Well-Fed or Lake-Fed | We Establish Which Before Quoting | 24/7, 365 | 5-Year Workmanship Warranty
Two houses on the same Tavares street can both say they have an irrigation pump and own completely different machines. One sits at the bottom of a cased well. The other sits at the shore and pulls water uphill.
We repair both. The first thing that happens on a Tavares call is working out which one you have, because it decides the fault list, the parts, and whether the problem is at the pump at all.
Ask a Tavares homeowner where their sprinklers get water and a surprising number cannot say. The controller is in the garage, the heads are in the lawn, and whatever happens in between happened before they moved in. But the answer decides almost everything about a repair, because the two common arrangements here have almost no parts in common.
A well-fed system usually runs a submersible pump hanging in a cased well. The pump is underwater, so it never has to pull water up to itself. There is nothing to prime. Water enters through a screen between the pump and the motor as it passes, and the motor relies on that flow to carry its heat away, which is why a pump left sitting above the water line quickly runs into trouble.
A surface-fed system is the opposite geometry. The pump sits on the bank, above the water, with a suction pipe reaching down into the lake. Everything difficult about that pump follows from those few feet of air. It has to be primed before it will move anything; the suction side has to be genuinely airtight, or it loses that prime, and there is a practical ceiling on how far above the water it can be mounted at all.
So, when somebody tells us their irrigation pump is running, but no water is arriving, that one sentence points at two different investigations. On the well, we are looking down. On the lake intake, we are looking at the suction side, and usually at a foot valve.
Drawing irrigation water out of Lake Eustis or Lake Dora is a regulated withdrawal in the same way a well is, and the St. Johns River Water Management District applies one set of five thresholds to both. Three of them are about volume and equipment capacity and apply identically whichever way the water comes up. The other two are about size, and that is where the two arrangements part company.
Six inches is the figure in both, and it is measured in two different places. On a well, the rule looks at the outside diameter of the largest permanent water-bearing casing at the point where it leaves the ground. On a lake intake, it looks at the diameter at the end of the pump intake. Same number, different tape measure, and a system somebody sized decades ago may sit on either side of it. Crossing any one of the five is enough on its own, and where a particular withdrawal lands is the District's determination.
One further point catches people out. A withdrawal that stays under every threshold is still not unregulated. It is authorized by a general permit granted by the rule itself, with conditions attached, and which authorization applies to a given withdrawal is again the District's call.
The watering restrictions apply to lake water as well: the District's wording covers ground or surface water, private wells or pumps, and public or private utilities alike. As of early September 2026, the portion of Lake County inside the District is under a Phase III Extreme Water Shortage order allowing one irrigation day a week, Saturday for odd-numbered addresses, Sunday for even, and Tuesday for non-residential properties, with irrigation prohibited from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Orders change, so confirm the current position on the District's watering restrictions page.
Almost every irrigation system we see here is one of these three, and we stock the common parts for each.
The pump is set down in the casing, and the motor is cooled by the water passing over it. When one of these disappoints, the usual suspects are electrical or in the pipe rather than in the pump body itself, and a system that has been asked to run long cycles will show it at the control gear first. We test the electrical and delivery sides before we condemn anything that needs to be pulled.
This is the one with a suction line, and it lives or dies on prime. A pinhole at a fitting, a foot valve that no longer holds, a screen packed with leaf litter after a windy week, or a pump mounted higher above the water than it can realistically lift from: any of those produces a pump that runs happily and moves nothing. Replacing the pump without fixing the suction side just buys a new pump with the same problem.
Plenty of older Tavares properties have been rearranged over the decades. A lake intake has been abandoned in place while a well took over, a house system and a lawn system share one pump that was never sized for both, or a second pump has been added to push water to a far corner. We map what is actually connected before we quote, because on these the fault is often in the arrangement rather than in any single component. One thing to know if a pump is shared across more than one property: the District can treat those withdrawals as a single one for permitting, which is a question for them rather than for us.
Follow the pipe. A shore-mounted pump with a line running toward the water is a surface system. A wellhead with the pump wiring running down into the ground, with nothing visible above it, is a submersible. If the equipment is in a shed or buried under twenty years of landscaping, we will work on tracing it while we are there.
Often not. On a shore pump, that symptom points at the suction side first: lost prime, an air leak, a foot valve that will not hold, or a blocked screen. On a submersible, it points at the delivery side or the electrical side. We test before concluding anything, because the two paths lead to very different repairs.
It is the check valve at the bottom of a suction line that holds water in the pipe when the pump stops, so the pump still has prime next time it starts. When it stops sealing, the prime drains back to the lake between cycles and the pump comes on to a column of air. It is a small part with a large consequence.
Yes, and it is set by physics rather than by preference. Water can only be lifted by suction so far before the pump starts to struggle, and friction in the pipe and fittings eats into that further, so the workable height is well short of the theoretical one. A pump asked to lift beyond its limit runs rough, cavitates, and wears out early. Height above the water is one of the first things we measure on a surface system.
The District sets five thresholds, any one of which triggers an individual permit, and determines where a given intake lands. Separately, placing a pipe or structure in or on the lake bottom raises questions about state-owned submerged land, which is handled by a different agency and may require written authorization. We are pump technicians and not your permitting advisor, so for anything involving a new or relocated intake, settle the submerged-land question with the state agency that administers sovereign submerged lands before you commit to a design.
Both. Well-fed irrigation is the larger share of what we do across the area, and shore-mounted surface pumps are ordinary work for us as well. The team brings over 40 years in the trade, and the truck carries the common parts for either arrangement.
Call (407) 809-8805 and tell us what you can see. Whether the pump is at the shore or at a wellhead, and whether it runs at all, sends us out with the right parts on board.
We trace the system to its source on arrival, because that decides the test. Prime, suction line, and screens on a surface pump. Electrical and delivery side on a submersible.
You get one all-in price after an on-site diagnosis, covering the repair the system actually needs.
Where we repair on the visit, we re-prime or re-pressurize as the system requires and watch a full cycle before we leave.
Surface pumps and well pumps are different diagnostics with different first questions. We treat both as ordinary work, so what we look at is determined by the system, not by what happens to be on the truck.
Foot valves, suction joints, and screens take a minute to look at and are easy to overlook, and they account for a good share of the surface-pump calls we take in this area. Looking there first is how the fault gets found.
A suction repair and a pump replacement are different jobs, and we do not try to tell them apart over the phone. We evaluate the system in person and then provide you with a single all-in price after an on-site diagnosis.
We are a family-run Florida company working across Orange, Seminole and Lake counties, responding 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and every job carries a 100% workmanship warranty for five years.
The rest of the list below runs on the same truck and the same number, here and across south and central Lake County.
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Whether the pump sits at the lake or down a well, tell us what it is doing and we will come and find out why. (407) 809-8805
Call (407) 809-8805We dispatch help 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and evaluate your system in person for a firm quote.
