Forget my comment on checking the tank bladder pressure.I did not pay enough attention to your comments.
There should be a check valve at the pump. This appears to be holding as the tank maintains pressure when there is no water being used.
My quess is the well produces some gas. When the pump kicks on the check valve opens and the pump becomes temporary vapour locked till the gass passes thru. Tthis allows the pressure drop to almost zero. When the pump picks up water the pressure will again start to increase.
I checked the tank pressure and it is right on 38 psi, which makes sense for the 40/60 pressure switch that's being used.
In order to check the air pressure in the tank, I turned off the power and ran the water until there was no water pressure. What I observed was that as I ran the water (no power - just pressure from the tank) the gauge reading slowly fell as you would expect it to. When the psi hit the cut-on level at the pressure switch instead of a continued slow drop in pressure, the pressure immediately fell to nothing and that was the end of the water out of the hose bib.
What puzzles me is that it's as though the well either has 40-60 psi of water pressure or nothing - there does not seem to be any pressure below 40 psi. But - I don't lose water pressure during times non-use. I was anticipating that as the water ran the pressure would continue to slowly drop to nothing, not fall from 40 to nothing, like off of a cliff. I just don't get it. I am tempted to replace the pressure switch since it's cheap, but I don't want to start just throwing parts at the problem.
I don't want to pester you with all this, but I would sure like to figure out what's going on before calling the well company. I'm not so sure that I'll call the ones that installed the pump, so I wanted to get some good knowledge before talking to anyone else. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Thanks!
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