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I am having an issue that only happens on occasion. I haven’t been able to reproduce it at will yet. However, when it happens I get into a scenario where my pressure gauge will read 10 psi or so and there will be no running water throughout the entire house. This doesn’t happen at any specific time of day. I have had it happen in the morning, afternoon, and at night. This drop in pressure happens and I can be in the middle of a shower and the water just cuts off. The thing is it takes a long time for the pump to finally realize it is below the cut in and that it should kick in. It always kicks in though it just takes a long time.

I have tried changing the whole home filter more frequently to see if that would do it but I still get the issue. I was thinking maybe the pressure switch or gauge could be at fault, but I am very new to this so more or less a guess. I have brought it up to my plumbers and so far they haven’t given me a solution.

To provide some more details I have a jet pump and am on my own private well. I use to have two pressure tanks but one was water logged and the plumber said I could just remove it since it wasn’t needed anyway. I still have one remaining one which appears to be fine. The house is small 1 and half bathrooms, but we do use a fair bit of water.

Any help in troubleshooting this issue would be very much appreciated!

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    I'm not going to post this as an answer, because I don't know enough yet about your system. But one possibility is there is a water level sensor in the well that cuts power to the pump if the water level gets too low to prevent it from "pumping air" which can be quite damaging to a pump. If the well doesn't produce enough water for the pump size, this happens. The sensor waits until the well recovers before providing power to the pump again. Again, this is just speculation based on what information you provided.
    – George Anderson
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 3:07
  • That is an interesting thought. What kind of details could I provide to give you a better understanding of the system? Also when I say a long time it might take 15 minutes or so. It feels very long when you are trying to take a shower.
    – user3832583
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 14:04

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I need to post this as an answer bc it will be too long for a comment. Here goes:

Plumbers aren't well people, you need a qualified well person. There was a reason you had 2 pressure tanks. Probably due to a low producing well. Lets walk thru this...you are taking a shower and the pressure in the tank runs down (normal) and the well pump kicks on. Then it pumps the water level down in the well to the point where the pump shuts off. Then you use the remaining water in the pressure tank until it's gone. Bladder type pressure tanks don't behave like pressure tanks without bladders, they can stop delivering water very suddenly when they run out. With two tanks, you had more reserve capacity.

It sounds like your problem started when you removed the 2nd pressure tank. You could probably minimize your problem by re-installing a new 2nd tank. It's a Band-Aid solution, but it might work.

Frankly, you need a well guy to do a draw down test, review your setup. Everything depends upon the production rate of the well. All wells are different. Unfortunately there isn't much you can do to fix a low producing well, all you can do is cope with it. I've see setups where a large (several hundred gallons) NON pressurized tank was used to store water, filled by a pump that matched the well production rate, then it was pumped into a pressure tank for domestic use. All of this requires some design work, based on well production.

As much as ALWAYS hate to say this here, it's time to call pro. And be sure the pro is an expert well/pump guy. Regular plumbers aren't qualified.

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