Dug well pump questions

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LLigetfa

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...but this was an event telling me that if I can reduce pressure inside the hose by adjusting the settings on the pressure switch, I ought to.
What you ought to do is install a small pressure tank. As valveman said, the pressure switch is likely to bounce and should not be used without a tank.
 

MikeSS

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What you ought to do is install a small pressure tank. As valveman said, the pressure switch is likely to bounce and should not be used without a tank.
I've thought about using the non-functioning HF pump tank as a tank to soften the starts with my pump. Also thinking to use the pressure gauge off of that pump and put it on my TEEL. There's a bolt on the pump housing that looks like it is designed for installation of a gauge. If the thread diameter is the same I'll try it.

Question still is, until I buy a tank or utilize the HF tank, will moving the cut-in/cut-out adjustment either up or down minimize the hose pressure with the nozzle turned off? Essentially the 80 foot hose is currently being used as a tank. I plan to add another 80 feet to this hose today and with 160 feet of mildly expandable hose, seems like it might provide a small buffering effect . . . maybe not. In any event, considering my current configuration, would adjusting the adjustments up or down help mitigate stress on the hose and the pump?

Thanks.
 

MikeSS

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moving the cut-in/cut-out adjustment
Lowering the cut-out pressure and raising the cut-in pressure seems to have reduced the strain on the hose pressure with the nozzle closed. Might be my imagination. I haven't put on the additional 80' hose yet so I'll see if that changes anything. In any case, I've had no problem with the pump short-cycling. The pump turns off when I close the nozzle and stays turned off as long as I don't have any loose fittings, leaks on the output. When I open the nozzle the pump turns on. After I'm done watering, I turn the breaker off.

Seems to be working like it's supposed to.

Regarding the hot-to-touch motor, if it has a service factor of 1.3 and is thermally protected and rated for continuous duty (data plate uploaded) should I worry about it getting hot? It's not confined - in the open air. I'm thinking of buying a pedestal fan at Wal-Mart and aim it at the motor when it's running . . . useless?
 

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Valveman

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Without a pressure tank the pump can be cycling off/on so fast you may not see it, which is not good for the pump. Lowering the on/off pressure can make that worse.

Those motors are made to run hot. Otherwise they would last longer than the manufacturer wants. Open air is good and a fan won’t hurt, but may not help much either.
 

MikeSS

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I've had my "system" up and running for a month now. I have not followed through (yet) with my more elaborate plan of putting in some elevated storage tanks with a drip system. If I had that I could put the pump on a timer to fill the tanks each day at a certain time and the water would then distribute itself without any human intervention. In the meantime . . . I've always enjoyed watering plants and trees with a hose. The smell of dry vegetation getting water is intoxicating and I imagine the water-starved plants thanking me as their shriveled up cells get a dose of moisture. Basically I live in a desert and except for the palms and the pepper trees, all my vegetation isn't natural to where it's at and water has traditionally been pretty inexpensive around here so I've not given it much thought. But . . . it's getting dryer over the years here in SoCal (all over the Southwest actually) and water is getting more scarce and more expensive and I've got a property full of trees and many kinds of other vegetation. I should have gotten this well going years ago and saved many thousands of dollars. I can't believe it took me this long . . . but oh well.

I bought some new Costco commercial grade hoses and put two together, making 160 feet which run up to the front of the property. The other two hoses, also 160', run to the back. I anchored both hoses to posts near the pump/well and take one off and put the other on every two or three days. I water each day between an hour and an hour and a half. I can run two hours plus without exhausting the well but the pump has to work harder the further down the water level drops and I'm being nice to this 1/2 horse TEEL. I wish it were a 3/4 or 1 hp pump so it would render more pressure and not have to work so hard. This one does get hot on certain areas of the motor body, depending a lot on ambient temperatures. With these hot days - it's 100 degrees as I write this - my infrared thermometer reads, on certain small sections of the motor, as high as 145-147 degrees. At night if it cools down into the 60's, all of the motor body will stay well below 140. When I first start pumping the well produces about ten gallons a minute and after an hour is down closer to five. Based upon my experience watering with the city water pressure, I'm guessing the pump starts out at around 40 pounds of pressure and drops down to 25 after an hour and a half. It takes the well about 24 hours to recover.

What I'd like to do now is reduce the time I spend watering by increasing the pressure through using a second pump as a boost pump. I'm thinking this would have the additional benefit of reducing the stress on my current pump. So . . . if anyone has gotten this far reading this . . . could I buy another half horse pump like the one I've got and just put it in line? Turn the first pump on and then the second? Is there a better way to do this than using a jet pump as a booster pump . . . I guess I'm asking are there pumps designed just for use as a boost pump? Anything I should watch out for regarding the pressure switch on the second pump (if it has one)?

Anyway, that's where I'm at with my well project. At 4.4 amps per hour my 220 pump costs 57 cents an hour to extract about $25 worth of water per hour at current city rates. Nice. My city water consumption has never been lower. I'm now a model water consumer and will soon have this place again looking like a South American River. I'm in a river drainage and the well drilling guys tell me the level never drops, although I've seen about a foot difference between winter and summer and the summer isn't over - in fact we're now in the hottest, driest part of it so we'll see. The water is heavy with minerals which I see dried on any surfaces like glass windows. I'll eventually test the water and see what kind of stuff I've got. Initially the water smelled of sulfer but that's mostly gone after a month of pumping.

Thanks for any how-to advice on putting in a booster pump.

Mike

**********

Forgot to mention, I haven't had a single issue with the pump losing prime. I just turn it on and it pumps. I put a primer funnel just above the hose bib but except for initial set-up I've never had to use it.

I never did get the Harbor Freight pump to do anything except spit out the prime I'd put in. I tried it with a short downpipe into a five gallon bucket but got nothing. It looks and sounds new but I've given up on it.

Regarding the boost pump, would I want to stick with a pump that's got the same specs as the primary pump? Would it make any difference to go over or under in capacity?
 
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