[smorley65]

We have a submersible well pump about 120 feet deep. Have NO water coming into house... have already replaced control panel, circuit breaker, and pressure switch. Pressure tank was reading 0, a friend stupidly put 100 psi into pressure tank, when we turned power back on, air blew out from water valve when turned on... ran tank back down to 0. Tried putting air back in with compressor to 38 psi, turned power and water back on... had a little bit of water and sputtering for about 15 minutes until tank ran back to 0 and now there is nothing coming from faucets? What could cause this? Some one said a possible broken pipe... or maybe no water in well? Another person said relief valve blew... how do I check or solve these issues?

[speedball1]

Are we talking about a galvanized pressure tank or a blue bladder tank? If it's a bladder tank the tank should be charged at 2PSI under the cut in point on the control box when the system's shut down and the pressure's bled off by opening a cold water faucet, So whadda you have? Back to you, Tom

[smorley65]

well... I'm not exactly sure.. have to check with husband. I know it's a white cylinder sticking out of ground with nozzle at top that looks like a tire valve. Sorry about the lack of information, I really don't know too much about this well stuff... until recently, and most of my knowledge has come from reading sites like this. Our capacitor went bad a couple of weeks back, so we changed it. After replacing capacitor, our pump seemed to cycle on and off non stop. After about a week of this, pressure started lowering, until one day, we had no water at all. Someone said pressure switch may have burned out, so we replaced it. This fixed nothing... circuit kept blowing instantly after turning pump on... thought it might be breaker... replaced that. Still no difference. Had capacitor checked, and wires running from pump... all were good. We have not heard pump kick on, so we are unable to determine our cut on/cut off pressure. If we added water to well, would this allow us to at least get pump to cut on, in order to determine cut on/off? Also, is 120 feet deep enough for well? Everyone I speak with has greater depths... well was installed in 1995, we had pressure tank replaced about 5 years ago... and other than that, no problems until recently. We bought an above ground pool for kids... 16 ft x 3 1/2 ft... could filling this have caused well to run dry? We had to fill it twice in a month's time??

[jlisenbe]

The tank might be bad, but that's not the source of your problem. For some reason you are not getting water from the pump. Could be the water table has dropped too low, but I'm more thinking the pump may be bad for several reasons. It keeps throwing the breaker, it is 17 years old, and it went through a period of short-cycling for at least several days.

Bottom line is this. If you are not getting water, and the switch has the pump turned on, and the capacitor is good, then the pump is generally the culprit. Again, that's assuming the well has water, but even if you had pumped the water level down low to fill the pool, the well should recover in a few days and be good to go.

Running the pump dry would also contribute to pump failure.

[jgrantacob]

I agree with jlisenbe on the pump going out. The symptoms say head to Tractor Supply or call a well repair service.

Water Well Drilling Texas