Twice in the past six months we lost water to our house. We are on a well. Both of those times I turned off the breaker to the well for about a half an hour. After turning it back on we have water again. I don't doubt this will happen again in the future but I would like to know what the problem is so I can fix it. (FYI-There is no water to our outside hose faucets when this happens. This is before the water softener.) Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Danny

 

It almost sounds like the well may be running out of water.
Was the pump running when you went to turn the power off?

 

I'm a do it yourself er and have not had to deal with well problems yet so please bear with me. How do I know if the pump is running? Do I go outside, put my ear near my well, and listen? I'm not sure if this helps but this cap is similar to the one on my well -
Shop ProPlumber 6" Well Cap at Lowes.com

The bladder and well switch are in my crawl space. Thank you for your help waterwelldude!

 

This happened again today. No water, I turned the breaker to the well off for about 15 minutes, turned the breaker back on, then voila-water!

Any ideas as to what could be causing this? Thank you!

 

Can you disconnect the pipe before it goes into the tank?
If you can, turn the pump on let it run, if the water stops flowing, your well is running out of water.

If you cant, you can use an amp meter to see what is going on.
With the amp meter, clamp it around one of the power wires going to the pressure switch.
If the well is running out of water, the amp will drop fast.
EX= if the pump runs at 10amps while pumping water, the amps will drop to around 5 to 7 if the will is running out of water.

 

It happened again today. I usually lose water in the morning. I turned the well breaker off for about 20 minutes, then turned it on, now I have water again.

If the well was running dry wouldn't it have run dry already? This started shortly before April and it is late August now.

Do I disconnect the pipe that goes into the bladder tank? Should I turn the well breaker off when I do this?

 

If I'm not mistaken a Grundfos 2-wire motor will do that if it cycles too much and the way to reset it is with the breaker. Sounds like your tank might be waterlogged.

 

My first thought was the well might be running dry.
My second thought might be that the pressure switch or control box for your pump might be going bad.

When you lose water, does it happen when there is a high demand (i.e morning showers)?
Have you tried flipping the breaker off and on in a short period of time (30 seconds or so). If this worked, my second thought is applicable. If it fails, might be the well running low.

A quick (non-technical) test would be to add a demand for water. Water the grass for 20 minutes, or similar. This would indicate if it's the cycle controls (equipment that turns the pump on and off) or supply issue (low water). Watering the grass would be a continuous demand. It should start your pump and keep it running until you stop (at least mine is like this).

 

Just to eliminate the obvious are you sure the breaker isn't tripping. Some breaker handles don't move much when they trip and can look like they aren't tripped.

 

the continuous demand thing isnt a bad idea, however we dont know how much demand it takes to keep his pump running rather than cycling. first things first, i think texas wellman gave good advice.. kill the power, open a faucet and when the water stops... the tank should be completely empty when you shake it. check the air in the tank with a tire gauge. if it is low, use a compressor and add air (keeping that faucet open). without knowing the switch settings, i would start by charging it to 20psi. then close the faucet and restore power. in a perfect world you would charge the tank to 2 psi lower than the switch kicks in.. but this is a good start. this would be the first thing i would do, then go from there.

 

Some great advice here and I will touch on what I have been through recently when I ran out, turned out to be a leak.

When the pressure is up, check the schrader valve at the top of the tank...there should be air coming out and not water. Some water may come out in the form of condensation initally but only briefly. If you have water flowing out then the tank needs to be replaced.

What type of pressure switch do you have, does it have a lever on the side?

Cut the power to the pump via the breaker and run the water until the pressure drops to 0. This is when you need to check the pressure in the tank. If you can shut off the well supply before the tank then that's great, just open a faucet until the water stops and the pressure is at 0 if the gauge is after the shutoff valve.

Edited to add: If you need to add alot of pressure, or any for that matter....I would very seriously recommend an air compressor depending on your tank size. Ours is 75 gal which probably has a bladder that's half the tank and it took about 2 hrs with a bicycle pump and a series of batteries with my portable inflator. My compressor is waiting on a part..... it sucked.

Depending on your pressure switch, 30/50 or 40/60, the tank should be 2 PSI less than the lower number when empty.

The amp test is a great suggestion, however I find it easier to pull the cover off the main panel since there is more wire to clamp. DO NOT PULL THE MAIN PANEL COVER UNLESS YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH THIS OR HAVE SOMEONE EXPERIENCED TO HELP.

If you don't have one of those levers on the side of the box which is a low pressure cutoff I would highly recommend one.

We had water for 10 min or so then we gradually lost pressure, turned out to be a stuck check valve along with an old pump with broken impellers. You could possibly have a leak and the thermal cutoff is engaging and again this is where someone suggested waiting 30 sec after tripping the breaker to see what happens.