elcb and borehole pump

Allow us a few moments to fire up our crystal balls, but in the mean time could you post a few clear pics of the relevant parts, such as the elcb ,the old pump, the new pump Etc?


:)

Thanks for your reply. The old pump is no longer on site and the new one is 20m down the borehole. The elcb is a standard domestic consumer unit bog standard elcb by Proteus.

When you say the house wiring is exactly the same do you mean the controller was not replaced, just the pump?


One of my customer has just had a new borehole sunk, last Saturday morning I went down and stood a couple of metres away from the borehole engineer as he temporarily wired the pump and lowered it into the borehole, whilst having a hour of general discussion about boreholes and pumps, including how I will wire it up permanently when a trench has been dug for the cable and water pipe.


At the moment the pump controller is wired to the pump flex with a short lead and a 13-amp plug, the plug is connected to two extension 1.25 mm leads with a total length of fifty metres, so that’s two more 13-amp plugs, the one in the house is 30 mA PRCD which is plugged into a socket  in the house which is supplied from a circuit protected by a  B16 MCB and a 30 MA RCD in the house CU. The CU is supplied by a 100 metre distribution circuit with another MCB and a 100 mA S-Type RCD.


So the 1.5 kW pump is protected by three 13 amp fuses, a B16 and a B40 MCB, two 30 mA RCDs and a 100 mA RCD, it has only been started three times, once by the borehole engineer and twice by me after I turned it off to do work elsewhere in the installation during the week. It starts and runs perfectly without any issues, even on this temporary setup.


Andy Betteridge

The bore hole engineer should have put the label with the details of the pump on the controller so you should have the details of what is down the hole and everything else should be visible , fo you should be able to post photos of the pump label, the controller and consumer unit showing the breakers. 

Sparkingchip

Thanks for your reply. It seems that many modern pumps don't have a controller. The capacitor, etc. is integrated into the pump and the whole thing simply connects to a 13A socket, in my case fed directly from a domestic consumer unit. The pump current is only 2.4A.

Sparkingchip

Thanks for your second reply. I don't have details of the pump. It was installed only yesterday and I've not yet received an invoice which I assume will detail the type of pump, etc. The elcb is a bog standard Proteus 30mA elcb.

The mystery is what is happening on startup. It doesn't trip the elcb once it's running.

That makes testing dead simple, it should not take long at all to determine if the is a problem with the pump and its flex.


Andy B

But, there has to be some sort of controller if it’s supplying a house, a float switch if it is pumping into a storage tank or a pressure switch if it’s feeding directly.


Andy B

what do you mean by a "bog standard elcb"? Do you mean an RCBO, which is a combined MCB and RCD, or where the MCB and RCD are separate - and if the latter, is it the RCD that is tripping?

Wallywombat

It's a separate RCD. I get the same effect with a separately wired RCD in the garage, so it's not the RCD at fault.