I just had to pay a $200 idiot tax for a well pump service call that turned out to be an issue with the plug that my husband installed last summer, so could use some advice before we make the same mistake this summer!
We are building a house this summer but had a well installed last summer so we had
water on-site for camping and
gardening. To power the pump (300ft deep well btw) the well company ran a wire out of the well and connected it to an on/off switch mounted on a tree. Another wire comes out of the switch box and is for plugging into a generator, but the well company didn't provide a plug, just the wire.
We bought a big plug at one of the big box stores- the $20-30 220v kind that has multiple prongs, some of them with bends, and twists to plug in. My husband researched installation and struggled with it a little bit, but figured it out (we think?!). We have a new-last-year 5 or 6K portable generator and this system worked great last summer. This year we came back and it worked fine the first time but then was unreliable- sometimes water would come out and sometimes it wouldn't.
We assumed the worst- maybe we'd need to drill another 300ft well through solid bedrock right when construction is scheduled to start and interest rates are going up and material costs are bonkers!!! but figured first we
should eliminate mechanical issues before panicking too much.
We're still under warranty with the well pump so had the company come out to see what was going on. They told us that the plug was fried and charged us for the service call.
So, my question is, what should we know about when replacing that plug? Was it dumb to leave it out in the elements (snow, rain, major ice storm) all winter? (obviously yes.) Are there any tricks to connecting the plug? What fried it, most likely, and how can we avoid doing it again?
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