• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Water supply problem

RogerS

RogerS

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We get our water from a borehole and it's then treated down in the cellar. An annoying problem has been creeping in over the last few days in that the cold water in the house stops flowing. It's all driven by pumps in the cellar and when you turn the tap on, you can hear the pump kick in.

This is the pump and what? Pressure tank as it's a negative head ?



The tank does have a meter on it and when the water stops (because the pump s not energised when the tap is turned on) I notice that the pressure on the meter has fallen. To get round the problem, I momentarily open up this stopcock here and then the pump starts and the meter on the tank shows increased pressure.



I don't really understand how these things work. Does the tank have a diaphragm inside it with air under pressure on one side and water on the other ? If the pressure is dropping then what? A pinprick hole in that diaphragm? How can I tell?

What if there was a slow leak in the cold water system somewhere ? A leaky cistern stopcock, for example. I could see that slowly reducing the pressure such that when a tap was turned on there was not enough pressure inside the pressure tank to start the flow to make the motor run.

Have to confess that I don't really understand how it turns on and off....pressure sensitive switch as opposed to a flow magnet like to get in shower pumps ?
 
I have no knowledge of this arrangement but you guess that it works with a differential switch like on a compressor and if this is the case it can be adjusted for max and cut in pressure .
 
I have use of a similar system. The pressure vessel should have a schraeder (car tyre) valve to pressurise on side of the diapraghm. This in turn pressurises the water in the pipe. When you open a tap the water pressure drops and a pressure switch turns on the pump to try and restore the pressure....which it cannot do until the tap is closed.

The setting of the vessel pressure, the pressure switch set point seem to be a bit black magic to me but it seems to work.

Ian
 
Phil":22a3z859 said:
Roger, what are the black tanks used for?
Brewing beer?
Click to expand...


LOL! I wish. No settlement/holding tanks. All a bit of a mystery TBH.

Old/Ian, many thanks for the replies. There is a black circular device on a screw thread at the back of the tank and is loose...as is the other one on the other tank and so probably in the correct position ie loose.
I think that it is the pressure switch at issue as knocking it when in a fault condition, it does its thing and fires up the pump.
 
The waterman came this morning and he thinks that the switch is misbehaving.

I now know how the system works and is very similar to Ian's. There is a diaphragm in the tank and one side is pressurised to 2 Bar. The other side to the pressure in the water pipe. The purpose is to absorb fluctuations in pressure and to give a more consistent flow. There is a 1 Bar differential pressure set on the switch.

They ran water out of the drain tap that I'd been using to trigger the pump until the pressure switch kicked in. But it didn't consistently. So as a temporary measure they've let out some air in the tank down to 1.5 Bar and dropped the pressure switch down to 2.5 Bar.

The pump is also knackered (I could have told them that! You only have to hear it) but they recommend not replacing the switch until the pump is replaced ...makes sense to me.
 
RogerS":193qgvkw said:
The waterman came this morning and he thinks that the switch is misbehaving.

I now know how the system works and is very similar to Ian's. There is a diaphragm in the tank and one side is pressurised to 2 Bar. The other side to the pressure in the water pipe. The purpose is to absorb fluctuations in pressure and to give a more consistent flow. There is a 1 Bar differential pressure set on the switch.

They ran water out of the drain tap that I'd been using to trigger the pump until the pressure switch kicked in. But it didn't consistently. So as a temporary measure they've let out some air in the tank down to 1.5 Bar and dropped the pressure switch down to 2.5 Bar.

The pump is also knackered (I could have told them that! You only have to hear it) but they recommend not replacing the switch until the pump is replaced ...makes sense to me.
Click to expand...


I'm not sure if this is still the case but the "Mutts Nutts" of pumps are made by Stuart Turner so if you are choosing between brands and they are in your budget, then maybe pick one of those. I have one that must be 50 years old if it is a day for general purpose pumping jobs and one I fitted on our shower in 1985 and it has not missed a beat since.

Bob
 
Many thanks to all for your kind comments.

David...'off-grid' ? Sometimes it does seem like it ! Especially when one factors in our incoming mains AKA 'the long extension cable'. It just happened to work out that way. I admit to being intrigued by both wood boiler and water treatment plant but the reality is that the wood boiler is a PITA and needs constant attention. I certainly cannot go away, for example, and leave my wife alone to look after it. Hence the desire to replace with an oil system. There was a real 'off-grid' house up for sale with solar panels and very large batteries.... a step too far for this person.

Certainly we have had to modify our way of living and any trips out requires a bit more planning. I always knew that where we were previously located was extremely handy..rural yet Malvern only about 15 minutes away. It has also confirmed my views as to just how well appointed Malvern is. A large Waitrose, an M&S, large Boots. Good supply of plumbing and electrical suppliers. A very good system of recycling...I have yet to find anywhere that will take plasterboard and Northumberland operates a Pay'n'Throw policy for DIY waste. £20 for a fully-loaded 4x4, for example. Now our nearest place for 'civilisation' is a good 30-40 minutes away. A small price to pay for our seclusion.

Bob...many thanks for the timely reminder re Stuart Turner pumps. We also had one at the last place which worked flawlessly apart from the flow switch floats gumming up due to the hardness of our water. When I rang up ST they had all the manufacturing details etc of my pump on hand. Very impressive. I'd always thought of them as just 'shower pumps' and will look again. I could replace it myself I guess but I rather like the GALMI approach.

As an aside I have sent off a water sample to the lab to be tested. If all else fails then when its raining for long enough we have a small spring at the bottom of the cellar steps !



which reminds me...that cellar floor so wet and manky :o I've done some initial work, namely to rip out the perforated pipe that they had laid down the side of the cellar but which, predictably (viz. my loathing of French drains), had totally blocked up. I now have a free running runnel down the side of the cellar. A bit of angle-grinding and SDS hammer work should see me make an intercept runnel to collect other stray water ingress and route it down the main runnel. After that, it's a question of carrying out the sludge that had accumulated over the years and the cr*p that the previous owner left. :evil:

I'm getting some fluorescent die to see whereabouts the cellar drain runs out to as I need to put in some better drainage for the drainpipes ...currently straight onto the grass !

Which brings me nicely on to a little R and R and I wandered down to the river to inspect my fishing rights :)



I can see me having a picnic and a couple of beers come Summer :D

There is ancient woodland behind this area that rises steeply up the side of the gorge and one can imagine that Sherwood Forest must have looked a lot like this once upon a time. And, indeed, the location team who made one of the Robin Hood films thought exactly that as some of it was filmed around here.



 
I also forgot to mention that one of the best £50 I've ever spent was getting an asbestos report on the Artex ceilings and hall stucco.

Woo hoo !! No asbestos found which means we can change/replace/remove/plasterboard over/drill the ceilings to our hearts content.
 
Nice river. Have you got your rod out yet?

Always nice for us to have a wander outside and remind ourselves what we like about living in the area.

As well as the challenges on the inside is the missus getting to grips with the garden?
 
Andyp":27s2pkbl said:
....
As well as the challenges on the inside is the missus getting to grips with the garden?
Click to expand...

Not as yet. We have a chap coming in to do some mega-ground clearance for us and put in some land drains. Currently they are being transported out into the polytunnel.
 
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