Well Pumps in Wadsworth & Greater Akron, OH

If your house runs on a well, your water does not come from the street. It comes from a pump down a hole in your yard, a pressure tank in your basement, and a switch wired between the two. When any one of those quits, every faucet in the house goes dry at the same time. We repair and replace all of it for well homes around Wadsworth, Sharon Center, Bath, Doylestown and the rural townships of Medina County. Mackin & Sons is family-owned, founded in 2009, with 17,000+ jobs and a 4.9 star average across 600+ Google reviews.

Well country

Plenty of homes around here never tied into city water. Drive the township roads outside Medina or Wadsworth and most of the houses you pass run on wells, and they run fine for years right up until the morning they do not. A well system has three working parts. The pump moves the water, a submersible that hangs down inside the well. The pressure tank holds a cushion of water under air pressure so the pump does not start every time someone rinses a glass. The pressure switch watches the pressure and tells the pump when to run. Well homes typically hold 40 to 60 PSI, and most switches are set to kick the pump on at 40 and off at 60. When your pressure drifts outside that range, something in the chain is going.

The problems that trigger the call

• No water anywhere in the house
• Faucets sputtering and spitting air
• Pressure that surges and sags while you shower
• A pump that runs constantly and never shuts off
• A pump clicking on and off every few seconds (short-cycling)
• A breaker that trips when the pump starts
• Banging pipes or an arcing, chattering pressure switch

No water is the big one. On a well there is no backup main, so a dead pump means no flushing, no washing, no coffee. If that is your morning, call 330-825-3686. Our emergency plumbing line answers around the clock.

Check two things before you call

Some no-water calls fix themselves in five minutes, and we would rather tell you that here. First, check the breaker panel. Well pumps run on their own double-pole breaker, and a tripped one is the cheapest fix in plumbing. Reset it once. If it trips again right away, leave it off and call, because something downstream is shorting. Second, look at the pressure gauge on the tank. If it reads normal but nothing comes out of the faucet, the problem likely sits between the tank and your fixtures, not down the well. Either way you just saved the first fifteen minutes of diagnosis.

What we do on the visit

We start at the tank, not the well, because more well problems live in the basement than down the hole. We read the gauge, check the tank’s air charge, test the pressure switch contacts and measure what the pump is actually drawing. That tells us whether you have a switch problem, a tank problem or a pump problem before anyone lifts a pipe. You get the price in writing before work starts. The dispatch fee is $79 in our core area, $89 in Greater Akron, and it rolls into the job if you approve the work. Details are on our pricing page. Switch and tank swaps usually wrap up in the same visit.

Short-cycling: the cheap fix that saves the pump

If your pump kicks on and off every few seconds while water runs, the bladder inside your pressure tank has probably failed and the tank is waterlogged. The pump loses its cushion and starts for every glass of water, and rapid starts are exactly what burn out pump motors. Replacing a tank or a worn switch costs a fraction of pulling a pump, and doing it on time is the difference between a 7-year pump and a 15-year pump. Well water around Medina County also tends to carry iron and minerals that chew on tank bladders, switch contacts and fixtures. If your water stains the tub or smells metallic, look at water treatment while the system is open.

Repair or replace, honestly

A three-year-old pump with a bad switch needs a switch, not a pump, and we will say so. But submersible pumps generally last 10 to 15 years. Pulling a submersible is most of the labor whether you reinstall the old pump or hang a new one, so if your pump is past a decade and already out of the ground, replacing it usually beats sending tired equipment back down the well. We give you both numbers and you decide.

What moves the price

Well depth drives the cost more than anything. A deeper well means more drop pipe, more wire and a bigger motor. After that it is pump type and horsepower, tank size, the condition of the pipe and wiring coming up the well, and access. A well casing in the side yard is one job. One buried under a deck in January is another. Our freeze cycles add their own work, with frozen lines to outbuildings and cracked well caps showing up every winter. Either way, no surprises. The price is approved in writing before we start.

Why this is plumber work

A submersible pump is 240 volts at the bottom of a wet hole. The splices have to survive underwater for a decade, the drop pipe has to be supported correctly, the well cap has to seal so surface water and insects stay out of your drinking water, and the tank has to be air-charged to match the switch. A handyman who misses one of those details does not find out until the pump is 80 feet down and the symptom comes back. We work under our Ohio plumbing license, insured and background-checked, and installations carry a minimum 1-year warranty. One more well-house note: water-powered backup sump pumps need municipal pressure to run, so on a well your backup sump needs a battery. We handle that too.

Serving well homes around Akron since 2009

You get an on-the-way text, a stocked truck and a price approved before the work starts. Book online or call 330-825-3686.