 PSI makes me think there is a hole in the pipe. If it is a hole in the pipe the amps should be at max?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Hardyh]

The amps are doing the same thing as before - starting about 6.9 and then dropping to low 4's within the first minute or less. This only happens during these 'events' . Even overnight the well hasn't been able to recover, after restarting it drops to 4.5amp within 30sec-1min.

Could there be a pressure difference between our main house and the second house uphill? The person living up there was saying that it seemed like their pressure seemed higher than normal the last couple of days. Going up to check I noticed that their pressure release valve on the hot water tank had gone off, it wasn't too recent because it was no longer wet but there was definitely evidence that it had happened sometime in the last couple of weeks - could a failing hot water tank cause this kind of water fluctuation?

 

[Reach4]

Failing T&P valve could cause this. A check valve isolating the upper house from the pressure tank could do this.

 

[Hardyh]

Just wanted to update in case a future internet search leads to this thread. It was a combination of a failing hot water tank, T&P valve (in the upper second house) and the 'low pressure cut-off' pressure switch. The hot water tank was leaking, as was the T&P valve, but intermittently (and at first not noticeably). Whenever we went up to the second house to troubleshoot there wasn't any real indication (to us) that something was wrong. We finally figured it out when the T&P valve failure finally went from intermittent to permanent. Installing a new hot water tank (& valve) in the upper house fixed everything. Thanks again.