water pressure

[tanner]

We are newbies to country living and are having water pressure problems. We bought four acres just over a year ago, finished building a house about two months ago, and are desperately trying to get grass started. We have learned that there is not enough water pressure from the well to run a sprinkler. No water pressure problems in the house; however, the sprinklers will not rotate effectively (even when only one sprinkler is connected!). Is there a cost-effective method to increase the water pressure? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Argee]

You didn't mention what your water pressure is. I keep mine around 60 lbs. Usually, near or on your pressure tank is the a pressure switch. Remove the cover and with a nut driver or small socket turn the nut clockwise to increase pressure.

 

[TWINKLE_TOES]

tanner,

With a little more information, might be able to help. What is the configuration of your water system, pressure tank size and setting? Line sizes and lengths?
This link may be of help.
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.tractorbynet.com/cgi-bin/compact/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=rural&Number=77326&page=&view=&sb=&o=&vc=1>Calculating GPM</A>
This is an quick and easy head loss calculator. <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Concourse/3075/hazen2.html>Head Loss Calculator</A>
Al

 

[TonyC]

If you want a simple solution that isn't fancy just buy a water pump. I got one at Northern Supply for $34.00. Just hook the hose to it, hook a hose to the egress and plug it in. You will need a couple of inexpensive adaptors to do this. You could just mount it to a board an use it portably. If your well will keep up with it on volume it will turn those sprinklers!

 

[TresCrows]

Join the club, I am on rural water which sometimes means no water. I always thought the South was supposed to be backwards but here I am in Kansaw and they don't got running water--.
I drilled a well but unfortunately the wells in the area around my house average 10GPM. Mine is exactly that--10GPM. The submersible pump puts out about 80PSI. I use a 80 gallon accumulator tank with a pressure switch set for 50/30 operation. Kicks off at 50 and on at 30. Between the water stored in the tank and the water stored in the well I can get about 30 to 50 minutes of high flow rate but at some point and that point depends upon how much water I am drawing and how fast the 10GPM well cannot keep up and the well will draw down and the tank will go down and the submersible pump will suck air and cavitate. Sustained flow cannot exceed the 10GPM. Regulating to a lower pressure is one way to make a low GPM well more efficient. For example, a given sprinkler head may draw 3 GPM at 30 PSI, 5 GPM at 50 PSI and 8 at 80 PSI (just making up numbers for the example). Most sprinklers are designed for about 30 to 35 PSI and some will say operating pressure 20 to 50 PSI (for example). If the sprinkler functions at 30 PSI and you have a 12 GPM well then you could run exactly 4 sprinklers using 3 GPM at 30 PSI, if you boosted the pressure (via the accumulator tank and pressure switch) to 50 PSI then you could only run 2 sprinklers. I have my pressure set and 50/30 but I also installed 25 PSI resrictors in my sprinklers. I can run three of the 3GPM heads, impulse type. Without the restrictors I can run only 2.
Some people near me who have only a well and no rural water have drilled and linked together as many as three wells. Three wells, say 10 GPM, 15 GPM and 7 GPM is 32 GPM, expensive but needed. My 100 foot, gravel packed and cased well with bibb, cap, and 1/2 horsepower submersible pump (and associated plumbing) ran just shy of 2,000 dollars. Latter this Summer I will drill a second well on the east side of my property and tie them together, they will both run to my accumulator tank.
Good luck.
J

 

[Devildog]

Argee,
The only other thing I could add is if you have a bladder tank and you adjust the pressure, Make sure you adjust the PSI in the bladder acording to what manufacturer requires.

Also Welcome aboard
__________________________________________
Take care, Jim

 

[heehaw]

if the problem is a low producing well, its solved fairly easily. around here we install 1000 gal sealed tanks, the pump in the well keeps the tank full, and we take the water from the tank; if we have what the ole timers referred to as "copperous" water, which i think is also referred to as irony water, we install some gravel and sand in the tank and filter the water, walla, plenty of water and its doesn't stain the fixtures. i have seen stores put in as many as 3, 1000 gal tanks to take care of their water shortage problem. if its just low pressure, but you have plenty of water, the previous answers covered that quite well..good luck
heehaw

 

[looch]

<font color=blue>No water pressure problems in the house</font color=blue>

Without knowing the age of your house all I can say is that we have a similar problem. Our house is over a hundred years old and at some point galvanized pipe was used. The plumbing system is a friggin's mess right now. Bits and pieces were added willy-nilly over the last 50 years. I have galvanized, copper, and PVC pipe throughout. Even when the PVC was added it wasn't done properly - I have 1/2" pipe feeding my upstairs bathroom. The sections that have galvanized pipe - this includes the external spigget - do not produce much pressure because they are clogged with rust and mineral deposits.

 

[WVBill]

Tanner:

I have experienced exactly the same thing.

We moved into our house on 4 acres with a well 3 years ago. Water pressure and flow in the house is OK (although you can certainly tell in the shower when the pump cycles in and builds up the pressure in the pressure tank). But the AVERAGE pressure just wasn't enough to effectively run sprinklers.

Here's what I found:
The well pump is strong enough to put out pressure up to at least the cut-off point in the pressure tank. There is some flow rate at which the pump will not be able to reach the cut-off point pressure.

If we turned on MORE sprinklers, the pump would kick in and pump up the pressure - but never be able to quite reach the cut-off pressure of the tank - thus it would keep up that pressure forever (again, we have a very good well with no flow problems {knock wood, cross fingers, etc. etc.}). It does not damage the pump to run it for long periods - pump life is rated in on-off cycles not in hours of pumping.

So our solution was to run two sprinklers at the same time using 5/8" hose to achieve max flow and allow the pump to run continuously at its max pressure.

 

[hwp]

Does your system have water filters on it? If so, when were they last changed?