I have trees showing stress from lack of rain and excessive heat, so for past week I have been running my well pump 24/7 moving the irrigation every 24 hrs. The trees after a day or so are looking better. It's a good well never runs out but, I'm concerned for the well pump down in the well at 71 feet. My well guy sold me a ceramic pump, is now 26 yrs old, is showing no signs of weakness. I can run two hoses full without weakening pressure and supply the house just fine'

 

My question is Should I give the pump a rest? Been going for a week now.

 

T.I.A.

If you can I would. Might get a few hose timers and set up two different watering systems. Then I would set it up to water in the night. Run one for a few hours and swap to the second one and run for a few hours. 

 I agree, if you can give the pump a break. I like Mike's idea of timers and switching between the 2 hoses to take away some of the demand. 

 It holds 60 psi for the house when both sprinklers are going so not bad really. I will give it a rest tonite and then fire it back up in the early morning. Leave off in the heat. Good thoughts, and I thank you.

In reality if the well doesn't run out of water and pump sucks air and overheats along with doing damage to impellers from cavitation then it should be fine. It gets cooled by the water. If you have paperwork for the pump check amp rating and measure amps, that will tell you more about it. If there's a drag on the pump from worn bearings amps will be higher. Also if water table drops then head drops and amps should be slightly higher than when there's plenty of water above it. 

Not sure if you have a separate tube that sometimes ran down with the pump so you can put compressed air in it and with a gauge for psi you can calculate how many feet the water is above the pump, 2.31 feet for each psi. So if you pump air in to the tube which is usually 1/4" and have a gauge read 30psi then you know there's 70 feet of water above the pump.

1 hour ago, Dieselfuture said:

Not sure if you have a separate tube that sometimes ran down with the pump so you can put compressed air in it and with a gauge for psi you can calculate how many feet the water is above the pump, 2.31 feet for each psi. So if you pump air in to the tube which is usually 1/4" and have a gauge read 30psi then you know there's 70 feet of water above the pump.

Neat and interesting... 

3 hours ago, Mopar1973Man said:

Neat and interesting... 

Generally you want to do it 2 times, it's called drawdowns. Once before the well kicks on so the water had time to fill the void space called cone of depression, then second time right before the well shuts off to see the lowest that it can draw down. It's probably more important on big city wells like we have some are 1500 feet deep, but same principle can be used on house wells to keep an eye on water levels and pump condition. Lots of things can be done to get more water/yeld it of well, one is simple chlorination and recycling the water back in the well, called well shocking. The other more expensive is using acid to get the formation cleaned up.

59 minutes ago, Dieselfuture said:

Generally you want to do it 2 times, it's called drawdowns. Once before the well kicks on so the water had time to fill the void space called cone of depression, then second time right before the well shuts off to see the lowest that it can draw down. It's probably more important on big city wells like we have some are 1500 feet deep, but same principle can be used on house wells to keep an eye on water levels and pump condition. Lots of things can be done to get more water/yeld it of well, one is simple chlorination and recycling the water back in the well, called well shocking. The other more expensive is using acid to get the formation cleaned up.

AAAmazing, Thank you Dieselfuture. We hit water when drilling in 1995 at 51 feet it yielded 50 gallons per minute at the time. Then driller said I'm going another 10 feet for summer drop off. I said go another 20 feet for extreme drought conditions just in case. He said okay it's your money and fired up the drill and kept going. Glad I did.