Home & Garden Water Pressure Systems

There is where we are in disagreement. Picture this. In my scenario you want your tank as high as it can be and still fill from the municipal water, but if you do it your way you must lower your tank or it will only fill when the municpal water is at the max pressure. Feed from a short way up from the bottom of your storage tank with a check valve and then the tank will fill part way, even if the municipal pressure is not maxed. I hope that is clear. I can tell you it works as that is the way my system used to be. If it was fed from the top I would have had to lower the whole tank and lose the advantage of the extra gravity pressure on those nice days when the municipal water is being good to me.

I do admit it will make little difference if the municipal water pressure is relatively steady. In my case the municipal water would get shut off for 1 or 2 days at a time and would have fluctuating pressure when it came back so I was often operating with half a tank full. But it was sure nice when the tank filled

EDIT: Its also nice doing it that way because I needed no shut off mechanism. When the tank filled to the maximum pressure put out by the municipality then it automatically stopped filling. On those rare days when the municipal pressure was really high I had to turn it off manually if I saw water coming out the overflow. That was a seldom occurrence and the cost of water in that baragay was negligible so not worth worrying about the little bit that spilled. In fact I had a fresh fish pond I fed from to the overflow. Worked good except it was too shallow with no net to cover it and the birds would get my fish.

 

Ok, concur, pressure here is RELATIVELY STABLE (Daro), it's a rental, landlord covering half, and water shut off middle of night but never in the other 11 months we're here, so risk-cost / reward of lower cost of tank on ground won out... Sorry about the fish, how about piranhah??

 

Ok, one last question. Now that our system (described on my earlier post this noon) is up and running (as of 5 tonight, thanks Noel), what start / stop pressure do you have your system ???. I'm concerned this ramshackle place will spring leaks after years of low pressure ??? We're currently starting out at 20 / 30 psi, altho most systems say 30 / 40 or so ????????

 

I set the water pressure on my system so the pump will run full time when I'm taking a shower.
It's important that the pump can easily achieve the off pressure or it could end up "stuck on".

 

Hi SP, am following posts closely and checking the youtube videos for setting pressure switches (Noel gave us a Square D 9013-fsg-2). It doesn't sound like your system is working properly, or something isn't set right; you might have your installer (or Noel) check it out, just a gut feeling. If the pump won't achieve the off pressure, it might be the pressure tank bladder or "air charge" ??? I'm a recent expert, which means i don't know jack-s**t.....

 

And Davy, in my research, the factory set differential is 20 psi, in the case of the 9013-FSG-2, it comes preset at 20-40 psi.. It might come 40-60 (you gotta look inside the switch cover) but maybe not in the stock we get in dumaguete). We are readjusted to 22 to 32, but that was pretty much just to check for leaks, i think we'll go to about 22 to 36 or so. The smaller the differential (i learned that word from the manual), the more the pump cycles, but i think the 27-40 would be about right....... fun and brain games, keeps me from becoming demented...

 

I had such a system installed by Noel /citi hardware a couple of days ago - 500l stainless storage tank, 40l pressure tank, 0.5hp pump (the cheaper blue version in city hardware, which is, like the double expensive green ones, apparently from Italy). Including float switch to turn off the pump when the tank is empty, check valve for the bypass, installation and lots of small parts this cost about 30k all in all. Biggest items were the tank (10.5k), pressure tank (7k)and pump (3.5k).

Reason I chose the expensive stainless tank over the plastic one (which is usually put in the ground) was the possibility to clean it since it is standing on the ground and has kind of a plug at the lowest point.

The pump turns on at 30psi and works until 40psi are reached. However there is a lever on the pressurized side of the pump that is just opened half to not overload the installation in the (rented) house.

Works great so far, I just have to find the hidden leak that triggers the pump every ten minutes even if no one uses any water...

 

Do you have a check valve between the pump and the storage tank. The check valve prevents water from flowing backwards from the pressure tank through the pump to the storage tank when the pump is stopped.