Water pump problems

David09

The house has a private well for water supply.
The system uses a pressure vessel with inflatable rubber bladder and submersible pump.

The whole system threw a wobbler today when any of the mains taps were switched on, the pipes began pulsating.
I took a look outside in the pump house and discovered that with the tap on, the water pressure was fluctuating like mad on the pressure gauge. It goes suddenly from almost 1 bar to 3bar and back down again, repeatedly.

I switched off the pump and drained down the taps. With the system empty, I checked the pressure in the vessel and it's inflated to 2 bar, as normal, indicating that the bladder hasn't been punctured.

Any ideas on what might be causing the problems???

AckwelFoley

On the pump, there is a little black box about half the size of a bag of sugar. Its a pressure regulator. Common enough that they go wallop, Cost about 30 quid. I suspect it may be that

sullzz

I agree with snyper it's pointing towards the pressure switch , it's a handy enough job to replace , it's just a live neutral and earth in and the same out , the switch itself just screws out of the pump , but in some cases you have to remove the pressure vessel to get a full turn on the pressure switch .

exaisle

Apologies for hi-jacking this thread....

I installed two filters last week on my well pump (one for PH regulation and one for iron removal) and since then the relay switch for the pump has cut off several times although it seems to work fine when i press the reset button. I checked the current being drawn and it's about 6amps. The cutoff is rated 7amps.

Any ideas? Should I simply replace the relay with a higher capacity one?

E.

exaisle

Just by way of completion, I discovered that whomever had wired the pump had connected the live directly to one of the pump windings, so the pump was cavitating more or less permanently....hence my rather large ESB bill and the plumber's rather large black eye.... ;-)