A well pump not working usually traces to four things: a tripped breaker, a stuck pressure switch, a waterlogged pressure tank, or a pump that has failed. Check the breaker once, read the pressure gauge, and knock on the tank. If water is not back in 15 minutes, call 631-591-2289 and we will send a technician.
What a Well Pump Not Working Usually Means
Match your symptom to the table before you touch anything. The pattern tells you how worried to be.
| Symptom | Likely cause | Urgency |
|---|---|---|
| No water at all, house was fine an hour ago | Tripped breaker, failed pressure switch, or a dead pump | Check the breaker yourself first |
| Pressure faded over days or weeks, now a trickle | Waterlogged tank, clogged sediment, or a pump wearing out | Call today |
| Faucets spit air and sputter | Lost prime, dropping well water level, or a drop pipe leak | Call today |
| Pump clicks on and off every few seconds | Waterlogged pressure tank short-cycling the pump | Call today, this kills pumps fast |
| Pump runs nonstop and never shuts off | A leak, a bad foot valve, or a pump too weak to reach shutoff | Call now to protect the motor |
What to Check Yourself Before You Call
These five checks take about ten minutes. None of them involves opening an electrical cover. They also give us the exact information that decides what goes on the truck.
1. Check the breaker once (2 minutes). Find the breaker labeled well pump or water pump and look for a trip. Reset it one time only. If it trips again, leave it off and call, because a repeating trip means a shorted motor or wiring fault. Never hold or tape a breaker on.
2. Read the pressure gauge (1 minute). The gauge sits near the pressure tank, usually on the pipe at its base. A normal system reads 30 to 50 psi. Zero psi means the pump is not running at all. A needle stuck around 20 psi with no water flowing points at a weak pump or a switch problem, and the exact number helps us, so write it down.
3. Knock on the pressure tank (2 minutes). Rap your knuckles down the tank from top to bottom. A healthy tank sounds hollow up top and dull near the bottom, because the top holds air. If it sounds dull the whole way up, the tank is waterlogged. That is the most common culprit we find, and it destroys pumps by making them start and stop constantly.
4. Listen at the tank for the pump (3 minutes). Open a faucet and stand by the tank. On a submersible system you should hear a soft click from the switch, then the hum of water moving. Rapid clicking every few seconds means the tank is waterlogged. Dead silence with the breaker on points at the switch, the wiring, or the pump motor.
5. Note any recent storm or outage (2 minutes). Think back over the last day or two. A power outage, a lightning storm, or heavy rain right before the water stopped is a real clue. Surges kill pump motors and control boxes, and storms stir sediment into wells. Tell us the timing when you call.
One hard safety rule while you check. The pressure switch is the small gray or black box near the tank, and it carries live 240 volts inside. Do not remove its cover, do not tap its contacts, and do not poke it with a screwdriver. Everything above can be done without opening anything electrical.
Call Now or Can It Wait
Call now, any hour:
- No water at all and the breaker trick did not fix it
- The well pump breaker trips a second time after one reset
- The pump runs nonstop and will not shut off
- Rapid clicking from the pressure switch every few seconds
- Water leaking around the tank, the switch, or the well casing
- A burning smell anywhere near the pump equipment
It can wait for a daytime appointment:
- Pressure is lower than normal but water still flows
- Faucets spit a little air but recover after a minute
- Water looks cloudy or carries sediment after a storm but runs
- The pump cycles a bit more than it used to
A pump that still delivers water buys you time to book a regular-rate visit. A pump that runs nonstop or clicks rapidly does not, because every extra hour shortens the life of a motor you have not had to replace yet.
Sudden No Water vs. Pressure That Faded Away
The speed of the failure is the best clue you have. Sudden and gradual failures come from different parts of the system.
Water that vanished all at once points to something electrical or mechanical breaking. A tripped breaker, a failed pressure switch, a burned pump motor, or a snapped wire down the well can all stop water in a second. These faults are binary. The pump either runs or it does not, and yesterday it did.
Pressure that faded over days or weeks tells a slower story. A pump loses capacity as its impellers wear or clog with sediment. A waterlogged tank shrinks the cushion of stored water, so pressure swings get sharper before delivery drops. A drop pipe leak inside the well can bleed off pressure a little more each week. Gradual fading almost always means a service visit, not a reset.
There is a third pattern worth naming. Water that comes and goes, strong in the morning and gone by evening, points at the well itself rather than the pump. The pump lowers the water level faster than the well recovers, sucks air, and quits until the level rebuilds. That pattern shows up in dry spells and needs a different fix than a broken pump.
The Waterlogged Tank: The Pump Killer We See Most
Your pressure tank is a steel bottle with a rubber bladder inside. The bladder holds compressed air on one side and water on the other. That air cushion is what lets your pump rest, because the tank feeds the house between pump cycles.
When the bladder fails, water fills the whole tank and the air cushion disappears. Now every small draw of water, even an ice maker topping off, drops the pressure instantly and starts the pump. The pump reaches shutoff pressure in a second or two and stops. Then the cycle repeats, sometimes hundreds of times a day.
This is short-cycling, and it is the number one way good pumps die young. Every start is the hardest moment in a motor's life. A pump built to start a few thousand times a year gets a decade of starts crammed into months. The rapid clicking you hear at the pressure switch is the sound of that damage happening.
The knock test from step three catches most waterlogged tanks. So does watching the gauge while a single faucet runs, because a healthy system swings slowly between cut-in and cut-out while a waterlogged one bounces fast. If your tank fails the knock test, call before the pump pays the price. A tank costs far less than a pump plus a tank.
The pressure switch deserves one more word. Its contacts arc a little on every cycle, and a short-cycling system burns them fast. Burned contacts can strand the pump off, weld it on, or cause chattering starts. Diagnosing that is our job, not yours, because the switch is live 240 volts under a thin cover.
Pump Runs Constantly vs. Pump That Never Runs
These two symptoms sit at opposite ends of the same system, and they narrow the diagnosis better than anything else you can report.
A pump that runs and never shuts off is moving water somewhere or failing to build pressure. The usual suspects are a leak between the well and the house, a failed foot valve or check valve letting water drain back down the well, or a worn pump that can no longer reach its shutoff pressure. On jet pumps, lost prime does this too. The pump spins, moves no water, and runs until something burns. Shut the pump breaker off if the pump has been running nonstop, because a dry-running pump destroys itself in hours.
A pump that never runs has an electrical problem or a dead motor. Power is not reaching the pump, the pressure switch is not closing, or the motor itself has failed. You have already ruled out the breaker in step one. Past that point the test path runs through live voltage checks, so this branch belongs to a technician.
A note on jet pumps, the above-ground pumps common on shallow wells. Jet pumps must stay full of water to move water, which is called holding prime. A leaky foot valve, a pinhole in the suction line, or a run-dry event lets the prime escape. The symptom is a pump that hums along while the gauge sits near zero. Re-priming is a short job for us, but it repeats until the leak that caused it is fixed.
Submersible pumps sit down in the well and fail differently. When a submersible dies you get silence and zero psi. When the water table drops below the pump intake in a dry spell, you get the same zero psi, but the pump may still run and the water often returns overnight. Telling those two apart matters, because one needs a new pump and the other needs the pump set deeper or the well assessed.
After a Storm: Air, Sediment, and Surges
Storms hit well systems three ways, and each leaves a different fingerprint. Knowing which one you have saves a panicked call.
Power blinks and outages stop the pump, and most systems restart on their own when power returns. Some pressure switches have a low-pressure cutoff lever that trips if pressure fell too far during the outage, and the system stays off until it is reset. Lightning is meaner. A surge can kill a submersible motor or its control box outright, and a pump that never came back after a storm often took a surge.
Heavy rain stirs wells. Fine sediment washes toward the well screen, and you see cloudy water, gritty aerators, and faucets that spit for a day. That usually settles on its own. Water that stays cloudy for days, or smells different after flooding, is worth a call and a water test, because surface water may be getting into the well.
What We Do When We Arrive
The technician starts with what you found: the gauge reading, the knock test result, what you heard at the tank, and the storm timing. Then we test the system in order, from the panel to the switch to the tank to the pump, so nothing gets condemned on a guess. We check voltage at the switch, verify the tank's air charge, and measure what the pump actually delivers. On jet pumps we check prime and the suction line, and on submersibles we test the motor windings from the wellhead before anyone talks about pulling the pump.
You get the diagnosis in plain English and the price in writing before any work starts. We service pumps, pressure tanks, and switches, and we carry common sizes on the truck, so most repairs finish the same visit. One honest boundary: we do not drill wells. If the well itself has failed, meaning the bore has collapsed or the water level has dropped below reach, we tell you straight and coordinate with a licensed well driller so you are not managing two contractors blind.
What Well Pump Repair Costs
Our service call is $189, and it includes the diagnosis and the first hour of labor. Parts are extra, and we price them in writing before anything is installed. After-hours emergency calls are $249. Major repairs, such as a replacement pressure tank, a pulled and replaced submersible pump, or a motor swap, run $500 to $950 on average.
If a repair quote passes half the cost of a new setup and the equipment is 15 or more years old, we usually advise putting the money toward replacement. That is the standard 50 percent rule, and we show you both numbers so the decision is yours.
No Water in the House Right Now?
Run the five checks, then call and tell us what you found. Same-day well pump service across Suffolk and Nassau, $189 service call including the first hour of labor.
Call 631-591-2289Why Well Problems Run Different on Long Island
Public water covers most of Nassau, so nearly every well call we run is in Suffolk, and they cluster east: Wading River, the North Fork, and the East End. Long Island sits on a sole-source aquifer, and our wells are driven into glacial sand rather than rock. That sand is why local wells make sediment trouble after heavy rain, and why iron staining is a constant complaint on the forks. Dry summers hit shallow points and older wells out east hardest, and every August we field calls where the pump is fine but the water level has slipped below it.
Power is the other local wrinkle. PSEG outages stop pumps across the service area at once, and after restoration we get a wave of calls where a low-pressure cutoff tripped or a surge took out a control box. Salt air near the shore corrodes well caps, switch covers, and exposed fittings years ahead of their inland twins. A pump house that sat through a nor'easter with a wet floor is worth mentioning when you call, because we have seen what that does to a pressure switch.
If you smell gas, suspect carbon monoxide, or see smoke anywhere in the house, get everyone out first. Call 911 and National Grid from outside. Call us after the utility has made the house safe.