Well pump popping breaker

[showcrop]

I've seen the power line in the well to the pump wear through. Pump torque occasionally results in dead short but intermittently.

When we pulled my son's FIL's pump a few years ago there were no discs on the pipe/wires to keep the wires off the wall. I had the three kids that were present use rags and clean/inspect the whole length of wire. They found two worn places. We installed 5-6 discs.

 

[Absent Minded Farmer]

2011. They replaced it after a lightening strike. I made it through a Sunday without having to call and have them put in another new one anyway. I just don't know why it almost always starts acting up on a Friday and happens after dark. It sounds like I'm making it up.

I wonder if something on your grid is starting up/shutting down for the weekend & is causing just enough of a fluctuation in your neighborhood to cause a trip on your circuit with a lot of draw? You have any big industry near by that would suck up a lot of juice from the lines? Pumping stations & treatment plants could be another culprit.

Anyone else have issues in your area?

Mike

 

[rrlund]

Curious where you put the antifreeze or what ya mean there
All the switches im familiar with hook directly to the potable water side

You must be in a warm climate or have your tank and switch in the basement. This a bury system. If you Google it you can probably see what it is. The tank is buried underground next to the well. The pressure switch and gauge sit right on top of the well. There's a copper tube that runs down inside the well casing a ways and is gets pressure from the actual potable water. It's filled with antifreeze. The water pressure pressurizes the antifreeze and works the gauge and switch. When it got down to -20 a few months ago, the antifreeze got slushy and the pump wouldn't start up. I heated it with a torch, then it ran up to 85 psi before it shut off. I had to put a heat mat over and plug it in and covered it with a heavy coat for a few weeks to make sure it didn't happen again.

 

[buickanddeere]

There is a little gizmo that your power company can temporarily install between your meter setting and the meter. It records all electrical flow , normal and odd situations.

They did this to my house because I had a number of burnt motors / slow starters and other intermittent issues that seemed like a bad ground.

They discovered that the transformer on the pole was bad. After the new transformer was installed, my 1930s Westinghouse refrigerator in the shop started and spun up faster than I had ever heard it.

How does a bad service/utility ground cause those symptoms ?

 

[joeysmith]

You must be in a warm climate or have your tank and switch in the basement. This a bury system. If you Google it you can probably see what it is. The tank is buried underground next to the well. The pressure switch and gauge sit right on top of the well. There's a copper tube that runs down inside the well casing a ways and is gets pressure from the actual potable water. It's filled with antifreeze. The water pressure pressurizes the antifreeze and works the gauge and switch. When it got down to -20 a few months ago, the antifreeze got slushy and the pump wouldn't start up. I heated it with a torch, then it ran up to 85 psi before it shut off. I had to put a heat mat over and plug it in and covered it with a heavy coat for a few weeks to make sure it didn't happen again.

Ahh interesting
Yea our pressure switch is normally mounted to the pressure tank T
It connections directly to the potable water
In a well house or somewhere thats kept from freezing

 

[trackrat]

I think pump or wires in well going to it the little bit of movement when the pump cycles can wear the insulation off in a small spot allowing a short

 

[DanielW]

While I'm no expert, we had a similar situation. Just like others above, it ended up being a problem in the wiring dropping down to the pump. In our case it was the heat-shrink the installer used where the pump wires were connected Not sure if it was shorting through the water (if it's really pure water it doesn't conduct) or just the corroded connection drawing more amperage. It bugged me that they only used one layer of heat-shrink to seal those unions. If I was installing a system like that, I'd spend the extra 70 cents on a few more layers of heat shrink to ensure a water-tight seal.

Once ours dried out I re-did the connection and sealed it with a few overlapping pieces of the adhesive-filled heat-shrink before dropping the pump back down. Each piece a little longer to get good seals at the ends. I never put in (nor thought about) the discs to prevent the wires from chafing, but they sound like a good idea. As long as you have a properly-installed torque-arrester just above the pump, I don't think there'd be much appreciable movement or wires rubbing against the casing. But I'm certainly no expert. And submersible well pump seem to be much less expensive than they used to be. If I had one pulled today, I'd probably just replace the pump preemptively anyway.

 

[sms]

Literally everything has been apart or replaced in the last four months except the pump. It was still working alright this morning. I got thinking last night, the wires from the house are solid, the ones going down in the well are braided. Each side of the pressure switch has one of each. When I ran the wire through conduit three weeks ago, I had to take it off of the switch. When I did, I took all of them off, unscrewed the switch and took it off to put stronger antifreeze in it. I wonder if I got one of the tiny little braid pieces against something that shorted it out somehow and flipping the breaker back on like I did Saturday night burned it off?

Good idea to check the pressure switch for some kind of ground. We had one that welded the contracts in the on position. Missus called because there was so much pressure she couldn't turn the faucet. I told her to quickly shut off the pump until I got home to fix it

 

[Fritz Maurer]

How does a bad service/utility ground cause those symptoms ?

I don't know.... it was Ohio Edison's idea. I initially thought it was a bad ground because once I accidentally shorted a live wire on the compressor and tripped the breaker..... later discovered everything ran great ....for a few days. Then it was back to the old mushy- starting motors and dimming lights.

I later learned that I could short out the 220 line intentionally, trip the breaker, and everything would be back to normal for a short while.

 

[buickanddeere]

I don't know.... it was Ohio Edison's idea. I initially thought it was a bad ground because once I accidentally shorted a live wire on the compressor and tripped the breaker..... later discovered everything ran great ....for a few days. Then it was back to the old mushy- starting motors and dimming lights.

I later learned that I could short out the 220 line intentionally, trip the breaker, and everything would be back to normal for a short while.

Problem was an open neutral. The neutral current was instead being incorrectly carried on the ground system, water pipes, ground rods/ground plates etc.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

Problem was an open neutral. The neutral current was instead being incorrectly carried on the ground system, water pipes, ground rods/ground plates etc.

Well, that may be, but I can't believe Ohio Edison would have given me a new transformer if that's all there was to it.

 

[buickanddeere]

Well, that may be, but I can't believe Ohio Edison would have given me a new transformer if that's all there was to it.

Not impossible that the centre tap for the transformer had a fault(s).

 

[Fritz Maurer]

Not impossible that the centre tap for the transformer had a fault(s).

That must have been it, then. You know what was funny, the house is near an intersection.... the loud azz Harleys are still winding through 2nd gear as they pass the house, and the throbbing exhaust would make the lights flicker.

 

[rrlund]

We'll find out tomorrow. We had to go to a funeral this morning and when we got home, it had popped again. I called the well guy. He said they'd be here in the morning.

 

[buickanddeere]

Choosing a pump with too many stages will cause dangerous over pressure when the pressure switch contacts weld together .
Number of stages and water depth have to be considered . So that a dead headed continuously operating pump will max out at 75-100psi .

 

[scootergmc]

Interesting. How old is the pump? I don't recall it being mentioned.

 

[rrlund]

Interesting. How old is the pump? I don't recall it being mentioned.

I mentioned it. 2011 after a lightning strike.

 

[Russ from MN]

I had a breaker trip prematurely once, and when I went to change it one of the screws holding the wire was loose, so the bad connection was causing heat. You need a clamp-on ammeter to check the load. A question about the stuck check valve, I think when a centrifugal pump is deadheaded like that will draw less amperage, but if it runs long enough the pump will overheat. We had that happen to a pump at work one time, about a 50 hp pump, someone started it without opening the output valve. It ran until the bearings in the pump seized up, then it blew the coupling, then it vibrated so bad it broke the feet off the motor, and it was upside down on the floor, the cooling fins wore grooves in the floor!

 

[rrlund]

Ken was here this morning and put a new pump in it. He said he'd wait a while before he sends me a bill to be sure it's working. He said a 15 year old pump on a farm is like a 30 year old pump at a residence.

 

[paul]

Antifreeze?

Puzzled.

You never really mentioned the wire down the hole. I think you have talked about the wire to the pump from your power pole, horizontal feed. You haven’t really said anything about the vertical wire to the pump.

My pickup is in the same boat as your pump, it shuts down to limp mode every so often, infrequent enough they can’t find it, the codes point to generic thing that has been replaced twice and clearly isn’t the actual problem…

Paul