Electrical Question–is the well pump on
I’ve got a well about 50 feet from the house. Power goes out through a 10/3 underground feeder cable and water comes in through 1″ copper, both buried in a 24″ deep trench (I just installed this stuff the other day). The pressure tank is in the crawl space along with the pressure switch and a motor starter for the pump. Out at the wellhead I installed a ‘yard hydrant’ using a tee from the main 1″ line that comes into the house (piping at and near the wellhead is brass up to and including the hydrant, then it converts to copper). All of it was placed under pressure for several days before the trench was closed, and it did not leak anywhere.
My question: can I install some sort of indicator light or similar that will tell me when the pump is running? My theory is that I would notice if the pump were running too much or at odd times. With the setup the way it is now, there would be no indication of a subsurface leak, unless a pipe was fully open for a LONG time, in which case we would have no water in the house.
While I’m at it, two stories about invisible leaks. One, client with small commercial building calls and says that the water bill shows a couple hundred thousand gallons of usage above normal in a 60 day period. I check it out and find that an irrigation fitting in a large planter box has blown and the pipe, buried in the dirt, is wide open three hours per day (in the middle of the night, actually). Drainage from the planter box was not easily traceable but I suspect it was plumbed into the sanitary sewer. Two, colleague’s client with a house on the fairway gets a water bill for more than a million gallons. Problem is found to be a damaged irrigation line, hit by a lawnmower or something. The landscaper had been highly clever in creating drainage swales for the property and channeled a big piece of the backyard down toward a water hazard on the golf course. Owners in both cases had to pay their water bills, of course.
Replies
I just did the same thing to my cabin . Two things ;
One is I can hear the pressure switch , and two theres a little rattle of the incomming pipe. I dont reccomend #two but I think hearing the pressure switch would be ok. I hear a lot of things in a home that means all is well. Think about it . Can you hear the pressure switch?
Tim Mooney
You could install a light to operate in parallel with the pump, not a big deal.
Another idea would be to install a timer (like an hourmeter on a boat, but for AC) to accumulate time when the pump is on. The cub 7 or cub 4 (see link below) would work if you get the one for AC. Probably run you around 100 to 150 bucks. Something cheaper could be done, too, if you like to get creative.
I'd probably like a set up with two timers in one - one for total time, and one that is resetable to zero. That way you could get a rough idea of what is used in a day and then know if it is going over "normal".
Lastly, if you have a friend that is a controls engineer or a plant electrician with PLC experience, there are some programmable relays with realtime clocks that could be used to really get you what you are looking for - "If it runs more then x minutes in y hours, shut her down!" Some thing similar exists for washer hoses, one of the most common causes of house floods.
http://www.redlion-controls.com/products/timers.html
And a friend who owned a strip shopping center (she bought all the water) got high bills. Put a useage strip chart v time on and long story found the local landscape/ lawn fertilizer people people filling up water truks at 3 AM from outside faucet.
For an indicator light you can get a small neon light from places like Radio Shack. Neon has the advantage of the lamp not burning out. You'd install it downstream of the motor starter.
A lot of cities will make some adjustments for water leaks and not charge full rates.
At least many will adjust the sewer charges if they are tied to water usage.
Wire a fire alarm bell in parallel with the pump?
hehehe
SamT
In industrial settings this issue comes up fairly often. Until a few years ago, about 5 or so, the standard approach was adding a relay controlled light or the neon mentioned. More recently small coils have been available commercially to drive a LED. Not sure if it would be easily visible at 50' in daylight unless you provided a shade or dark background but I think it will work well at night.
There are a few models. I like the one with wiring connections on the coil to connect the LED to as opposed to the all-in-one unit with the connections made. The former allows the LED to be sited more flexibly. All seem to operate on the basic transformer principle. The coil is placed around a power lead and the current passing through the lead induces a voltage in the coil. Because there is no direct electrical connection the indicator LED is isolated and safe from line voltage.
I'll dig around on the net to see if I can find a supplier but and good industrial parts house should be able to fix you up with one if you describe what you want.
Almost posted when it dawned on me that these units need not be located as the pump as the coils sense current not voltage. You could place the coil on one of the wires at the breaker and slip the LED into a holder glued, I use silicon caulk, into a hole in the panel cover. The indicator light would be at the main panel feeding the pump.
The more I think about it the more I'm convicted that an indicator light at the panel is something I might be offering as an option to HOs for new houses. A lot of these pumps are a long way away and the tech, gadget, appeal of this sort of thing would cater to the man of the house. We men are such suckers for shiny toys and blinking lights.
The system for our house has a preasure guage next to the preasure switch. You can see the needle jump when it comes on and turns off. We have a basement so I can go there and check things pretty easily. That section of the basement has a lot of mechanical equiptment in it. I keep adding more.