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gkbarr · May 30, 2010, 02:34 PM

I have several related problems concerning my water.

Pressure tank is at 45 PSI
Water Pump only builds pressure to 20PSI.
Only air is flowing when I turn on a faucet.

The pump does not turn off at 20psi. But it does not build past 20PSI.

Small house. 1 Kitchen Sink, 1 Bathroom Sink, 1 Toilet, 1 Shower

I have no idea what the cut in/out pressures are for the pump. I didn't keep track of how many turns I have done.

A new well was dug about 5 years ago.

My next door neighbor, down river, has ramped up operations as a plant nursery this summer. Could he be draining the water table enough that my well is not deep enough?

How can I figure out where the cut in/out pressure are currently at? And how can I make the pump build more pressure? And why is only air coming from pipes?

gkbarr · May 30, 2010, 02:42 PM

When I turn the pump off, it holds the pressure.

jlisenbe · May 30, 2010, 02:55 PM

Is this pump in the well or above ground?

A drop in the water table is possibly the culprit. I wouldn't run the pump much until finding out. Running a pump dry can burn it up. You might also have a problem with a leak in the suction line if the pump is above ground, but that often causes problems with losing prime as well. Does your pump tend to lose prime?

gkbarr · May 30, 2010, 03:03 PM

Above ground. Gould J5S. I have never had to prime the pump. And this is the first problem I have experienced.

jlisenbe · May 30, 2010, 06:21 PM

Don't worry about cutin/out pressures right now. The reason you are getting air is probably because the pump is picking up air (for some reason). As the pump delivers air, the pressure tank will fill with it and then all you get from a faucet is either air or an air/water mix. I don't know any easy answers for you. If I was you, I would try pulling the wellpipe and then trying to get some idea of where the water level in the well is.

It is possible that you have either a pump or wellpipe problem, but I would think the fact that you are getting a lot of air points to a water level or suction line leak problem.

gkbarr · May 30, 2010, 06:36 PM

Noted. Thank you. What about the issue of the pump not rising above 20psi. I read in other threads that you posted in that it is part of a safety feature of the pump design. But why is it doing it?

jlisenbe · May 30, 2010, 08:00 PM

If your water level has dropped, then the pump would not be able to get sufficient water to pump up to pressure. BTW, how many pipes come out of your pump, one or two?

Not too sure what on earth I would have said relating this to a safety feature on a pump. You might be referring to the safety lever on a switch that cuts the pump off if pressure falls to 10# below the cut in pressure of the switch on the idea that the pump must be running dry for pressure to have fallen so low.

gkbarr · May 30, 2010, 08:56 PM

Re Pipes: One pipe leads to the pump from the well, then there is another pipe that leads to the pressure tank from the pump.

You wrote about the pressure switch. "If the pump gets up to 20# and then keeps running, but can't get over 20#, then your switch is doing its job."

jlisenbe · May 31, 2010, 07:52 AM

That was actually specific to another situation. Someone had stated the switch, in that case, might be bad. I was simply saying that all the switch can do is keep the pump running until it gets to cut off pressure.

GK, you have a shallow well jet pump. Water depth is critical to your setup. You can't pull from much more than 25 feet down. So you can see that the water depth is a big deal with you. If the water table has dropped even just a few feet, then it can have a negative effect on your system. Shallow well pumps work better as the water depth DEcreases.

Check out this site for a good explanation of what you have. They refer to yours as a single drop jet-pump system. It strictly works off suction, which is to say it uses air pressure to "push" the water up the wellpipe. As I said, that only works well up to twenty five feet or so, and won't work at all as you get much past thirty feet.

Water Well Pumps and Systems - How a Water Well Pump Works - Popularmechanics.com

So, you are probably at the point of needing to call in a well pro to take a look. Honestly, if your well bore size will allow it, and if you have a well deep enough, you would do "well" to go to a submersible pump. However, as you can read from the article above, you can go to a double drop (two pipe) jet pump setup that will work effectively at up to 100 feet, sometimes even more. But, as I stated, you might want to call in a pro.

Just make sure that the pump is properly primed. I feel sure yours is, but that is easy to do.