Well pump runs constantly and never shuts off

A well pump that never shuts off is losing water somewhere or cannot build pressure. In Henderson County the four causes are a leak (usually a toilet or a frost-free hydrant), a pressure switch stuck closed, a check valve letting the column drain back, and a worn pump. Diagnosis is $150 to $300, a switch $150 to $350, a check valve $200 to $400, a line or drop pipe repair $400 to $1,500, and a worn-out pump $1,200 to $3,500 by depth. Shut the breaker off if it will be running unattended overnight.

Check this first

1. Read the gauge. If it sits at 20 or 30 psi and will not climb, the pump is making water but something is taking it. If it sits pinned at 60 or above and the pump is still running, the switch is stuck closed and the relief valve may be dumping. Kill the breaker on that one.
2. Isolate the house. Close the main shutoff where the line enters. If the pump satisfies and shuts off, the leak is inside. Walk the toilets first: a leaking flapper is a common cause, and it is silent.
3. Walk the yard. Look for a green stripe, a soft spot, or a wet patch along the line from the well head to the house, and check every frost-free hydrant. A hydrant left cracked open in a barn or a garden bed will run a pump for weeks.
4. Count the cycles. Note whether the pump has been running continuously or is starting and stopping quickly, because that second pattern is a different fault entirely, covered on the short cycling page.

What is usually wrong

All ranges come from the pricing page.

Why this one costs you twice

There are two bills attached to a pump that never shuts off. The first is the repair. The second is the electricity: a half to one horsepower submersible running around the clock instead of an hour a day is a real line on a Duke Energy statement, and sometimes the power bill, not the water, is the first sign anything is wrong. There is a third cost if it goes long enough, because continuous running is what wears out the pump you were trying to avoid replacing.

Why Henderson County systems do this

Iron and manganese in mountain groundwater plug the small sensing tube feeding the pressure switch, so the switch stops seeing the real pressure and simply stays closed. That is a cheap and very common failure here.

Freeze damage is the other local pattern. At 2,100 feet in town and higher on the ridges above Zirconia, Saluda, and Flat Rock, a hard January night splits an exposed hydrant or a line in a vented crawlspace. The homeowner finds the pump running in the morning and no obvious water anywhere, because the split is under a barn floor or inside a wall. North Carolina’s plumbing code requires exterior water piping at least 6 inches below the frost line and never less than 12 inches below grade, and lines that were laid shallow decades ago are the ones that go.

When it is an emergency

Call the same day. A pump running continuously is either flooding something you have not found yet or destroying itself, and both get worse by the hour. If service cannot happen today, turn the well breaker off, use stored water, and turn it on only long enough to fill what you need.

What to expect on the call

Say whether the pump satisfies when the house is isolated, what the gauge reads, and the well depth. On site we isolate each section, watch the pressure decay rate with the pump off (that number shows whether the check valve or the drop pipe is the leak), test the switch and its sensing port, and read amps against the nameplate to judge whether the pump is worn. A leak found in the yard or the house can usually be repaired that visit. A pump that is genuinely worn out gets quoted from the replacement page before anything comes out of the ground.