Well Pump Keeps Shutting Off

[mattclary]

I am on city water but have a well in the backyard that hasn't been used much lately. I have only lived at this home for one year, so the only info I have is from a few records that were left when I bought the place.

Looks like the well was dug in the summer of 1985. I'm in north Texas. The original bill says 920 feet of drilling & casing. I also have several repair receipts and one in 1985 that says the pump is at 620 feet. In 1985 they replaced the pump with a 5hp Berkeley Pump, Franklin motor and control. ($1,663)

That's the last of the info. Now to my problem:

I have the pump control box wired so that I can control it off and on with a circuit breaker. If I turn it on, it runs fine for about 4 minutes or so then shuts off. It's not imperative that I fix the well, but it bugs me no knowing what's going on. I had a well guy come out and check it out but between you and me he didn't want to be there and was only interested in leaving ASAP. He put an amp meter on it and thought maybe the pump was worn out and causing the motor to work too hard and overheat. From a nozzle on a garden hose, I get a great stream of about 40 feet with the pump running (there is no tank). The guy wouldn't give me an estimate, took one look at the 2" galvanized pipe and said, "No way I'm doing this job."

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Matt

 

[mattclary]

Is there a chance that it's not the pump/motor? Could it be the control box?

 

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[Reach4]

I would think so. https://franklinaid.com/2003/07/12/overloads-serve-an-important-purpose/ talks about their overloads for big pumps having a manual reset if it trips. I don't know if that is always the case, or if some others have a reset that happens when the power is cycled.

But it seems to me there is a possibility that some other thing in the box could fail. Since the box costs so much less, it seems worthwhile to change out the box. I am not a pro. Give it time for those with experience to take a look.

In your description it sounds as if this is quite repeatable. You might compare how long it takes for the pump to go off when the box is hottest vs when the box is coldest. If you have a correlation, it seems likely it is the box.

 

[LLigetfa]

Looks like the well was dug in the summer of 1985. I'm in north Texas. The original bill says 920 feet of drilling & casing. I also have several repair receipts and one in 1985 that says the pump is at 620 feet. In 1985 they replaced the pump with a 5hp Berkeley Pump, Franklin motor and control.

Not sure if I'm reading too much into it or not. 920 feet of drilling but is it also 920 feet of casing? What size of casing? How much (if any) of it is slotted? This is to determine whether or not the pump might be top fed. I kind of doubt it as they probably would not go another 300 feet if they found water above 620 unless above 620 it was low producing and they hoped for more further down. I wonder what the static water level is and if the 5HP is for the height of lift or for the GPM. The mention of 2" downpipe might suggest it is for high GPM. How many GPM are you getting out of that garden hose? Maybe there is not enough flow to cool the motor?

Also wonder why they replaced the pump in the same year they drilled the well.

I think you should take your own current readings if the pump guy didn't tell you what they were.

 

[mattclary]

That was a typo. The first receipt is from 1980. The well must have been dug in 1980, not 1985. So it looks like they replaced a 3 hp pump with a 5hp pump in 1985,

 

[Valveman]

If the motor was overloading it would be tripping an overload in the control box. There is either a breaker or a couple of red buttons underneath the control box. If you are not having to push the red buttons or flip the breaker underneath, the motor is not pulling an overload. If it just stops pumping water without tripping the overload, you maybe pumping the well dry. Without a pressure tank you have to throttle the output of the pump to keep it from pumping too much water. Wide open even a 20 GPM 5HP can pump over 30 GPM. And if your well only makes 20 GPM, you can't run the pump wide open but 4 minutes before it sucks the water down to the pump. Try the same thing but restrict the valve to the hose to about 1/2 of the 40' output that you tried. If the pump runs longer before shutting off, then you are on the right track, you just need to throttle down some more.

A good pump man can tell you this from the amp reading. A 5HP will draw 24-27 amps when pumping water, and will instantly drop to 12-15 amps when you pump the well dry.