Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

Last week my wife noticed the switch in the basement clicking off and on repeatedly, so I checked into it. The well pump was cycling every 5 minutes...

I had the local well compnay come out the next day and check it. The contacts in the switch and capacitor in the control box were almost completely burned up from the continual cycling. I have no idea how long this has been going on, as you can't hear the pump run in the house. They replaced them and it still leaks the presure down and comes on again. When I built my shop, I tapped into the plastic hose right at the well casing and ran 140 feet of line to it. We couldn't be certain that there wasn't a leak somewhere under ground, so Friday I started digging down to install a curb stop to isolate the shop. After 3 hours, I hadn't made enough progress to be able to get the job done in 1 day with this cold weather coming in on Sat.

I'm down the length of the shovel handle with a step to stand on. At this point I couldn't lift more dirt out without making the hole much bigger for room to work. The clay is soooo freakin' dry down there that it's like trying to chip thru concrete.

I finally figured out that this wan't going to happen without help, so I ran to the rental company and brought this home.

It still took 2 hours to get down the 7 feet to the hose. I had to work slowly so I didn't hook the plastic hose or electrical cable and rip them out.

Finally, I'm ready to cut in the curb stop laying to the left of the hole. I was running out of daylight by this time and neglected to get anymore pics, but I got the hole filled back in just as dark was settling in. The backhoe was a muddy mess after the backfill, so I drove that to the shop and washed it all off to avoid a $100 cleaning charge. Saturday, I spent an hour cleaning all the mud out of the shop....

Sad part is, the pump still cycles every 5 minutes, so Monday the well company is coming back out to pull the pump and replace the check valve, which is what I suspected all along.