Well Pump and Water System Service
On a well, you are the water utility. Nobody else is coming to fix the pressure, and the difference between a bad afternoon and a bad month is usually diagnosis.
We diagnose the whole system, pump, tank, switch, wiring and well, before anyone pulls anything out of the ground.
How a well system works
Diagnosing a well system is much easier when you know what the pieces do, and most homeowners on a well have never had it explained.
The pump. Either a submersible sitting far down in the well casing, the norm for anything deeper than about 25 feet, which is nearly all Oregon wells, or a jet pump at the surface on a shallow well. The pump does not run continuously. It runs to refill the pressure tank.
The pressure tank. A vessel divided by a rubber bladder, with air pre-charged on one side and water on the other. Compressed air pushes water out to the house between pump cycles. This is what gives you steady pressure without the pump starting every time you wash your hands.
The pressure switch. A small device that starts the pump when tank pressure falls to the cut-in point and stops it at the cut-out point. Typically 30/50 or 40/60 psi. It is the brain of the system and it is also one of the most common failure points.
The gauge. Cheap, often broken, and the first thing to check, a great many well diagnoses go wrong because someone trusted a stuck gauge.
The control box on some submersible installations, containing the start components.
The well itself, casing, static water level, recovery rate. The part nobody can see and the part that occasionally is the answer.
Almost every symptom on a well system maps onto one of those, and the ones that are cheap to fix are also the most common. That is why we test before pulling a pump.
No water at all
The worst symptom and frequently the cheapest cause. In rough order of likelihood:
Electrical. A tripped breaker, a blown fuse in a disconnect, or a failed pressure switch. Check the breaker first. A breaker that trips again immediately means a fault rather than a nuisance trip, and repeated resetting is a bad idea.
Pressure switch failure. Contacts pitted, burned or stuck. The pump never gets the signal to start. An inexpensive part and a common fault, particularly where the switch has been cycling frequently for years.
A stuck or clogged switch tube. The small tube sensing tank pressure blocks with sediment or iron, and the switch reads a pressure that is not there.
Control box failure on installations that have one, capacitor or relay.
Pump failure. Motor, windings, or a seized impeller. Real, and the expensive answer, which is exactly why it is not the first assumption.
Wiring fault down the well. The drop cable can chafe against the casing or fail at a splice. Diagnosed by resistance and insulation testing at the surface, which is far cheaper than pulling the pump to look.
Well gone dry or the water level dropped below the pump. More common in late summer, in drought years, and in areas of declining groundwater. If the pump runs but delivers nothing, this is a strong candidate.
Frozen line in winter, usually at a riser or in an unheated pump house rather than in the buried run.
Our sequence is: verify power, test the switch, test resistance and insulation on the drop cable, check amp draw against the pump nameplate, and sound the static level. That establishes whether the problem is above ground or below before anything comes out of the well.
Check the breaker and the gauge before anyone talks about pulling a pump.
Call Now: 1-866-203-6890Low or falling pressure
Low pressure has more possible causes than no water, and the useful first question is whether it came on gradually or suddenly.
Pressure switch set low or drifted. Sometimes simply adjustable, and it is worth checking before anything else.
Waterlogged pressure tank. The bladder has failed and the tank is full of water with no air cushion. Pressure then rises and falls sharply with use and the pump cycles constantly. Diagnosed by tapping the tank, a hollow ring at the top and a dull thud at the bottom is a healthy tank; dull all the way up is waterlogged.
Clogged sediment filter or a fouled iron filter. Extremely common, easy to check, and the single most likely cause of a gradual pressure decline on a treated well system.
Pump wearing out. Submersible pumps lose output gradually as impellers wear, particularly on sandy water. The symptom is a system that just does not deliver what it used to.
Well level dropping so the pump is working against more lift than it was sized for. Seasonal, and worse in a dry year.
Scaled or corroded plumbing, especially on old galvanized service between well and house. Distinguishing this from a pump problem matters and is done by testing pressure at the tank versus at the house.
A leak in the buried line between well and house, which shows as low pressure plus a pump running more than it should.
Short cycling and the pressure tank
A pump that clicks on and off rapidly during use is the symptom to take most seriously, because it is destroying the pump.
Motors wear out on starts, not on running hours. A pump that starts thirty times filling a bath is doing the damage of a much longer service life compressed into a season. Short cycling is why pumps that should last fifteen years fail in five.
The cause is nearly always the pressure tank: a failed bladder, or lost air pre-charge. A tank with no air cushion holds almost no usable water, so the pump starts, hits cut-out pressure in a second, stops, and immediately falls back to cut-in.
The checks are simple. Air pressure at the tank valve with the system drained should be about 2 psi below the switch cut-in, 28 psi for a 30/50 system. Water coming out of the air valve means the bladder has ruptured and the tank needs replacing. And drawdown, how much water comes out between pump starts, tells us whether the tank is doing its job.
An undersized tank causes the same symptom without any fault at all. A twenty-gallon tank on a household using a lot of water at once will cycle no matter how healthy it is, and the fix is a larger tank rather than a new pump.
The other cause worth naming is a leaking check valve or foot valve, which lets water drain back down the well between cycles so the pump restarts for no reason. Also relatively inexpensive, and also frequently misdiagnosed as a pump problem.
Short cycling is killing your pump. It is usually the tank.
Book a Well DiagnosisAir, sediment and spitting taps
Air spitting from taps. Either the water level has fallen near the pump intake and it is drawing air, a leak on the suction side of a jet pump, or a failing check valve letting the drop pipe empty. On a submersible, intermittent air is a signal worth acting on rather than tolerating, it usually means the level is marginal.
Sand and grit. A well producing sand is wearing its own pump out. Causes include a screen or casing problem, a pump set too low in the well, or over-pumping a well beyond its yield. The fix ranges from repositioning the pump to fitting a sand separator, and it should be addressed because sand is abrasive to everything downstream.
Cloudy water that clears from the bottom up is air, and it is harmless. Cloudy water that does not clear is sediment or a treatment issue.
Sudden change in taste, smell or clarity is a testing matter, not a plumbing one, and it needs a bacteria test promptly. Any well work, flooding or nearby ground disturbance is also a reason to test. Treatment is covered on our water filtration page.
A well that recovers slowly, good pressure in the morning, poor after two showers and the laundry, is a yield problem rather than an equipment problem. The answers are storage: a larger pressure tank, or an atmospheric storage tank with a booster pump, which lets a low-yield well fill slowly and the house draw quickly. This is a common and workable solution on rural properties in the eastern counties.
Pump replacement
When testing shows the pump itself has failed, replacement means pulling the drop pipe, cable and pump out of the well and installing new. What matters is what gets done alongside it, because the pump is out of the ground once and the access is the expensive part.
We replace the drop cable rather than reusing it, fit a new check valve, inspect the drop pipe and replace it where it is aged or degraded, fit new torque arrestors and cable guards, and set the pump at the correct depth for the well, below the drawdown level with clearance above the bottom so it is not sitting in sediment.
Sizing is done properly rather than by matching what came out. Pump selection depends on the depth to water, the pressure required at the house, the vertical rise to the house, the friction loss in the run, and the well yield, and a pump larger than the well can support pumps the well down and draws air, which is worse than one slightly smaller.
Constant-pressure and variable-speed pumps are worth mentioning: they modulate speed to hold steady pressure regardless of demand, which eliminates the pressure swing between cut-in and cut-out entirely, and they largely eliminate short cycling. They cost more and they need more sophisticated controls, but on a house where several fixtures run at once and the pressure swing is annoying, the difference is dramatic.
Freeze protection and pump houses
Well systems have exposure that municipal-supplied houses do not, and it is concentrated in a few places.
The buried line from well to house is generally below frost depth and rarely the problem. The risers at each end and anything inside a pump house or well pit are where the freezing happens: the pressure tank, the switch, the gauge, the filters and the exposed pipework, all sitting in an uninsulated shed in a Klamath or Harney County January.
What works: insulating the enclosure properly, a thermostatically controlled heater sized for the space, heat trace on exposed pipework, and a pitless adapter arrangement that keeps connections below frost level. What does not work is a bare bulb and optimism, which is what a surprising number of pump houses run on.
For seasonal properties, the well system needs its own shutdown, pump off at the breaker, pressure tank drained, filters drained, and our seasonal winterization page covers the whole-property procedure.
Low-yield well? Storage plus a booster beats a bigger pump.
Get a System QuoteServices that often go with this one
- Water filtration & treatment
- Water softener installation
- Septic system plumbing
- Seasonal home winterization
- Water pressure regulator
- Main water line repair
Where we cover
Available in all seven regions, 155 Oregon communities.
Well systems, answered
The breaker for the pump, and the pressure gauge. A tripped breaker and a failed pressure switch account for a large share of no-water calls, and both are inexpensive. If the breaker trips again immediately, stop resetting it and call; that is a fault, not a nuisance trip.
Almost always the pressure tank, a failed bladder or lost air pre-charge, so there is no cushion holding water between cycles. It matters because motors wear out on starts, and short cycling is the main reason pumps fail years early. Sometimes it is a leaking check valve, and occasionally the tank is simply too small.
Ten to fifteen years is typical for a submersible, and considerably longer where the system is not short cycling and the water is not sandy. A pump failing at five years usually had a tank or cycling problem that nobody fixed.
More likely the well is recovering slowly, a yield problem rather than an equipment problem. The answer is storage: a larger pressure tank, or an atmospheric storage tank with a booster pump so a slow well can fill gradually while the house draws quickly.
Yes, coliform bacteria and nitrate annually, and after any well work, flooding or nearby ground disturbance, plus any change in taste, smell or clarity. Nothing is testing your well but you, and arsenic in particular is odourless and tasteless in parts of Oregon.
If the pressure swing between cut-in and cut-out bothers you, or several fixtures run at once, yes, it holds steady pressure and largely eliminates short cycling. It costs more up front and needs more sophisticated controls, so it is a comfort and longevity decision rather than a necessity.
Pump houses freeze. Insulation and a thermostat, not a bare bulb.
Talk to a PlumberTest above ground before pulling anything out of it
Breaker, switch, gauge, tank pre-charge, cable resistance and amp draw, in that order. Most well faults are found and fixed at the surface, and we will tell you clearly when yours is not.
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