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cindy1121 · Oct 6, 2012, 08:54 PM

The water pump in my house won't hold a prime. Its an air-e-tainer tank and star motor. You plug it in and the prime disappears. Does anyone have an idea of what might be causing this?

speedball1 · Oct 7, 2012, 07:21 AM

Will the pump hold prime with the pump off? Let me know. Tom

cindy1121 · Oct 7, 2012, 09:45 AM

If the plug is in it will hold some water but once the plug is out the water runs out. That's with the pump being off. The water will stay there for a second when I pour it in but it will slowly drain back out.

speedball1 · Oct 7, 2012, 11:50 AM

Sure sounds like a faulty foot/check valve. Have it replaced, Good luck, Tom

cindy1121 · Oct 8, 2012, 02:13 PM

There was a very small stick making the ball/check valve stay open at the bottom of the intake pipe. I removed it and replaced the valve with a foot valve that has a screen on it so I won't have to worry about that again. It holds the prime now but still seems to be having issues with drawing the water up. There is a clear hose that is clamped onto the pump that is mounted on a 6 gallon tank and the clear hose shows the water going up to the pump but then it kind of stays stationary, an air pocket can be seen resting there. Could my pump have gone bad? It is staying on and never quite shuts off. Before all of these issues I was actually having low preasure at some of the faucets in the house. I hope this helps. My biggest fear is that it is the pump itself. What do you think?

Oh and by the way there is no preasure gauge so I can't really monitor the preasure, when I go to release the water it does seem like it has some preasure. Could this be a bad preasure switch too? Trying not to replace too much in case it is the pump. I know these things can be hard to diagnose

jlisenbe · Oct 8, 2012, 04:42 PM

We are going to assume here that you have a bladder type pressure tank. If so, then there is an air valve towards the top. Generally speaking, you can use a tire gauge to measure pressure there. That doesn't work perfectly, but it usually give you a fairly good indiication of what you have.

The fact that your pump cuts on and runs for what seems to be long periods is not good. I'm going to guess that it ran "dry" on many occasions when the system lost prime. If that's the case, then it could have damaged the pump. The fact that you had been having low pressure even before all this began is another bad sign.

One more issue. I'm guessing this is a shallow well jet pump, with only one pipe going into the well, spring, lake, whatever. If that's the case, then just be aware that it is fairly sensitive to water depth. It can only draw down to 25 feet or so, and even then you will not get the kind of pressure you could get at, say, 12 feet. If your water level has fallen, then that could also impact your pressure.