Good to know you are back in business.
But I am lost as to a wire and a pebble causing an issue???
So are you saying for 240V one of the hot wires was broken, or not connected and the disconnected wires were taped?
Guess you didn't read my post # 26. Based upon many years of experience installing pumps.
OP: "There is a setting that I was unaware of to check for continuity. It sends a signal down one line and it should return through the other wire. In the well, the signal never returned. Plumber told me that all that power was being fed into the water and dispersing rather than to the motor. Out of the well, he ran that same test and it returned the signal. A small cut in the insulation of the wire was enough to short the entire loop."
I think we have an issue with semantics. I found one definition: "Continuity testing overview: Continuity is the presence of a complete path for current flow."
For this, I would use an Ohmmeter (someone mentioned this earlier). If there is continuity in a wire, touching the Ohmmeter's probes to the ends of that wire (conductor) will give a reading of (or near) Zero.
So, in the instant case, since neither conductor was 'broken,' touching the probes to the two conductors with the pump in or out of the well would always read Zero - thus conductivity.
What the OP described was a BREAK IN THE INSULATION that effectively SHORTED one leg to GROUND.
We need to ask his PLUMBER, but I think that folks were measuring the voltage across the 220 legs and not between the neutral and each leg as well.
If I understand the OP's explanation of the PLUMBER's explanation, one would have gotten different readings from each leg when the pump was submerged (first time the OP checked the VOLTAGE) as opposed to when the pump (and exposed conductor) were removed from the well. Or, with a clamp-on ammeter checking the respective legs when the pump and wires were submerged.
If the OP is reading this, please ask the PLUMBER (copy and paste this into an email to him?) as I have spent quite a bit of my time reading forty odd posts (some not so odd) and would love to learn if a test at the pressure switch would have detected the Ground Fault found in that one leg of the well pump wiring before pulling the pump to confirm!
What a story!