Water Pump

[jmellc]

Having issues with water at my house. Have a temp hookup with a hose to a neighbor's house so have a little time to figure out the problem. I checked voltage at pump house and had full 240 from black to red. Didn't check yellow as I thought it only carried booster charge on startup. Should I get a steady reading on it though? I have hooked up a few pumps but never did much troubleshooting on them.

 

[iwire]

This from EC&M may help

Troubleshooting Residential Submersible Pump Systems

 

[GoldDigger]

FWIW I had a problem with my submersible pump, checked out starter, dry run protector, pressure switch, etc.
Turned out to be a faulty fusible disconnect whose blades were not closing properly.
(Possibly a side effect of the mouse nest)
((which was in turn a side effect of not noticing that the installer ten years ago had not blanked off one unused 3/4" knockout.))

If you have voltage on the actual pump leads but no current (clamp on ammeter), then you have a faulty pump or a broken wire.
The starter lead is necessary to start the pump rotating, but it will not prevent the pump from drawing an excessive current and humming a lot till it burns out or the overloads trip.

 

[ActionDave]

Didn't check yellow as I thought it only carried booster charge on startup. Should I get a steady reading on it though? I have hooked up a few pumps but never did much troubleshooting on them.

If it is a franklin pump starter the yellow and black are the hots and the red is the starting. Amp meter is your friend here. See if the pump is drawing a load.

Pressure switch, pump protector, pump starter relay, starting cap, all can go bad and you hope it's one of those. Be prepared for the worst though, a lot of the time it's the pump.

 

[chadnodine]

Try bypassing float switch or pressure switch. Be sure the pump is grounded correctly and check each leg to ground. I have found some pump motors not work when the ground was lost. I had to replace the run capacitor on my well pump last week.


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[kwired]

Having issues with water at my house. Have a temp hookup with a hose to a neighbor's house so have a little time to figure out the problem. I checked voltage at pump house and had full 240 from black to red. Didn't check yellow as I thought it only carried booster charge on startup. Should I get a steady reading on it though? I have hooked up a few pumps but never did much troubleshooting on them.

Did you check if it was drawing current? If it is, you probably have a mechanical or plumbing problem and not an electrical problem. If it is high current and cycles on/off often - you may have bad start capacitor or potential relay and it never starts and it cycles on overload protection.

1.5 hp and less typically only use the third lead for starting. 2 hp and up often are capacitor start-capacitor run and that third lead is always in the circuit though it should draw less then the other two leads, it has a start capacitor switched onto it only at starting then they drop the start capacitor off and the current through the third lead is in series with the run capacitor only during run mode.

Have seen several pumps that simply wear out the splines on the shaft that couples the motor to the pump - motor runs but isn't driving the pump anymore.

 

[Barbqranch]

I have had failures where the water pipe broke, and water was just going around and around.

Also, when I had to replace the Franklin control box, I took the dead one and made a breakout extension that would plug into the fixed part of the unit, and let me plug the control part into it and have access to all the connections.

 

[jmellc]

The breaker started tripping just after my last post. I disconnected pump and it quit tripping. I went ahead and replaced pump and control box. Both were quite old and I have had to replace a lot of our water equipment over the years.