The well pump that came with our house gave up the ghost last winter at age 6, and I have a replacement hooked up and running after some trials on the new pumps different dimensions and the old pipes. After blowing out lots of air and rank smelling old water, things seem to work well, except for one zone.

Zone #3 is mostly misters for a rose beds and garden on the sides of the house, and doesn't put much of a load on the system. The pump is set for 50 PSI, and tends to "strobe" on and off every 5-10 seconds. The one and only time I let the system go on this zone, the pump shut down after 7-8 minutes and would not restart.

Much to my relief the pump ran again the next morning, and has no trouble on the other zones which run continuously. I've been afraid to let it go on zone 3; I don't want to wreck the new pump. It's possible that I have some mister heads that are thatched over that could make for some relief; I've found a couple of those in another zone but those didn't cause any problems.

We have some other irrigation networks that run off of well taps and timers that also don't tax the pump in a similar fashion. It was the first time the pump had run the sprinkler system (I had some priming issues too), was this a first run glitch or a real problem?