Hi,
I have no water coming from the well. We have a electricity and I checked the circuit breaker. I have a Culligan water softener in the system. Any thoughts on where to start trouble shooting? Is there a reset on the pump?
Regards,
Ken
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Replies
I know almost nothing about water softeners but are there pressure gauges on the inlet and outlet sides that could tell you if there's a blockage and if there's pressure from the pump coming online?
If you're OK with doing electrical work I'd check the pressure switch (I've seen them where the points get pitted and don't make good contact), and the pump motor for power and continuity.
A friendly lizard was fried to death and remained lodged in the contacts on the pressure switches. It's been 8 years since this was installed, so I had the well vendor replace the switch and other electrical units. He put in duct filler to keep the lizards/frogs out. I'll also poison for ants to keep them away from the contacts. Heavy corrosion was evident on all wires/switches. Should be good for another 8-10 years.
Thanks for all your advice.
Regards,
Ken
"Do as you would be done by." C.S. Lewis
Glad it helped. Thanks for letting us know the outcome...
PaulB
First I would trip the breaker off and then back on.
Some of them will trip "half way" where you can not tell that it is tripped looking at it.
Do you have a submersed pump or is the pump on the surface.
aquifer ran dry?
Could be any number of things.
Besides checking that breaker and pressure switch.........If you have a well pit, go down there and see if there's a control box on the wall. If there is, there should be a reset button to push.
Or.....if you have a deep-well jet pump (which sets aboveboard of the well, as opposed to down in the casing like a submersible)...one of those two pipes has a foot-valve on the end down in the well. If a piece of crud lodged in there last time it tried to close or the spring is broken or fatigued.....no water.
If you have a submersible and sandy water, your screen may be plugged.
Etc, etc, etc.
First things first though. Check out the electricals.
Here's a little info.
http://www.peekspump.com/dwspt.htm
Click on troubleshooting link.
Knowledge is power, but only if applied in a timely fashion.
Edited 5/11/2005 11:09 am ET by GOLDHILLER
I was thinking of things from the simple - open the velves - to the worst - which is that sometimes a submersilble pump will twist each time it cycles, hanging there in the hole, and eventually, if the wiores are not placed corerectly, they chafe and wear through, shorting out on the casing, but that usually shows up at the breaker box. I knew of one where it would come on and the torque would twist it just as it started pumping, which made it short to shut off again, without tripping the breaker every time, so it could cycle like crazy...LOL
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That's not the worst -- the worst is a dry well. We are worried about this on Vinalhaven. What's the aquifer situation on Islesboro?
yur kidding! after all this rain and snow?!? Water is up to my heels here.but this is a growing concern. There are a few fantastic artesians that could supply most of the island if tapped and controlled for distribution, but everyoine gets their own well.Being further out, you might have of that sort of supply and more concerns about intrusion along the shore, though we are narrow and that presents a possibility in dry years.my dad had a statement that he delivered after he started his cancer treatments several years ago - "you never know how good the water tastes until the well runs dry..."
We were talking about my well here specifically at the time, but I always felt like he had more to say with those words.
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If your recovery rate is not very good a water softener will drive the nail in the coffin. They use a lot of water. In that case you will need to hydro-frac. signs of this will onset slowly, running out of water during a shower or during laundy.
If the well just up and quit it could be a small stone caught up in the pump. This happens also with a low recovery.
My well guy put a gizmo on my pressure switch that detects a change at the pump when I've reached low limit and shuts down the system for an hour to recover. Since then I had the well fracked and I never ran low again