Well Drilled - Results

[Valveman]

Valveman,

I appreciate the input but can you PLEASE stop slamming VFD's in every post you make? It's getting old. We get it, you don't sell VFD's, you sell CSVs and have a personal investment in seeing that CSV's sell.

I like the dialogue but the constant attack and slams on VFDs gets old.

I know, I know. But I am not really slamming VFD's. I am just repeating what I hear from others everyday. I had rather try to keep people from making a mistake, than help them get out from under those mistakes a year or two later.

 

[Valveman]

When pumping if the level stays static then the input should equal the pump rate.

When that happens the static level and the pumping level are the same.

If the level doesn't stay static you don't know what the recharge rate is.

Agreed. You have to maintain a level when pumping X amount of water to determine the pumping depth.

A cable or rope is often att he'd to the pump so fishing expeditions don't happen.

Many times people try to pull a pump with that rope or cable. When it breaks and the whole thing goes south, the rope or cable make it almost impossible to fish.

 

[the old grind]

Understand that VFDs and CPVs are apples and oranges, the former being oversold IMO for the presumed benefit of energy savings. Watt/hp remains pretty much the same regardless of voltage or phase config.

VFDs do allow motor-specific tuning to a high degree on current draw, slow start ramps, o'load trip outs, etc. For their few $hun they can make life easy for any 3PH motor they're properly matched to (flexible, there) esp reducing starting torque. Doing anything with less energy consumed is quite a stretch, but one might be able to use a lighter ga wire. If they go south there IS no tinkering, only replacement/setup. They ARE commonly used on very high HP community system pump where flow rates and power requirements vary considerably by the hour.

One should never ask an electrical wire to do more than support it's own weight. Poly rope is typically slippery and will outlast wire in a wet environment. (I'm confident with metal pipe, but with poly pipe the rope is reassuring, better than nothing. :laughing

The CPVs work with the tank and beyond and their primary purpose IIRC is to maintain constant pressure. Reduce cycling would be a nice side benefit if proven, but as I understand it there are particular pumps/brands more or less well suited to using them as well.*

I'll go back to the wiki page on CPVs, because IIRC the benefit/viewpoint vm prefers seems to be perfectly valid, but reading twice wasn't enough for this old guy to fully grasp why/how. One thing I missed if it was even there, was whether typical (regular?) extremes of usage (200gal/day, 200gal/week ..) could mitigate any advantage. Perhaps they are best suited ot the more shallow wells where torque or pulling to service may be less scary.

btw, I'm totally enjoying this 'class'. Gentlemen, please continue. :thumbsup:

* (Where/how would we find out which is which.)

 

[Pettrix]

I know, I know. But I am not really slamming VFD's. I am just repeating what I hear from others everyday. I had rather try to keep people from making a mistake, than help them get out from under those mistakes a year or two later.

Well, if the VFD controller goes bad. I have a 5-year parts and labor on the motor, pump and controller. The motor & pumps last 20+ years. The controllers are not as stout, I will give you that, but they are a few hundred dollars to replace.

I will leave it at that.

 

[Pettrix]

Goulds and Franklin recommend multiple check valves in the drop line. On their site, they say at least 2 but up to 4 are good. They claim it actually stops water hammering and protects the piping from extreme back pressure.

I am just going by what the engineers at Goulds and Franklin state.

 

[Haoleguy]

Pettrix- You should be in good shape with the system you're installing. I nearly went Goulds but ended up with Sta-Rite/Pentek. My pump is 30gpm and the motor is 5hp which is controlled by VFD. My use is primarily vineyard irrigation for 6-8 hrs straight for 5 to 7 days at a time directly from the well with very small expansion tank...not a volume holding tank....Gary

 

[Valveman]

Understand that VFDs and CPVs are apples and oranges, the former being oversold IMO for the presumed benefit of energy savings. Watt/hp remains pretty much the same regardless of voltage or phase config.

I don’t really think they are apples and oranges. They both deliver variable flow and maintain a constant pressure. But how they do this is certainly apples and oranges. But as you say VFD’s are being oversold by claiming they save energy when they do not.

VFDs do allow motor-specific tuning to a high degree on current draw, slow start ramps, o'load trip outs, etc. For their few $hun they can make life easy for any 3PH motor they're properly matched to (flexible, there) esp reducing starting torque. Doing anything with less energy consumed is quite a stretch, but one might be able to use a lighter ga wire. If they go south there IS no tinkering, only replacement/setup. They ARE commonly used on very high HP community system pump where flow rates and power requirements vary considerably by the hour.

CSV’s are also used on very high HP community system pumps where the flow rates vary considerably, as they deliver variable rates of water at a constant pressure the same as a VFD.

One should never ask an electrical wire to do more than support it's own weight. Poly rope is typically slippery and will outlast wire in a wet environment. (I'm confident with metal pipe, but with poly pipe the rope is reassuring, better than nothing. :laughing

I have pulled many pumps by the wire when needed. If the pump was installed close to the bottom of the well and doesn’t have far to fall, I would not use a rope or cable. But if the pump could fall a long ways, I would use a SS cable instead of a rope. And either will cause a rat’s nest in the well and not let the pump come out if you break or drop the rope or cable.

The CPVs work with the tank and beyond and their primary purpose IIRC is to maintain constant pressure. Reduce cycling would be a nice side benefit if proven, but as I understand it there are particular pumps/brands more or less well suited to using them as well.*

Yes some pumps work better (have more HP drop) than others when used with a CSV. Franklin is the only one now claiming their pump will not work with any kind of restriction. I don’t really think that is true and that they just don’t want you to benefit from longer pump life caused by a CSV. But if they want to say those things, I just say use any pump but a Franklin, as any of the others work fine with a CSV.

I'll go back to the wiki page on CPVs, because IIRC the benefit/viewpoint vm prefers seems to be perfectly valid, but reading twice wasn't enough for this old guy to fully grasp why/how. One thing I missed if it was even there, was whether typical (regular?) extremes of usage (200gal/day, 200gal/week ..) could mitigate any advantage. Perhaps they are best suited ot the more shallow wells where torque or pulling to service may be less scary.

The CSV is a very simple valve, but because of how it affects pumps, it has a very complicated explanation. A CSV is not nearly as advantageous on a system that only uses 200 gallons per day or per week as it is a more heavily used water system. But even on those lightly used systems the CSV will allow the use of a much smaller pressure tank and deliver those 200 gallons per day at a constant pressure instead of continually varying pressure as with a large pressure tank. CSV’s work equally well with deep pumps as well as shallow pumps. But a deep pump with a high static is a little bit of a problem as I will discuss later.

 

[Valveman]

Well, if the VFD controller goes bad. I have a 5-year parts and labor on the motor, pump and controller. The motor & pumps last 20+ years. The controllers are not as stout, I will give you that, but they are a few hundred dollars to replace.

I will leave it at that.

Yeah is all sounds really inviting. But a 5 year warranty isn’t much consolation when you wake up to no water coming out of the faucets. These are the stories I hear everyday. “Replaced the controller 2-3 times under warranty. Replaced the pump/motor once under warranty, while being out of water for a day or two each time waiting on repairs. As soon as the warranty was expired we got hit with a bill to replace everything. Tired of the problems with the VFD and want to change, but have wire too small ditched under the driveway, which has to be changed out to have any other option.”

Goulds and Franklin recommend multiple check valves in the drop line. On their site, they say at least 2 but up to 4 are good. They claim it actually stops water hammering and protects the piping from extreme back pressure.

I am just going by what the engineers at Goulds and Franklin state.

Yeah that all sounds really good, works well on paper, and a lot of people get away with it. And if the only goal is to keep the pump from spinning backwards, more than one check might be a good idea. But these are the stories I hear everyday. “I hear and feel a loud thump when the pump comes on and/or goes off. I keep splitting a pipe or fittings at the top of the well.” On larger pumps I also hear “I keep shattering the thrust bearing in the motor.” All of these problems are caused by having multiple check valves, and the problems go away when the extra check valves are removed.

Water hammer from the extra check valves actually CAUSES the extreme backpressure they are trying to avoid. And again if the VFD actually gives the soft start/soft stop they claim, there would be no surge or water hammer that required an extra check valve to mitigate. But maybe you will be one of the lucky ones.

 

[Valveman]

Pettrix- You should be in good shape with the system you're installing. I nearly went Goulds but ended up with Sta-Rite/Pentek. My pump is 30gpm and the motor is 5hp which is controlled by VFD. My use is primarily vineyard irrigation for 6-8 hrs straight for 5 to 7 days at a time directly from the well with very small expansion tank...not a volume holding tank....Gary

The Pentek Intellidrive is the newest version of their VFD that is supposed to solve all the problems of their older versions. I have been hearing that same story now for about 30 years. I don’t think the new Pentek has been out long enough to know anything, but I doubt that it will be any better than the older versions. We have been replacing VFD’s with CSV’s on vineyards and other similar systems since 1993.

I don’t bash VFD’s because I make a competing product. I make a competing product because I got bashed by VFD’s. After studying electrical engineering and getting back to work at my family owned pump business 30+ years ago, I thought VFD’s were the coolest thing. I could have built one of my own, but there were several models already on the market, so I just got good at programming and installing them. But when my customers started calling with problems, I had to take a step back. VFD’s were not saving energy as I had been led to believe. They were not making pumps last longer as the salesman had told me. And I was having multiple problems with bearing currents, harmonics, resonance frequency vibration, stray voltage, radio frequency interference, and many other things that I was not told about.

My customers did not blame the VFD. They didn’t know if it was a Yaksuka, Tojibsu, or what brand of equipment they had. All they knew was that I was not keeping their water supply running dependably. So I got the blame and lost customers because of VFD’s. When I got tired of being bashed by VFD’s, I figured out a way to duplicate the performance of a VFD by using a simple and dependable valve. In 1993 I went back and replaced every VFD I had installed with a CSV, and I have never looked back.

Now having said all of that, the pump system in this thread is not a very good candidate for a CSV. A 2HP, 13 GPM pump with a static water level of 220’ will have a backpressure of 192 PSI when using a CSV. And while a 192 PSI backpressure is not a problem for the pump and/or the well pipe and the CSV would work fine, it is a little more backpressure than we like to handle with a CSV.

I would have tested the well, figured out the actual pumping level, and set the appropriate pump so as not to have that much backpressure. When you don’t know how much or from how deep the well will produce, installing an extra large pump at the deepest setting is the only option. But even then, it is only a 13 GPM pump, so I would have just put in a couple of 80 gallon size pressure tanks and had a system that cost less and was more dependable than a VFD.

Also with 4.5" casing the VFD needs to be set up for the pump to flow a minimum of about 5 GPM required for motor cooling. So you would need a little larger tank, as the pump should be cycling on/off when using less than 5 GPM.

Working between 5 GPM and 13 GPM isn't much variation for a VFD or a CSV, which is another reason I would have just used a couple of tanks and no VFD.

 

[speedbump]

Well, if the VFD controller goes bad. I have a 5-year parts and labor on the motor, pump and controller. The motor & pumps last 20+ years. The controllers are not as stout, I will give you that, but they are a few hundred dollars to replace.

I just started reading this thread and there is a lot of good stuff here. I have to totally agree with the two pro's that are commenting here. The only thing I have to say is about the above quote. If you actually believe that a pump and motor will last 20 plus years, you are listening to the wrong people. Seven years is a pretty good life for anybody's pump and motor these days.