How many hours does it take to replace a well pump?

If you’re considering replacing a well pump and it’s your first time, you may have questions about long it may take. We often say a full install only has to be a couple of hours, but is that actually accurate? Let’s chat through each step of our install process and find out for ourselves! 

Step 1: Screw Pump end and motor end together - This should take about a couple minutes after looking through the manual we send. 

Step 2: Splice submersible pump wire extension cable onto 6 ft pigtail. - If you’ve never done a splice before go slow to make sure you have a solid connection. After reading the manual again this just takes 10 minutes at a maximum. 

Step 3 : Attach safety rope to pump eyelet - This is used to lower the pump so that weight is not distrubted on just the pump wire or piping. Another 5 minutes. 

Step 4: If using poly pipe, which we recommend, roll out your poly pipe and allow it to relax/warm up. Attach relevant plumbing. Warming up the poly pipe can take a little while, so it may be helpful to do this and then move on to other steps before attaching all plumbing. Let’s allow for 1-2 hours here, but with the assumption that step 5 and our bucket test can also be completed in this period. 

Step 5: Assemble well seal and associated plumbing for the top of your well. Thread wire and safety rope through the smaller, secondary hole in the well seal. This step should be accomplished within our 1-2 hour time frame. 

Optional Bucket Test: Place the pump in a large bucket of water with the inlet fully submerged. Wire your pump to it’s control box and the control box to either a GFCI outlet or a breaker box. Once all wiring is completed and the pump is hooked up to AC power, the pump should automatically start pumping. We recommend this test to make sure your wiring has been properly executed. Once you have completed this step turn off the AC power source. This should be accomplished within our 1-2 hour time frame. 

Step 6: Lower pump into well, careful to not hit the pump against the sides of the well casing. Depending on how deep the well is and where you’d like to place the pump, this could take up to 10 minutes or so with polypipe, or much longer with rigid pipe. We’ll assume polypipe since rigid pipe needs specailized materials and is normally not suitable for the DIY installer. 

Step 7: Now wire in the pressure switch (if you’re using a pressure tank or pressure system). The pressure switch will be between your breaker box and starter box, and will regulate when your pump turns on based on the pressure measured in the water line. The pump would turn on when your pressure tank pressure is too low, and switch off when it starts to become too high. Let’s assume about twenty minutes to ensure all wiring is in line with our manual.