Last year we had to replace our well. The new well is on the West side of the house where we get the worst weather (that was the only place far enough from the septic according to the well digger).
On Tuesday, I came home from work to no water. Amy said that there was a bad sound coming from the garage which she thought was the furnace going out (but the furnace still worked). I sat outside most of the day with a hairdryer on an extension cord where the pipe enters the house. The air temp got up to 40 F, but the water didn’t come back. I got the bright idea to check the circuit breakers and discovered that one had been tripped. When I reset the circuit (I think the one which covers the internal pump within the well) we got our water back.
The next day when it got down to ten degrees we lost the water again (we had left the water dripping), but this time the circuit was not tripped. We have been without water since Thursday.
Note that the “well head” is exposed down about three feet underground since we never buried it last year to the top (the well digger said that we were responsible for doing this). Also we have a “box” to insulate the pipe where it enters the house, but there is about an inch of exposed, insulated PVC piping before it enters the house.
The water pressure gage just before the water softener read 0 PSI.
Is our water pump (internal within the well) shot or just frozen? Is it okay to melt snow for baths and flushing the toilet (saving the bottled water to drink and cook with).
Your problem is going to be hard to diagnose remotely. However, I am dubious that leaving your water dripping would have prevented freezing in the well head. I would guess that your well feeds a pressure tank and only operates the pump when the water level drops past a certain point. So unless the dripping tap emptied out your tank, you likely wouldn’t have gotten the flow needed to keep pipes from freezing.
As for melting snow, it’s your call. Unless it’s yellow, it’s perfectly safe for bathing and flushing. However, the energy and effort to melt it may be more than you can justify – I’d suggest dragging a bunch of gallon jugs or five gallon containers over to a friend’s house and borrowing their hose.
We have an above ground pump.
I have had the contacts on the pressure switch arc or burn so that they don’t work.
I remove the switch and clean the contacts with sandpaper or a dremel.
How much of your water pipe is exposed at the well head? If it’s a foot or so, you can get heat tape at a hardware store and wrap it around the exposed pipe. Once it is thawed, fill the hole with fiber glass insulation until spring comes. Just cut up a roll of it, and layer it right to the top.
Can you borrow a stethoscope? If so, you can hear the pump cycling at the well head, or not, if it’s fried. In the cold, I would not tell you to put your ear on the well head. You can use a screwdriver, with the handle to your ear canal and the other end on the well head.
Is there any other place where the line is open to the weather?
The pipe was exposed where it enters the house on the West side until we built an insulation box last year. However, there is still about 3/4 of an inch of insulated pipe exposed between the box and the house.
If the pump is frozen is it ruined or will it likely come back once it thaws? Is there anything we can do besides wait for the predicted 40’s on Monday?
Also, I tend to believe that the problem is at the well head and not the 3/4 inch of exposed pipe between the box and the house. That is because the “utility room” where it enters has been kept at 85+ F degrees the last couple of days (by opening the vents out there on our oil furnace) so if it was this area that was frozen I thing enough heat energy would have been transferred to melt the ice right where the pipe enters the house. On the other hand the well head is exposed to a depth of about 2.5 to 3.0 feet (it has eroded around the head during the last year and or our dogs have been digging there).
I didn’t realize how much water we use! We went to Wall Mart on Friday and bought 30 gallons which is all gone! I just made a run to the fire station where my wife and I volunteer and obtained 20 gallons of there well water (which is even worse than ours). Just flushing the toilet take about a gallon poured from a pitcher three foot off the ground.
It is extremely unlikely that the pump is frozen if it is an inground pump. Those are usually placed at the ends of wells that are more than 50 feet deep. (Some folks use submersible pumps at shallower depths, but the pump would still be deeper than 10 or 20 feet and it should be held at a constant temperature near 55°F by the surrounding soil.)
This is not to say that the pump was not damaged by trying to force water past a blockage, but it would not be frozen, per se.
I would tend to think that the pump might be OK, figuring that the system would just shut down when it could not move water rather than burning out the pump. (I’m offering you hope without having any actual knowledge of the situation–depending on your configuration, something might have caused the pump to run until it burned out.)
Depending on the feedback loop between the pressure tank and the pump, if the ice blockage caused the tank to think that it did not need more water it would not start the pump while if the tank needed more pressure that it could not get, it could signal the pump to run forever.
First get the ice blockage out. Wrap the exposed pipe with heater tape overnight–I’d pull back the insulation box and wrap the pipe with tape all the way around the elbow, then replace the insulation box. If it is easily accessible, simply remove that section of pipe and bring it in to warm up, thaw, and drain. (Be sure to insulate the exposed pipe that is left in the ground.)
Once you’ve got the pipe free, hook everything back up and see if the pump will try to fill the tank. (You might also have lost your prime during the first episode, but I don’t have that much experience with submersible pumps, so I do not know that “lost prime” is even an issue.)
Oh, probably not an issue, but did you turn off the valve between the pressure tank and the rest of the house during your first go-round? If you did, have you remembered to open it again? Does you system work on a switch between the circuit box and the pump that has been turned off? (Nothing more frustrating than having a perfectly serviceable system that does not happen to be working because it is turned off.)
Could you have a leaking toilet? Meaning that it won’t shut off? I have this problem occasionally, If a toilet runs all day, the well itself runs dry. Fix the toilet, and the well recharges. It’s pretty strange, we never have any problems with showers and stuff.
I really really doubt your pump could be frozen. One way to check if your pump is working (if you can’t simply hear it) is to watch your electric meter. It should start spinning faster when the pump is on. Have some one through the breaker back and forth once or twice and watch the electric meter.
If the freeze is between the well and the pressure tank, the pressure switch might try to run the pump to run up the pressure. I don’t know about duplicate safety switches, but there’s a whole lot I don’t know about wells.
My experience with foktop wells came when my well’s submersible pump shredded itself in the midst of a -15 F cold snap. I’d had a mattock for some years, but I didn’t know what it was for until I had to find the well in frozen earth. During a few days in the middle of the repair, I filled the hole with sections of wall insulation. I had a lot of time to consider the phrase “colder than a well-digger’s destination.” I don’t know if I got that cold, but by Og, I got mighty cold.
By the way, I had a “pitless adaptor” installed. The next time it happens, the well won’t have to be dug up. I don’t live there anymore, but someday, the owners may thank me for that. :rolleyes: