I was filling a swimming pool. After about 4 hours the my 30/50 pressure switch kicked off completely and pressure was at zero. Re-engaged the pressure switch and back up to 50 i went. My question is, that is this normal? Does the well use all the water then kick off and have to replenish? how long does it take to replenish before I can use it again. Pump is 2 years old. Im running 150 feet of hose to the pool. Its a 5000 gallon pool.
Well pump and a swimming pool
- Thread starter cichy1012
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Most likely the overload in the motor tripped from the pump cycling on and off for 4 hours. The hose is probably putting out about 5 GPM and your pump is producing 10+ GPM. A Cycle Stop Valve would keep your pump running steady while using a 5 GPM hose. The only other way to prevent the destructive cycling is to use a larger faucet and hose or multiple faucets and hoses to be able to fill the pool at 10+ GPM.
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The lower the pressure, the more water the pump produces, and the sooner the pool fills up. You just need to run enough hoses so the pressure stays below 50 and the pump does not shut off.
guess thats my problems then, because even when the water is o n wether it be dishes or a shower, it starts at 50 slowly goes to 30, pressure switch engages, moves back up to 50 again, slowly goes to 30 and so on. now granted it takes awhile for it to get to 30, but that is the process when i watch it.
That is called "cycling" and is what destroys most pumps. When it is filling the tank quickly and draining it slowly, you are using very little water compared to what the pump can produce. When it fills the tank slowly and drains the tank quickly, you are almost using as much water as the pump can produce. However, if you are not using exactly as much as the pump produces, it is still cycling itself to death.
A Cycle Stop Valve (CSV) makes the pump produce exactly as much as you are using. This eliminates the cycling and greatly lengthens the life of any pump system. Without a CSV you need to either be using ALL the water the pump can produce, or nothing at all.
We do not sell to Home Depot or any of the other "box" stores. You can only get a CSV from a professional pump installer or from us at this site.
http://www.cyclestopvalves.com/index2.html
http://www.cyclestopvalves.com/index2.html
The reason a pressure switch would have a lever on it is that it has a feature to shut down the pump when the well runs dry or the pump dies. With a 30/50 pressure switch, if the pressure drops to some fixed lower pressure (10 PSI? 20 PSI?) the switch turns off and stays off until you hold the lever (running the pump) until pressure builds again.
FSG2J21M4BP is an example of such a switch.
I think there is a reasonable chance that you ran out of water, and should draw water a little slower or let the well rest between draws. You might try to find a flow rate where the water pressure stays at about 40 PSI during the fill rather than cycling.
FSG2J21M4BP is an example of such a switch.
I think there is a reasonable chance that you ran out of water, and should draw water a little slower or let the well rest between draws. You might try to find a flow rate where the water pressure stays at about 40 PSI during the fill rather than cycling.
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I also first thought maybe the well was pumped dry. But if you were only using one garden hose, the well was only supplying maybe 5 GPM, so I believe the overload tripped, which is why the low pressure cut-off switch had to be "re-engaged". If you run enough water to keep the pressure at 40 or at least below 50, you will be drawing much more out of the well than when using only one hose, which could then pump the well dry. Either way a CSV would help, as then you could use one hose and cut the flow as low as you want without cycling the pump to death. This would help if the well was being pumped dry, or if the low output was just causing the pump to cycle until it tripped the overload.
I can see that. At 5 GPM, this is a 17 hour fill, and there could be a lot of cycling of a 10 or 15 GPM pump.
Is this a submersible, or a jet (above ground) pump?
While it won't always save you, that pressure switch with the lever sure seems to have been worthwhile in this installation.
Is this a submersible, or a jet (above ground) pump?
While it won't always save you, that pressure switch with the lever sure seems to have been worthwhile in this installation.
The Franklin AIM manual says
"Motors should run a minimum of one minute to dissipate heat build up from starting current."
It further says that a 1 thru 5.5 HP motor should have a maximum of 300 starts in a 24-hour period.That does not directly answer your question, but I thought it might be useful.
I am not experienced. I am trying to think it through, and that is not as good asexperience. How could you distinguish which thing caused the loss of flow? If you had a clamp-on ammeter on the supply current that does not blank its display , and you videoed that display, I guess a thermal cutoff would stop the the current instantly, like when the pressure switch cuts off. But the running dry would have some reduced but very significant current happening before the switch kicked off due to loss of pressure for good.
What you can do is to figure out how long your pump runs and how long it is off when there is plenty of water and the pump is cool. If the run time is short and the frequency is high, that would seem to be the cause of overheating.
So you could try those two hoses, and see if the pumping lasts longer or shorter before the pressure switch deactivates. That one is easy. Shorter, vs the ~4 hours you had first, means running out of water, I would think.
If the well is running dry, it should trip the low pressure cut-off switch. If the well is not being pumped dry and cycling on and off is the problem, it will cause the overload in the motor to trip, then the pressure switch will go down on low pressure. If the overload in the motor trips it will reset it self after it has had time to cool down. How long that takes depends on water temp, motor temp, etc.
Either way the low pressure cut-off switch will trip out, which makes it hard to tell which is the problem. If you are standing there by the switch when the water stops and you quickly try to re-engage the switch but the well pump does not start, then the overload has tripped. If the well pump comes back on immediately, you maybe pumping the well dry and it is only going off on low pressure.
Again, either way a CSV would help. It would keep the pump from cycling on/off if that is what is tripping the overload. Even if cycling is not tripping the overload, it is not a good thing because when it does trip the overload, it maybe to late to save the motor.
If the well is being pumped dry, the CSV will allow you to adjust the hose to a lower flow rate so the well won't pump dry and won't cycle while pumping the lower flow rate.
Then a Cycle Sensor would be better than the low pressure cut-off switch. The Cycle Sensor would only shut the pump off if the well is really being pumped dry, and would actually say DRY on the display if that happens. Again it is hard to tell which is the problem when you have a low pressure cut-off switch.
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