water pressure

patrickg · Apr 9, 2002

Hey Tres Crows! 10 gal/min is luxury man. We think we are lucky when we can maintain 7 1/2 for a reasonable time. If they weren't puting in rural water here as this is being written, I'd be lookin' to drill another well. I put out 600 ft of soaker hose (the porous black recycled tire kind) and all hose and soaker was downhill from spigot. I took the end cap off to purge air and speed the onset of watering. No water would run out the end. All the water dripped out of the soaker before any got to the end. I have 50-20 hi-lo pressure switch. Water is adequate for house and will squirt from a hose nozzle but 450 ft is about max soaker length that will deliver water to the end of the line. So I put 6 ea. 75 ft soakers on one branch and two on another and have them take turns. Works fine but must turn down the water when only feeding two to prevent spraying instead of dripping.

If I were hard over for sprinklers (I'm not, I bought some but they didn't work worth diddly, even a rainbird due to low pressure/volume situation) I'd favor the solution a previous poster sugested, an in-line pump. It would have to be set up to cycle on and off otherwise it would drain my pressure tank in short order and do nothing but risk burn out. I would recommend that solution. Use an inline pump but test to insure that it doesn't outrun the well pump. If it does then set it up to run for say 2/3 the time to empty the well tank and then off for say 4/3 (133%) the time it takes the well tank to recover from being empty, fill up, come to full pressure, and shut off. This is just a guess but if there are other demands on the well you don't want to cut it too close.

A better approach and one that automatically compensates would be to put a relay on the pressure switch that controls the well pump. Use that relay to controll the in-line pump that drives the sprinklers. That way the in-line pump would only run when the well pump wasn't which would avoid out running the well pump and the associated problems. If you have a problem with water coming out of the sprinklers while the in-line pump is off and over watering near the sprinklers, then put an electrically controlled water valve like in dishwashers and home laundry washers in the line up stream of the in-line pump and wire it to the relay contacts on the relay that I suggested to control the in-line pump. Use the contacts that are de-energized when the in-line pump is off. Said another way, in case I haven't confused you enough... The water control valve should be turned off (no water flow) when the in-line pump is off but yo might not want to use the same contacts on the relay because...

You might choose to run the in-line pump on 220-240 volts and the water control solenoid thingy from an appliance made for 120 volts (unless you get a European market unit as they mostly use 220 volts)

Enough explaining! If anyone wants a schematic just ask and I will scrawl one out, scan, and post.

Patrick

tanner · Apr 9, 2002

The water pressure is at 30 psi and then jumps to 45 psi when water is being used. I'll adjust it up to about 60 psi.
Thanks.
Greg

tanner · Apr 9, 2002

Sounds like a great low cost solution. Will the well keep up? What capacity pump do you use?
Thanks!

TonyC · Apr 9, 2002

<font color=blue>Will the well keep up?</font color=blue>

Don't know. I don't use mine on a well, in fact I've never had a well. Maybe someone else can help with that one.

<font color=blue>What capacity pump do you use?</font color=blue>

Mine is 720 GPH...you can look at the exact pump I have <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.northerntool.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=7738&prmenbr=6970>here</A>

If you search their site they have others that are more powerful and more expensive. I also use this pump to move rainwater in my greenhouse. The 55 gal drums are collected outside and the motor is inside. The hose fires just like it is hooked to the house!

Argee · Apr 9, 2002

tanner..
Adjust it so the high end of the limit (pump shut off) is 60lbs..

You may need to set your low end up also...When I had my well put in, the guy that set the pressure tank and did the hook up bypassed the high end the during the initial filling to "stretch the bladder" in the tank. He ran it up to about 70lbs., said this would encourage it to hold the high end pressure. Haven't had a problem in six years. I wonder if your tank bladder has enough "stretch".

My tank and control is in the back of my shop, when I built the house I installed another tank there. Now I have more volume and longer periods between pump runs. Worth considering if your using it to water your lawn.

Personally, I don't use my well to water the lawn. Not worth the well going dry to have a green lawn. Besides if I water it, I have to mow it more often. If it looks green from the road, it's green enough for me.

TresCrows · Apr 10, 2002

Patrick, I am new to this well thing. I only use my well for irrigation. My house runs on rural water. I am going to rig a manifold so I can switch over to well water for the house in event of an emergency. I read your post several times and I am not sure I understand. I have a pressure guage at my well head and it reads 80 psi when flowing about 8GPM and about 60 or more at 10 GPM and I can let it run at 10GPM continuously--24 hours a day if need be. Soooo, I am not sure how your pump does not have adequate pressure. I installed pressure reducers at my sprinklers. I do not have a sprinkler system, just lots of hoses running everywhere--for now. My pressure switch kicks on the well pump and it will maintain the 50/30 cycle indefinitly as long as I do not pull more than 10GPM average. It is kinda confusing--I need to think about this some more. Before I installed the 5 dollar pressure reducers in my impulse sprinklers looked like rockets and would fall over and scoot along the ground. I could only run two also without depeleting the well. Now with the 25 psi reducers I can run 3 and they behave normally.
I hope the rural water works out for you. Ours is OK but there is rarely more than 20 PSI or so and often much less. I timed the flow rate into a bucket on a good day and it was exactly 4.7 GPM. With two hoses running the rate drops to about 3.5 and with three hoses it drops less than 2. The water quality is fine it seems, a little hard. I have not had the well long enough to access it's water quality though I imagine it will be rather hard.
Good luck.
J

ejb · Apr 10, 2002

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

Good point....after moving into my place a few years ago my wife noticed a decreasing amount of water pressure of the months we were her (I am oblivious to these things) and finally complained enough to spur me into action.

There was a water-filter on here that look like it had not been changed in years...plunked in a new cartridge and voila...instant water pressure.

ejb · Apr 10, 2002

How would you go about installing on of these 1000 gallon tanks into an existing system? i.e. what modifications would you need to do to an existing pump system to get it all working...I like the idea. At what point would you install the 100 gallon tank, i.e. before the bladder housing and water filter after both etc?

It seems that you would want to add another pump after the tank in order to improve pressure...anything else? I could see the new pump would be the one that kicks on when water is demanded, but what causes the tank to stay full? Some sort of float valve?

heehaw · Apr 10, 2002

i've seen it done two ways, one was with a well with low supply of water, the pump in the well was put on a timer, so it would pump 2 minutes out of every hour, or however long it could without draining the well. it did this 24/7, and that was enough to keep the tank full, if the folks went away for a wk-end, it would overflow the tank. the other way is with a float to shut the water off when the tank is full. the tank is installed directly after the well, and another pump is used to pump from the tank to the house, going thru additional filters if needed. i have a lot of iron in my well, but plenty of water, so i have a 7ft long, 3ft wide and 3ft tall tank that the well goes into, thru the sand/gravel then another pump to the house, its worked for 16 years now.
heehaw