Service area

Well pump repair in Paradise, CA

Pump work in Paradise looks different from pump work anywhere else in Butte County, for a reason that has nothing to do with geology. The Camp Fire destroyed the town in 2018. Practically, that means a large share of the wells here now sit under new construction, and the well is frequently the oldest thing left on the parcel. That combination brings its own set of problems, and they are worth knowing about. Call to get connected with a licensed local pump contractor.

New house, old well

This is the defining situation on the ridge. The house is a few years old. The well was drilled decades ago. Everything above ground was replaced, and everything below ground is exactly as old as it ever was.

That matters because people reasonably assume a new home means new water infrastructure. It usually does not. Casing, drop pipe, and often the pump itself predate the house by a long way, and a submersible has a working life somewhere around 8 to 15 years. If yours was already ten years old before the house was built, it is on borrowed time now regardless of how new the fixtures are.

The other half of it is that the pieces above ground are new and the pieces below ground are not, so the failures cluster at the seam. Wellheads, pitless adapters, wiring, pressure tanks, and switches that were replaced during a rebuild are only as good as the day they went in and how carefully they were matched to a well nobody had fully characterized yet. A pump sized by guess, or a tank sized for a valley well feeding a low yield ridge well, will run badly for years and then fail early. See the pressure tank page.

A well that sat idle for years

The other common Paradise history is a well that simply stopped being used. Nothing drew from it during the years between the fire and the rebuild, and a well that sits does not sit neutrally. It changes.

What happens in an idle well is worth knowing before you flip the breaker on one:

Sediment settles. Fines that were staying suspended while the well was in regular use drop out and accumulate in the bottom of the casing, sometimes right around where the pump hangs. Start that pump cold and it can pull sand straight through the impellers. Sand is the fastest way to kill a pump in this county.

Iron and bacteria get comfortable. Standing water in a dark casing is exactly where iron related bacteria thrive, and they leave a slime that fouls screens, coats the inside of pipe, and plugs things downstream. The well may run fine and still deliver water that stains everything it touches.

Seals and wiring do not improve. Rubber goes hard, splices that were fine when they were wet and working corrode when they are wet and idle, and a check valve that has not moved in years may not seat when it is finally asked to.

The water level may have moved. Static levels in this county have been under pressure through drought cycles for years. A pump set at a depth that was comfortable in the past is not automatically comfortable now, and the first thing you learn about it is usually air in the lines.

The practical answer is to have an idle well looked at before you rely on it rather than after. A well inspection and flow test runs $200 to $400 and tells you what the well produces, where the water sits, and whether the pump down there is worth keeping. That is a lot cheaper than finding out by burning up a pump.

Nobody has the paperwork

Here is the practical problem that comes up on almost every Paradise call: no records. Well completion reports, pump invoices, and the notes somebody wrote on the inside of a pump house door are all gone, and plenty of properties changed hands since. So the questions a contractor needs answered on the phone frequently have no answer.

How deep is the well. How deep is the pump set. What horsepower is it, what voltage, how many wires. When was it last touched. Nobody knows, and there is no reason anybody should.

That is workable, it just changes the shape of the job. Without records, the first part of the visit is finding out what is down there, and depth is not known until the pipe starts coming up. It also means the first quote you get is a range rather than a number, and it should be, because a contractor who confidently quotes a firm price on a well of unknown depth is guessing and one of you is going to eat the difference.

Two things help. Well completion reports are filed with the state Department of Water Resources, not the county, and DWR publishes them free through its Well Completion Report Map. A driller's report from the original well is often still in that state record even when everything on the property is gone, which is exactly the situation it is useful for. And if any work has been done on the well since, keep that invoice somewhere that is not the pump house. The next owner will want it.

What it costs up here

Paradise sits around 1,800 feet and the wells are hard rock, so they are deep. That puts the ridge at the top of the county range rather than the bottom: a submersible replacement generally runs $2,800 to $5,500, against $1,500 to $3,000 for the same pump in a shallow valley well down in Oroville. Depth adds roughly $500 to $1,000 per additional 100 feet, and that is real drop pipe, real wire, and real hours of pulling several hundred pounds of column out of the ground. A diagnosis runs $95 to $185 and is usually credited toward the work. Full ranges are on the cost page.

Before you spend any of it, check the breaker, read the gauge at the pressure tank, and knock on the tank. Hollow up top and solid low is healthy. Solid all the way up means it is waterlogged, which is a $150 to $350 pressure switch conversation or a tank conversation rather than a pump conversation. More on the repair page.

Nearby

The contractors we refer work the same ridge wells up in Magalia, the deep hard rock country over in Berry Creek, and the shallower valley wells down in Oroville.