My Well Pump Won't Shut Off (Bremerton, WA)

What usually causes well pump running constantly in Bremerton

In Bremerton we check a leak inside the house before anything else, because a City bill that doubles with no reason is how it shows up here. Cycling stops when the house shutoff is closed. Gray hardpan a foot down makes the signs misleading, so we confirm rather than assume.

Next: a leak on the buried line. Long poly well lines go brittle and split, often at a rock pressing on the pipe or a bend. With thin topsoil over compacted till under short service runs on the city grid, the symptoms can look identical to the first cause, which is why the meter test and the locate matter.

And a failed check valve: lets water drain back down the well when the pump stops. Less common on narrow Charleston and Manette grid lots, but we've found it near Manette.

First steps on a Bremerton property

On the Charleston and Manette grids the City box can be buried under a sidewalk repour or a hedge planted in the 1970s, and on the hillside streets above Pacific Avenue the service line sometimes takes an unexpected route across a neighbor's lot from an easement nobody remembers.

Do this before anyone digs wet clay seams on the Narrows side in Bremerton: close the valve after the pressure tank and watch the gauge. Close the house main shutoff and see if the cycling continues. It takes minutes and it tells us whether the problem is on narrow Charleston and Manette grid lots or inside the house.

How we fix it

The repair side is well line leak detection. On longer runs toward Kitsap Lake and Rocky Point that means locate acoustically, then restore in cobbles packed in glacial till where the problem actually is, then repair or replace. If what we expose is early poly on the Kitsap Lake lots at the end of its life, we say so with the pipe in your hand.

From Manette to Jackson Park and out around Sheridan Park, well pump running constantly is a regular Bremerton call for us. A few minutes from our base, and emergencies on short service runs on the city grid dispatch immediately, any hour.