It appears the pressure tank in my house is going T.U., so I’m looking at replacing it. The existing one is a ~36 gallon Jacuzzi Bros. tank, on the discharge side of the jet pump.
I was looking at the various models in Lowes and HD just for an idea as to price range, and have a couple questions.
1) The models at Lowes were sized just by gallons, period, and a 36 gallon there looked pretty close to the same size as what I have now (different diameter/height, but the same volume) so I presume that is about right. The ones at HD appeared a *lot* cheaper initially, but then upon reading the fine print on the boxes, they were sized as 42 gallons (19 effective gallons) or some such on up to 220gallons (85 effective), which looked about the same size as the 82 gallon model at Lowes. What gives w/ this nomenclature difference? Just marketing, what? Is the larger number supposed to be the volume of the whole tank, and the smaller the water volume at rated psi?
2) The boxes on the unit at Lowes had a small chart for selecting the proper sized tank based on the pressure range of the system (got that, 30-50psi) and the flow rate of the jet pump. Problem is that I have absolutely no idea what the flow rate or capacity of my well is, though I have a strong suspicion that it’s fairly low, and whatever it is, the well water source isn’t capable of maintaining it very long (filling the 80 gallon water heater from empty will suck the well dry, and it takes hours and hours for it to fill back up (spring fed?). I’ve looked and looked, and nowhere in my homeowner paper work or house purchase info do I have any sort of well capacity info (figures). Most things in the house run borderline to undersized for a family of 5, such as the water heater which I upsized when I replaced it, so I question what the actual correct size is for this house?
I’d kind of like to get a larger capacity tank to keep the pump from having to run as often, but worry that it might be more than the well can handle.
TiA,
Monte
Replies
As you are saying, the conventional wisdom is to size the tank as large as possible to avoid short-cycling the pump. We have a 119-gal pressure tank and a well that produces 3.5 GPM. Around here that's on the low side and a couple of neighbors have 20-25 GPM wells. The lowest I have heard of here is about 1 GPM, and I'm surprised that your well can support a family of 5 based on the description, especially if you have teenage daughters. Are you sure that the water heater fill is an indication of the well capacity? I would talk to a well driller in your area--they are familiar with the water sources, pumps, tanks, etc. typically in use there. With a few calls you can probably find the company that drilled your well. There are a lot of well users on this forum, so perhaps someone else will post in.
we had a local well drilling company out to look at it. Their eyes kept getting bigger and bigger as they walked around looking at things. Said they were *very* surprised that the VA signed off on the place.
We actually have two wells: one is the old, old, old (probably original) hand dug w/ a casing dropped down it. No cover, nothing. Just a 4" pipe sticking out of the ground, w/ an submersible pump hanging off of a piece of galvanized pipe supported by the elbow on the edge of the casing. That's our 'irrigation' water, since the house system doesn't have any sill-cocks (sp?), so we get to string out a couple hundred feet of hose to water the front and back lawns.
The second well has a concrete vault / coffer-dam arrangement w/ a 3" thick lid. Lift the lid and all there is is a well casing sticking up. w/ a lid over it, w/ 2 holes punched in it for the two lines from the jet pump, which is actually in the crawl space under the house. The well driller company didn't think much of the arrangement, from the borderline drainage provisions inside the vault, to the fact that there were no existing unions in the piping, so that to hook up a capacity test rig to the well itself was going to involve some cutting and fitting of unions (he seemed to feel it was normal for them to already be there from installation testing).
The reason I feel the well is an issue is that if the well runs too long, it sucks dry. Case in point: if say, some one goes to the bathroom before bed, and the ball on the toilet sticks and the toilet runs all night, in the moring: no water in the entire house. Find/fix the offending water appliance, and let the well refill for a few hours, and it's good again. Similar story when we replaced the water heater. Got about 50 gallons in, and sucked the well dry. Tried priming the pump, all sorts of things, couldn't figure it out. Left it alone for an hour or so, tried it again, and the well pumped for about 15 minutes before it sucked air again. So then I left it overnight, took the next morning off of work and proceeded to make *sure* the water heater finished filling up so the rest of the house could have hot water. After that, we noticed the toilet phenomenom, and put two and two together.
The well driller wanted to put in a 1500gallon cistern, w/ a pressure maintenance/booster pump to the house. We were a little hesitant about that, and wanted to see if there had ever been a capacity test done on the house. Couldn't find one in the purchase paperwork; the driller *volunteered* to get ahold of the DOE (dept of ecology) in Yakima and find out if there was a test on record. Got ahold of him a couple times afterwards... usual excuses, waiting on the govt office, etc. Never heard from him again.
Ok. Here's a dumb question for you (flame away): the water pressure in the house isn't great, but the instant you turn on a second water appliance/fixture, it goes right to heck. Like a small pencil sized stream from a faucet. Will a larger pressure tank, w/ a bigger drawdown, help keep the pressure up somewhat? A local pump place was concerned that w/ the history of this well, that too large of a tank, while it would certainly allow the well more time to 'recover', might come too close to sucking the well dry every time the pump has to fill up the pressure tank.
TIA,
Monte
A storage tank might be a good idea. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that your well is producing 1/4 GPM (based on your earlier post that it takes a few hours to refill the water heater. If you can get 1/4 GPM all day and night, you can get 360 gallons a day. That's not a whole lot but might serve especially if your family has learned to be conservative with it. Maybe you're getting more, and it would be a great thing to know. Anyway, if you get a storage tank and a booster pump, you can run a 119 gallon pressure tank and you will find that you have a lot of water, even with two fixtures open. The pressure tank will draw from the storage tank and will be mostly independent of the well capacity once the storage tank is full.
But, first I'd talk to neighbors, well drillers, and maybe plumbers and see if there are better producing wells in your area. It may be easier in the long run to have a new well drilled that produces a couple of gallons per minute. Then you can skip the storage tank and run a larger pressure tank without it. The piping of your existing well sounds iffy and you may find it causing trouble later. When we moved here the piping, pressure tank, and wiring install was heinously bad. I removed it within a month or so and replaced everything--new tank, new trench, new piping, new wiring, etc. Hopefully that investment of time and money will save us from water emergencies. 15 years ago I lived in a house with a poorly done well and it constantly went down, requiring expensive repairs that took days to get done. Easier to go without power than water, I think.
How much does the irrigation well produce, by the way?
The capacity of wells can vary during the year, particularly if they are relatively shallow. You might get more flow during or slightly after the wet season and during a drought, you might find you have nothing...
The irrigation well does seem prone to that... during the late summer, when the heat is up and the local agriculture is hitting the water system hard, it seems to be a little weaker... but it can run dang near all day long, and all night too (just about needs to at times to keep the yard alive). As far as I can tell, it's 30 feet, maybe a little more deep. Not much.
As to the house well... I don't know how long exactly it would have taken it to get enough to fill the remainder of the water heater... I just know that 3 hours was enough that we didn't have any problems. Could have been done in one, I don't know.
I think the wells around the area vary wildly. 100+ foot wells are not unheard of. Some people we know had their well go bad (not sure in exactly what fashion) and were something like $10K into drilling another and still hadn't hit water. Yikes! I think they ultimately went w/ drilling in another location after that. They are considerably higher up elevation-wise than we are, but still. That's crazy.
I realize this is getting a little outside the original topic (may have to make a separate thread on this) but what is considered a 'normal' size for water pipe inside the house, say downstream of the jet pump and pressure tank? I think ours is mainly 1/2", some 3/4", from there on. Thru the filters and water softener, to the water heater, etc. Would getting a different pump setup and running the pressure tank at the next level up (what, 60-80psi?) instead of the current 30-50psi make a noticeable difference? What else would be robbing my pressure? Too long of runs of 1/2" pipe? Do I need to run larger diameter, like 3/4" to 1" to the locations, like the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry areas and then step down 'locally'? Sort of a 'manifold' system? I'm open to ideas here. The majority of the 'long' runs of pipe are somewhat easy to get to inside the crawlspace under the old portion of the house, so I can do some work there w/o having to demolition walls to get to it.
TIA,
Monte
Edited 4/15/2004 1:29 am ET by milanuk
Typical piping in the house is 3/4" or 1" cold water coming in all the way to the water heater, 1/2" branches to the fixtures. Hot water is a little more subjective, because you have to weigh in the distance from the water heater and the resulting time it takes to get hot water. All the hot water piping downstream of the HWH in our house is 1/2". Old galvanized pipe can impede flow quite a bit and is usually replaced with copper. Do not connect copper directly to galv--if you've got a connection like that anywhere it may have corroded quite a bit inside the pipe and the water will slow down there.
Tha immediate pressure drop when drawing water indicates either a restriction in the line and/or an undersized tank.
But if the water tank is water logged (and I think that you say that the bladder is gone then you will have similar results).
This implies that the pump as normal usage rates is not putting out much pressure, but can built up pressure to fill the tank and shut off. When you are running a few seconds the water stored in the tank is gone and you are depending on pump pressure.
It would be interesting to use some tubbing to extend a pressure guage to the output of the pump and and also a line to indicate when the pump is running and observe it's under load.
Also another interesting test would be tap into the output of the tank and beable to run it open and see how much out put it has.
I wonder if there is also something else wrong such as an undersized pump or leaks in the jet/suction piping and is reducing the supply pressure.
I think that either larger tank or a cistern/pressure pump would be a good upgrade.
BUT, you need something on the pump to throttle the flow and/or controls to automatically shut if off and allow the well to refill when it run dry.
well... there is a pressure gauge on the pump, presumably plumbed to the discharge side, as it appears to read what would logically be the discarge pressure (not physically apparent from the gauge location itself to me not being that familiar w/ jet pumps. What kind of numbers should I be looking for? The piping goes from the pump to a tee, and the pressure tank is off on one leg of that tee, and the rest goes on to the water softener system and filters, and then to the rest of the house, including the water heater. There are some valves on the two lines btwn the jet pump and the well. Normally they've been either full open or full closed, but being they appear to be either gate or globe valves (didn't look that close) I could throttle them a bit if needed.
I'll probably go ahead and upgrade the pressure tank to at least an 82 gallon (that may be as much as the budget, and space, allows for the time being, and see what that nets me.
Like I said, I'm not that familiar w/ jet pumps. What all could be going wrong in that end of things that would be compromising the house pressure?
Thanks,
Monte
My experience is limited to shallow well pumps where the jet is mounted directly on the pump and it is sucking out of a 100 acre lake a few feet below. So I don't have to worry about running it dry <G>.
But I have found them ultra sensitive to any leaks on the suction side.
As far as pressure goes they often have 30-50 psi switches (cut in, cut out) or 40-60.
My experience watching the guage is that the pump usually will maintain pressure at the low end of that range will running "full open", which in my case includes about 60 foot of 1" pipe and a hose bib.
But I wonder how much pressure drop that you have in the filter and water softner?
Hmmm... just got done filling the tank up w/ air (again). Couple things I noticed: The portion of the tee from the pump to the tank is about 1" galvanized pipe, and then on the other branch of the tee is the line going to the rest of the house. There is a union, and then an isolation valve. That union, in the line to the rest of the house, btwn the galvanized iron and the copper line / bronze valve, has a fair bit of corrosion. Just out of curiosity, I valved everything around to where that section should be depressurized, and went to pop the union. It wouldn't give (and I'm not exactly weak), and in fact the other end of the line started to unscrew from the tee. That may bear some further investigation when I get to replacing the tank.
The other item that was bugging me was one that you just mentioned: No way to easily remove the filter, or the water softener, either one or both, from the system. Most of what pump/piping exposure I have is from being in power plants of one sort or another most of my adult life; being able to valve out a defective piece of equipment and/or being able to valve in a spare is 'normal' to me. I may have to do some creative re-arrangement of the valving and piping in that portion of the system. The ninny that put it in stuck the filter all the way to the back, where it is a PITA to get to anyway, and you have to turn off the system and depressurize it to be able to change the filter as it sits now.
The one reservation I have about just going out and spending the several hundred dollars on a new pressure tank (82 gallon size) is that this house has a tendency to 'mask' problems w/i problems i.e. something goes wrong, I fix the obvious culprit (usually needed fixing/upgrading anyway) but the problem either doesn't go away, or comes back a week later, since what I fixed was only part of the problem. Hence my reluctance to fork over $$$ for the tank until I *know* it's the problem causing the pump to run way too much and jack my electric bill thru the roof. Someone local mentioned that it was possible that the schrader valve could be leaking and loosing the air charge that way. Doesn't seem to show anything w/ a little bit of dish soap on it (no bubbles), but I'm not getting any water out of it either to inidicate that the bladder has failed and there is water in the air space... ?!?
TIA,
Monte
On the pressure tank, I have seen several web sites recommend the diaphram tanks over the bladder tanks - supposedly the bladder tanks are more prone to leaks between the water and air compartments.
The jet pumps are much less efficient than a submersible for a given horsepower rating. I just bought a submersible to replace my deep well jet pump and the 1/2hp submersible is rated at nearly twice the gpm of the jet pump.
If the pressure at the tank is fairly steady, I can't imagine that the pump would have any effect on the downstream pressure in the house. Older piping can get throttled down almost completely over time from deposits or, in galvanized, from rust and scale. If you have red stains in your sinks then you probably have a rust problem in the pipes. One of my showers had a pressure problem and I found the single handle cartridge type faucet had the cartridge completely filled with rust flakes. Replaced the cartridge and it gave a good blast of water again.
You've already received lots of good advice, but I think a couple of your questions went unanswered.
When you see 42/19 gallons on a pressure tank, the smaller number is the usable (effective!) volume before the pressure tank must be refilled by the pump. Obviously, the tanks cannot be 100% efficient. In fact they are obviously quite inefficient. You'll only get 19 gallons before the pump kicks on. Any tank that doesn't label effective volume is being deceitful.
Changing your setup from 30/50 psi shutoff to 40/60 will greatly enhance your water pressure. Hopefully you've already got a low-flow showerhead and 1 gallon flush toilets.
You should probably have at least a 3/4" pipe from the pressure tank, then run 1/2" pipes off that.
As far as flow and water supply go, others have advised that air leaks are very bad. So are dirty filters. Doesn't sound like you have much "head" (the height the pump must draw water), but it can be a factor, particularly with jet pumps. Deep well (submersible) pumps are more effective, because they "push" the water rather than "pull". Another supply/pressure issue can be the size of supply line from well to pump. If it's too small, the pump can be overworking. Higher horsepower pumps are better, unless the supply line is too small.
One final note: I suggest you install PSI gauges before and after every filter, or any other device/whatever that can affect supply pressure.
Regards,
Tim Ruttan
well, crap. Found out that the tank is *definitely* water logged. got a tire valve tool thingy and let the air out and let the pump run to try and maintain pressure... about the time the pump shut off, I started getting water out the air valve. Not good. I have the plumber locating me a pressure tank at the supply house (he's a good shootin' buddy, so I try to throw business his way rather than the box stores when I can). I'll probably be putting it in myself, possibly next week (have to work this weekend. Think I'll get a little bit of extra copper piping and some ball valves and set up the isolation valves and pressure gauges around the filter and water softener while I'm at it.
Well, plans change. Sounds like I'll be going to pick up the tank this afternoon. Might be able to get it in today, depending on how things go.
Gotta go.
Thanks,
Monte