Submersible Well Pump, Any thoughts on this?

[JP56]

I have a house built in 1974 that I bought in 1990 & I am still on my original Submersible Well Pump & want to move the feed into a sub panel.

I have absolutely NO idea as to how deep my well is, what brand of pump I have or what size pump I have.

Around 1992, the inlet pipe (rolled black plastic type) from the well into the tank inside a closet in the finished basement apparently cracked someplace under the basement slab during the middle of the night, (which I suspected occurred under the fireplace foundation, because the pipe appeared to go in a straight line to the fireplace) which resulted in my basement flooding and I had to remove & replace all carpeting and sheetrock, and me breaking out the concrete slab around the inlet, cutting it below the slab & capping it, then digging a trench by hand about 25 feet long & 5 feet deep from my well standpipe to my foundation at my garage, drilled through the foundation & installed the tank out in the garage where the floor is 5 inches lower then the basement floor of the house. I am of the opinion that all wells should be installed this way & NOT inside a finished area of the house UNLESS properly planed with floor drains in place!

I replaced my tank at the same time, eliminating the old air pump fueled galvanized tank that was also starting to pit with rust, (side note on the tank, the house was 16 years old when I purchased it, and I found 2 other old galvanized well tanks in the weeds up at the back end of my yard making this the third tank in the house since built!) with the newer bladder type tank (another side note on this, this is now the THIRD tank of this type I have put in since I purchased the house, because they use such crappy steel on these things, that they get rust pits all over them and they start to leak too!) & just rewired it exactly the way it was originally wired.

There are no controls on my system, just the air bladder tank, pressure switch on that & an old grey switch marked "TRW REDA Pump Switch with w logo on the end of the toggle that looks like a STOP sign with AB in it, as a main disconnect.

The wiring runs across the garage ceiling so I want to move them into a sub-panel near the Tank & Switch, but has a separate ground wire that looks to be about #6 gauge & wanted to know if I had to keep that, but I just now noticed that they wired it in originally with # 12 or 14 2 wire Romex & used the white neutral as a hot for the 2 pole breaker so they added the oversized grounding wire that terminates INSIDE the grey switch housing!

I can't find any wiring info for that old switch (which still works fine), but I am thinking that I will just replace it all with # 10 or 12 - 3 wire and use the neutral & bare copper in that, as I believe that is the way it should be used/wired.

Point of info question: The house was built in 74, I took it in 90, and now it's 2021, is it common for a submersible pump to last this long or am I just very lucky this time around?

 

[genmaster]

I've installed three well pumps in the 32 years I've owned my place. Replaced the original galvanized pressure tank with the bladder type in 1996, so I'd say you've gotten your money's worth out of your well pump. Kind of like old refrigerators that seem to last forever vs the newer ones that break every three years or so. As far as moving your power supply into a sub panel, that shouldn't be an issue for an electrician. The white wire you speak of is more than likely one of the two energized conductors for your well pump ( submersibles are usually 240 volt), plus a ground wire. In my experience, a 20 amp 240 volt circuit is usually sufficient, so the 12 awg romex you refer to sounds correct as long as the supply breaker in the main panel is 20 amp. The larger "#6 wire" is most likely the bonding wire from your well casing to your service entrance ground - that needs to stay . On a side note, there should also be a bonding wire from your service entrance ground in your main panel to your cold water pipe down stream of the black poly well piping to bond the piping in the house. Lastly, the switch in your picture looks like a motor overload for your well pump motor. I recommend hiring an electrician if you're not sure though.

 

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[JP56]

Thanks for the response genmaster. Yes, my supply is 12awg 2 wire w the bare copper neutral, & uses the white as a hot, & the supply is a 20Amp 240V circuit. The#6 wire ties in at the panel and ends in that switch box. From the other side of the switch box it just uses the 2 hots & a regular bare copper 12 out to the pump. The switch has also never failed same as the pump, so I have no intentions of messing with any of the wiring other then moving the lines up into the ceiling & over to the sub panel. It just struck me as very odd that the only place I see #6 wire is from the panel to the switch box, but it does not continue from the switch box down to the pressure switch. It just has 12 awg from the pressure switch out to the well casing pipe and down to the pump! The interesting thing is that my meter socket/pan was actually grounded to the grounding rod outside my service entrance, and they don't allow that up here any more. Now they just want the ground from inside the Main Panel to the grounding rod and bridged to the service entry pipe and then that grounding rod needs to be grounded to a second grounding rad 6 feet away from the first one. The biggest mystery to me though was that I am here is that I have been here 30 years & 6 months and still running my original pump, & I am always hearing about & seeing other well pumps in the area being replaced because they failed. I guess that the Well Pump was the only thing that the guy I bought the house from DIDN'T skimp on! Like they say, "If it ain't broke, Don't fix it"