No water following power loss

insular1

Hi all, returned from a couple days up the country and found we had no water in the house. We have our own private well so thought maybe the pump had broken but found the switch had tripped in the fuse box for the pump. Traced this back to water ingress in a badly sealed junction box dried this out and reset the switch. It's been about 2 hours and still no water at the tap. I know there is power going to the pump as there are also sockets on the same line and these are working since the fuse was reset. Any ideas? Do I need to manually restart the pump somehow?

insular1

In case anyone else in the same situation think I found the problem. Seems the power loss may have been unrelated. Traced the issue back to the little box in the pictures.

Anyone know what this box is? It's powered from the same box as the pump and seems to sit on the water line.

Looks like I was lucky and managed to avoid a potential fire. You can see the area around the live and neutral wires in the second picture is blackened with heat and the box itself has slightly melted!!

The pump company can't make it today to replace so looks like will be a couple of days without water, but I feel I dodged a potential fire so not too put out.

IMG_20230606_121647.jpg

IMG_20230606_121619.jpg

monseiur

That looks like a pressure switch, should be easy enough to replace but you need to find out what caused it to overheat first.

dp639

That's a Square D switch - handy enough to replace.

"simply put it's a device that senses the pressure in your water system and sends either an on or off signal to your pump depending on the current pressure in the system essentially. it controls the range of pressure in which the pump will run in every pumping system that a pressure switch is used"

insular1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120681894#Comment_120681894

Before I cleaned it there was a serious amount of spider webs in there. Thinking perhaps the little bugger got unlucky and shorted the wires or some dust or debris caught in the webbing did. Thanks for the replies, I'll have a look and see if I can get one myself.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120681932#Comment_120681932

Unless it was a metal-clad spider then no way it caused that to overheat!

Wearb

If you can, wait for someone with experience to look at this.

Your pump might be damaged, or loose wires at the pressure switch, clogged pressure switch port or burned contacts. Your pump might have been constantly running. Installers around here wire a bulkhead lamp into the pump circuit so you that you'd notice if it ran for too long.

New switch will have to be adjusted after installation and pressure tank tested and set. Gauge would often be replaced at this time too.

insular1

Just to follow up on this in case anyone is in the same boat. Meant to follow up sooner but forgot about it once it was sorted. Plumber came out and had a look. He had never seen anything like this happened before, found the whole thing very strange but felt I was very lucky. Something shorted it pretty badly and from the damage to the plastic container could very easily have resulted in a fire. Feel very lucky! He tested the system and said everything else is working as normal so just to keep an eye on it and switch it off immediately if I ever noticed anything similar again. Have been keeping an eye on it since it was fixed and thankfully no issues at all. Seems to have just been a dodgy pressure switch.

Thanks for the input.