Wild fire guessing details on pump and on well capacitor start box size

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70 elminator

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my property was wiped out in a fire and the well was salvageable. the casing swole up and sagged quite a bit but the integrity was acceptable, to prevent the surface water from infiltrating so I don't think it is contaminated. any way fixed casing and painted cap then for grins wired it to a generator . made pressure for a moment . however I had no idea about start box etc. learned about start box on 3 wire well.
went to store and the choices were 1/2 , 3/4 , and 1-/1/2 looking inside the 1-1/2 it says 1 to 1-1/2 hp inside the case knowing my fathers welly was 400 feet and he was 1 mile away I assume this well was similar in depth.
so I purchased the 1 to 1.5 hp box after looking at depth charts etc.

wired everything up fired up the generator and after a few moments woah!!!!!!!!!! tons of water from one of the yard hydrants.
loved it.

ran the pump for about an hour to find the burned off feed that was for the house.

shut it down for a while and hooked up a hose to fill a water tank I had been using to water baby trees.

it filled the 330 gallons in about 40 minutes. .

any way next day back out there and tried to run the pump and the pressure was minimal.

figured I blew a pipe somewhere but cant find leak.

any way after turning on and off power it seems the well surges tons of water on start and very quickly tapers to a trickle which is rhythmically pulsing more for a while then less 10 seconds or so between .

could the motor be running well on start cap and then loos torque on the run cap since I have no idea what hp the pump is.

it was a monster the first day and ran great. could I have hurt windings? or the cap sized wrong.
 

Valveman

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You need a clip around amp meter to see what is going on. If the amps are surging the same as the water flow, it sounds like the well is pumped dry. If the amps stay steady while the water flow is surging, you could have a break in the drop pipe to the pump.
 

70 elminator

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I went out there today and the flow does seem to taper over time.

the weird thing is that even after pumping another 100 gallons today if I cycle power the flow surges to max a hose can handle for 4 seconds and the settles down . I repeated this a few times and the flow rate would increase for 5 to ten minutes before tapering. so even after pumping for 2 hours the flow would surge up when ever the pump was cycled to start cap.


basically it seems like pump rpm slowly drops off and cycling power spins it back up. well has been in constant use for 20 years and un used last 2 years. likely the water is there still.

can I hurt the motor running the wrong size start box?? do I want to buy a run cap sized for a smaller hp?? and leave the start cap alone??
will I then mess up the start box.?
 

Reach4

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I wonder if a symptom like this could happen if the wiring between the box and the pump had a mistake. The timing of your change in flow is around the same time as it takes for a control box to open the start capacitor circuit.
 
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70 elminator

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it seems that after the start capacitor is off is when I loose flow however if 100% flow was the first 5 seconds it often goes to 50% for a while and slowly declines to about 10%

the first day I filled 330 gallons in less than an hour today was 100 gallons over almost 2 after that 2 hours if I cycled the pump power full flow would return for 4 or 5 seconds every time. and if I cycled it a few times it seemed like I could get 50% rather than the 20% it was flowing before the cycle. then it would taper like when a car is on a hill in 5th gear loosing rpm and mph but dosent down shift the car just boggs more and more .. cycling power is like down shifting to second gear from a bogged fifth..
 

Valveman

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It sounds like you may have something clogging the intake screen and when you shut the pump down it falls off. Again a clip around amp meter would tell us if you have the right size box and give a better idea of what is happening.
 
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