Interesting info and interesting video. Seems counter-intuitive to me to run the pump every time you draw a glass of water or during the full duration of doing laundry or washing dishes. I've seen many submersible pumps go 20 years with a conventional tank setup. I'd say the average life expectancy of a quality pump is 15 years, more or less. What could / should one expect with the CSV? Is there a power savings, also? Thanks.
It really all depends on how the water is used. If the CSV reduces the number of cycles by 50%, then it effectively doubles the life of the pump. But in some of our first test cases 25 odd years ago, the pumps were only lasting about 2 years. Most of those systems are still running today, which means the CSV has made those pumps last 10+ times more than usual.
The only way a CSV can save energy is by eliminating repetitive cycling on long running irrigation zones. It takes 6 times as much energy to start a pump as it uses when it is running, so if the CSV eliminates a lot of cycles, it will also reduce the electric bill.
However, when using water for just house use, the electric bill may even increase by 1 or 2 bucks a month. But that is cheap insurance because it will make the pump last much longer. And if you consider the price difference of the smaller tank, a buck or 2 a month on the electric bill would take decades to pay for a larger tank.
I don't understand the advantage of the special valve. Sure, I don't like the varying shower pressure, but I like the infrequent pump starts. I like having a good amount of water in a power outage, with no genny running. That feature in itself is invaluable.
The shower pressure is varying BECAUSE of the frequent pump starts you have now. With a CSV the pump will run continuously as long as the shower is on, even if you shower for a month. This keeps the pressure strong and constant, and eliminates frequent starts.
If you knew the power was going off tonight, and you went out and forced the pump to run and fill the pressure tank, then you would have some stored water when the power goes off. But if you don’t know when the power is going off, you have less than a 50% chance the pressure tank will have any water in it. With a 40/60 switch, the tank is full at 60 and empty at 41 PSI. You have no way of making sure it is even close to 60 when the power goes off. Murphy’s law says the system will always be at 41 when the power goes off, and you might have a gallon or two in that big, expensive pressure tank.
Now it is a different story when you go start the generator to fill the pressure tank. That way you know an 80 gallon size tank will be full with 20 gallons of water when you shut off the gen set. But you could also start the gen set and fill a couple of 50 gallon rain barrels and use little 12V RV pump to put it into the house lines. Storing 100 gallons this way would be much less expensive than a big pressure tank and would mean starting the gen set one time instead of five to get 100 gallons in the house. But if the power goes off that often, you need a whole house gen set, then the size of pressure tank would not matter.
Valveman is the inventor of cycle stop valves but I wouldn't waste my money buying one for a single stage jet pump. It's a good device but deep well jet pumps are a lousy application for their purpose.
Deep well jet pump, shallow well jet pump, or submersible, doesn’t matter. If your pump is cycling on and off while the shower is on, the CSV will be very beneficial. The CSV will eliminate pump cycling, give you strong constant pressure in the shower, allow the use of a much smaller and less expensive tank, and makes the pump system last longer, no matter what kind of pump you have.
Most people just get use to it and don’t realize how lousy their shower pressure is. But after installing a CSV they say things like the following I heard from a guy this morning.
“Ignore most of my BS since I installed the CSV, I finally get it. The difference doesn't sound like much BUT IT IS in the shower.” Ohio
