[Help] What is this thing controlling my water and what can I do about it?

The offending gizmo: http://ift.tt/1KLAgRw

I just bought a house and noticed that sometimes the water won't be available, as in, we try to use water somewhere in the house and... nothing.

I traced the issue back to the above valve thing. The pipe leading off to the right heads toward the well. The pipe to the left heads toward our house. The pipe headed downward leads to a small water tank that used to be attached to a single-wide trailer that was removed from the property when we bought it.

From playing around with this valve I've found that when the contacts are NOT touching, just like the above picture, the house DOES have water. When the contacts snap closed the water stops. As far as I can tell the contacts open and close automatically; I've not yet found a switch that operates it manually.

My theory is that this valve switches over to fill the trailer's water tank and that I can just completely remove it. I'm hoping someone here can confirm/correct this theory and also help me figure out what's up with the wire as to whether it can be removed as well or if that line is what's powering my well pump.

Any help/advice is much appreciated.

Submitted August 03, 2015 at 06:44PM by s3rvant http://ift.tt/1IGJHiW