Fire Safety and your Well Pump system.
Wildfires are, unfortunately part of our summer season in California and other dry parts of the country and many of these fires are completely preventable! In today’s blog, we’ll talk about the source of some of these preventable fires and give you some pointers that can help you prevent starting a forest fire with your well pump (or other electrical) equipment.
Working with water and water systems means that our team regularly works with power, electricity, electrical controls and electrical panels. OPS holds and works under multiple contractor licenses including (but not limited to) plumbing and electrical contractors licenses. Our pump technicians and electricians regularly find pump equipment that was not installed to electrical code OR considered any serious attempt at safety into account. In some cases, the original installation may have been perfectly acceptable, but with time, damage or deterioration, has turned into a hazardous situation that could cause electrical shock and/or a fire hazard!
In the photo above we can see a few items that are, unfortunately, all too common. First we see the control box for the submersible well pump laying on the ground. Second we see the wiring is not in any type of flexible/rigid conduit. Wires should never be laying around exposed! Animals chew on them, sunlight degrades the insulation and it cracks and falls off. Every time a submersible well pump turns off and on there is a slight torqing movement of the pump/pipe & wire. This can cause the wire to rub against any metal edges and wear through the insulation. Uninsulated wires can shift touching each other or the sharp piece of metal that are bent around and sparking. Third we don’t see any type of dedicated electrical shutoff breaker in proximity to this well. This is important because it ensures that the circuit will shut off if there is a short circuit or excess power usage and it also provides a method to shut of power to the well pump if service/maintenance is required. As an important side note we also see that the fittings on top of the well for the pipe connections are all glued solid, there is no union or way to service this well pump equipment without cutting the piping and then installing new fittings the next time around. Furthermore, the fitting on top of the metal casing is plastic! This needs to hold hundreds or sometimes thousands of pounds of force! With sunlight/UV degrading the plastic, the pump forces when it starts and the pressure inside this fitting it is very possible that this fitting simply breaks, the pump drops and the force/weight drag the wire down into the well, scraping off insulation and possibly causing a fire, loss of pump equipment down the well and completely unnecessary expense.
Check out this next picture above? What do you see? Yes, the wiring is inside, great. But no conduit! Again, there is no metal fitting at the top of the well seal that holds up the weight of the pipe, pump and wire. This all hangs on a strip of metal strap that is attached with a small screw. Give that screw a few years and it will rust/break or pull out of the wood it is screwed into.Yes, there is some thin plastic rope that will stretch when the metal strap/screw fails. The weight of the pipe, pump and wire now pulls down on the plastic plumbing a stretches the plastic rope. As this rope stretches it will cause increased tension on the electrical wire, possibly. The wiring scrapes on the sides/eduges of the metal hole where the conduit fitting should be or perhaps pulls loos from its electrical connections causing arcing and sparking. Now, to top all this off, these unsealed holes on the well seal allow critters (small mice, lizards, insects) access to your well where they will fall in, get all the water they can drink and then drown-creating an unsanitary condition.
Now lets look at this electrical equipment to the left. Conduit is used, great! Electrical breakers box and a timer box are present, excellent. The two primary issues that we should be concerned with are the fact that the support post is broken and the electrical will soon be on the ground (potentially in weeds and or water) AND there is a piece of romex wire that snakes off into the grass. Romex is not approved for direct burial or laying on the ground. If run over by a mower, damaged by a string trimmer, chewed on by an animal, driven over by a car…this wire will have insulation damage and be a potential fire hazard.
Go take a jaunt and look at your outside equipment now and make notes of the improvement you need to make today. Much of these repairs are not very expensive nor do they take a long time for a qualified technician to repair/rectify. If the crew at OPS can help get your well or water system equipment into tip top shape for this fire season, please don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us!
Please note that Amazon links have been provided to show illustrations of products mentioned in this blog. These links are not intended to show the exact product for your specific application, rather a generic example of the product referenced. While purchasing these items is possible, please do so after having done your own due diligence and understand that these links may generate Amazon commissions. If you are attempting to perform your own work, ensure all safety precautions are taken. Working with electricity and water can be hazardous and should only be attempted by those that are familiar with the safety precautions and procedures involved.