Well problems?

My water stopped working the other day, i went to pressure tank and there was no pressure on gauge. Then all of a sudden the pressure starting building up to around 52 psi then cut off and quickly dropped to around 32 psi and kicked back on up to 52 psi and so on. I kicked the breaker to the pump and turned valve on in house until water quit running. I then checked air pressure in tank with tire gauge (no air pressure) I proceeded to pump around 30 psi into pressure tank, this is with valves on in house. My neighbor said that if there was a hole in bladder that I would lose my air pressure through hole in bladder, made good sense to me. However, I did not loose air pressure. I turned breaker back on to see what would happen, the pressure built up to 52 psi, and then dropped to 32 psi as before, except it was quite a bit slower loosing pressure, it took about 1 minute to loose pressure. I have a ball valve between pressure tank and pump, I let the pressure build to 52 and let pump kick off as needle was dropping, I shut off ball valve and the needle stopped, therefore maintaining pressure to house. this would indicate water leak between ball valve and pump, anyway I waited about ten minutes or so and turned ball valve back on, I thought if water back drained toward pump that a sharp pressure drop would happen, it did not, instead the needle dropped slowly as before about a 1 minute cycle. So I am thinking about installing a check valve where the ball valve is, does this seem like a reasonable way to correct this problem.
Also I am going to install a sediment type filter in line, I drilled well in 2000 and there has always benn a lot of silt and small rocks in water, I am concerned that pressure tank could have alot of silt in it. does anyone recommend replacing pressure tank

 

If you had to add air to your tank, it may still be bad. The bag in the tank can be bad and still keep air from leaving the bottom. The bag can be torn anywhere but still cover the opening in the bottom.

I would never put a ball valve or any other valve between a pump and tank. If it were closed when the pump is running it will simply burn up in a few minutes.

You could replace the valve with a check valve. We have made that cheap fix in the past. However if you have a problem with electrolisis eating pipe in the well, and you don't address it soon, the problem is going to get worse to where your pressure get's worse, the pump runs longer and eventually won't reach shut off pressure. The worse thing that could happen is the pipe coming in half and sending the pump to the bottom.

bob...

 

You have a leak in the line or the foot valve from the pump to the tank. You idea of the check valve is one solution. The other would be to find the problem and correct it.