Hello all. Im having an issue with a well. Its about 30 years old and is at a depth of 1100 feet. Today while watering I noticed the water pressure dropped down and then when it came back up there was a bunch of muddy water. Soon after that the water pressure dwindled to nothing. I went into the well house to look around and noticed the pump control box was smoking. I opened the box and found the start capacitor was extremely hot but tested to the manufacturer spec of 70 mfd.

Any advice would be helpful, as I know nothing about wells.

Thank you

I should add that this well has never went dry before and we have had quite a bit of rain this year.

James, I'm not an expert but you might need to deepen your well.

Rain won't make it down to 1100 ft.

Holy moly 1100 feet?! Mine up here in Indiana is only 80 feet deep and the well pump sits at 40 feet.

I'd call a well guy. You might have to pull the pump and inspect it. Hopefully the well screen is still good.......

Controller was smoking? Sounds like the pump motor locked up. If you had suddenly muddy water, you could have also had a minor collapse.

My deepest well was 468", another was 280'. Both placed the deep well pump at 5' above the bottom of the well.

Like esshup suggested, probably time for the well driller to visit. Pulling a deep pump is not a lot of fun, and if you have never done it, an 1100' deep well is not a great place to drop things into!

Thank you for the replies.

Motor may be on it's way out or the controller is taking a dump.

You won't know what is going on for real unless you hook some fancy stuff up to this and check it out!

If your start cap is leaking its bad even if it reads good. Before you go crazy 99.9% of the time it is something very very simple. Do not over think it or stress over it. Start caps are cheap replace first.

Cheers Don.

Start cap is good. It wasnt leaking fluid. The combustible fluid was boiling and making smoke. What I find perplexing is the absence of a run cap...

Its gotta be one of two things. Like others have said, it could have had a cave in and the pump could be clogged with mud or perhaps it could have a bad potential relay, which would cause the start cap to overheat....but the fact that the pump isnt running leads me to believe the former.

I will try a new potential relay and start cap. I might even add a run cap as well. I will also ohm the windings and I will report back with my findings.

Its not an emergency situation because there is also city water at the house. The well is just used for outside watering and such.

Thank you again for the help

I'm just not following this with your diagnostics.

What would you suggest?

If you can meg the motor and work back, and everything is fine, Probably have a control issue.

The vast majority of motor failures we encounter with older motors is the insulation on the windings break down. It will still run, but not right.

Don't know exactly what your motor is. Capacitor start, induction run? If that's the case and you have a bad cap, it won't start. If it's a capacitor start, capacitor run, then the run capacitor may be the devil.

Sometimes we'll see wire as being an issue. It also breaks down over time. You'll get a higher voltage drop to the motor from the source, so the motor isn't seeing what it really needs. 1100 feet of old wire is a good candidate for this issue.

You can have motors rewound to make work somewhat decent again, but it will never work like a new motor.

1100 feet, egads that must require some juice! And I thought mine was deep at 250ft.

My neighbor's pump bit the dust this week, and it cost them $4K for a change-out. Partly due to needing to pull the pump, and partly due to interior pumps going bad from running dry. In all a hell of a lot more expensive than I ever dreamed possible.

Now I am worried about my 20 year old pump and obviously lousy wiring.

I guess I lucked out. My bill was just over a thousand bucks to pull and replace my pump at 2 1/2 hp. and 45 gpm. Well is 88 feet deep and I think the pump is set at the half way point.

The pump had run nonstop 24/7 seven months of the year except for one year since about 2000 I think.