There are few feelings worse than turning on the faucet or shower and unexpectedly having no water. Too often, emergency repairs could have been avoided by fixing small issues along the way. The challenge has been catching those small issues before they become expensive problems.
Now with the ability to get real time alerts on your well system, detecting these conditions is as simple as setting the appropriate alert thresholds. This article aims to describe common conditions with guidelines on setting the thresholds.
Pump Over Cycling
How often your pump cycles (starts and stops) is perhaps the #1 indicator of how long it will last. A pump that continuously cycles will have greater stress on the motor windings, bearings, and switching equipment such as the pressure switch. The fix for over cycling can be as simple as adjusting your fault timer settings, fixing a leaky faucet, or re-charging your pressure tank. These fixes can save you from a costly, time-consuming pump replacement.
Many manufacturers recommend a max number of cycles per day or per hour. When setting this threshold, it’s best to use the guidelines from your pump manufacturer, but >100 cycles per day or >6 cycles per hour are good starting points to alert you of an anomaly.
Freezing Water Line
As water travels from the well to your house plumbing, it can be exposed to freezing conditions. This can be from exposed pipes in a crawlspace or well house, inadequate bury depths, or failing heat tape/drain back systems. A frozen line can cause more damage than just “no water.” The pump can deadhead (pump against a closed line) which leads to overheating. In addition, pipes can burst or slow leak after the freeze event leading to a dry well.
To detect a freezing line, an “early warning” alert could be at 36 F to 38 F. This would give time to slow drip a faucet, start heaters, or switch on heat tape. In addition, our sensor indicates whether water is present in the pipe. If you have a drain back setup, you could alert both on temperature and whether water is detected in the pipe (water should not be present if draining back properly).
Excessive Drawdown
The water level in your well can dynamically change due to several reasons. These include both individual and nearby well pumping patterns, drought conditions, seasonality changes, and well aging conditions. In addition, pump problems can indirectly cause your well levels to appear lower. No matter the cause, monitoring the drawdown levels will help you detect and diagnose these changes early.
The dashboard gives an overview of the water level changes and storage over the past month. When considering a minimum water level, the main concern is protecting the pump which can overheat and fail if a minimum headroom is not maintained. It also acts as an early warning before running completely out of water. A good minimum starting point is 25ft above the pump inlet or about 40 gallons of remaining water storage. Note, this does not replace pump fault protection (e.g. PumpSaver) as it does not directly control the pump.
In addition, you can review your typical drawdown and set any other higher threshold to alert potential changes to the water table. Detecting deep pumping events in particular can be beneficial to your long-term well health as discussed here.
Finally, the pump rate from the well will generally decline as the levels drop. In some configurations, the pump rate can drop below the minimum required for proper cooling. Many pump manufacturers will recommend a minimum pump rate which is a great way to set the pump rate threshold. Otherwise, <1GPM pump rate is a good starting point to alert of a concern.
Usage Anomalies
Leaks can occur anywhere from in the well to your house plumbing. Leaks in the well cause pump over cycling while leaks in the house can additionally cause excessive drawdown to the point of a dry well.
The first step to detecting usage anomalies is to monitor your usage patterns. The dashboard provides daily, weekly, or monthly views. With this information, you can set alerts for usage that is unexpected. Perhaps there are a certain number of gallons per hour or per day that would indicate a problem. Or perhaps there is a time of day, such as 3AM, where water should not be used at all. Watching for irregular usage can be a great way to detect and correct problems before they affect your water availability.
Example Alerts Dashboard
These recommendations were used to populate the below alerts dashboard. An automated email will be sent any time these thresholds are crossed. Note, if the same threshold is crossed multiple times per day, only 1 email will be sent every 24hrs to avoid excessive alert emails.
Conclusion
We hope this article gives you initial ideas on how to set the alerts. As a reminder, every well system is unique, and these are generic guidelines for common setups. Getting guidance from a local well servicing company is a great way to tailor these thresholds or get additional monitoring recommendations for your specific setup. Ultimately, our product provides data, and it’s up to you on how to use it.
Feedback on this article or want to chat on your specific setup? Please reach out to us at support@imbrr.com. We are happy to provide additional suggestions and discuss ideas to solve your unique problem statements.