LLigetfa
DIYer, not in the trades
I use a pressure switch with the low pressure cut-off and never before had a nuisance trip except of course after a power failure. It seems that the way the Square D units work, the cut-off point is not hard set but rather some percentage of the kick-in/kick-out. I think when the switch is set to somewhere around 20/40 that the cut-off is 10 PSI.
Anyway... I did some recent work on the well to develop it and dropped in a new pump so that I could up the pressure to 40/60. While I had the system down, I also cut into the 3/4" copper line between the precipitation tank and the iron filter and found that there was almost 1/4" of iron build-up reducing the pipe to almost 1/4". I snaked and flushed out the line and ran 3 manual backwashes to get all the iron out of the line and filter.
Now, at 40/60 PSI I have to run the micronizer with the bypass fully choked so the effective GPM through the micronizer is now less than the GPM through the iron filter. Enter the wife and her soaker tub... it has full port valves and can fill at a rate faster than the micronizer permits so when the pump kicks in at 40 PSI, it cannot gain PSI but rather, slowly drops precariously close to the low pressure cut-off.
The precipitation tank has an air volume control that is float actuated to bleed off excess air but since it is in such a harsh environment with all that precipitated iron, it tends to stick sometimes, not regulating the air volume precisely. I keep a spare AVC on hand that I let soak in Super Iron Out for days to rejuvenate. It would appear that perhaps the AVC finally opened when the pressure (and subsequent water level) dropped and that in turn caused the pressure to drop below the cut-off. Keeping the wife happy is getting to be a long row to hoe...
At this point, I don't think I want to risk running without a low pressure cut-off but then again, I don't want it to trip off again when I'm not home and incur the wrath of an unhappy wife. There's no way that I will teach her how to go down into the crawlspace to hold the lever "just so" long enough for the pressure to climb above the cut-off, so I'm looking at replacing it with EPS15/99 from Cycle Stop Valves ( http://cyclestopvalves.com/products.html#eps1599 ). From what I've read it has a fixed cut-off of 10 PSI. Anyone have experience with this unit and know of a Canadian source?
Anyway... I did some recent work on the well to develop it and dropped in a new pump so that I could up the pressure to 40/60. While I had the system down, I also cut into the 3/4" copper line between the precipitation tank and the iron filter and found that there was almost 1/4" of iron build-up reducing the pipe to almost 1/4". I snaked and flushed out the line and ran 3 manual backwashes to get all the iron out of the line and filter.
Now, at 40/60 PSI I have to run the micronizer with the bypass fully choked so the effective GPM through the micronizer is now less than the GPM through the iron filter. Enter the wife and her soaker tub... it has full port valves and can fill at a rate faster than the micronizer permits so when the pump kicks in at 40 PSI, it cannot gain PSI but rather, slowly drops precariously close to the low pressure cut-off.
The precipitation tank has an air volume control that is float actuated to bleed off excess air but since it is in such a harsh environment with all that precipitated iron, it tends to stick sometimes, not regulating the air volume precisely. I keep a spare AVC on hand that I let soak in Super Iron Out for days to rejuvenate. It would appear that perhaps the AVC finally opened when the pressure (and subsequent water level) dropped and that in turn caused the pressure to drop below the cut-off. Keeping the wife happy is getting to be a long row to hoe...
At this point, I don't think I want to risk running without a low pressure cut-off but then again, I don't want it to trip off again when I'm not home and incur the wrath of an unhappy wife. There's no way that I will teach her how to go down into the crawlspace to hold the lever "just so" long enough for the pressure to climb above the cut-off, so I'm looking at replacing it with EPS15/99 from Cycle Stop Valves ( http://cyclestopvalves.com/products.html#eps1599 ). From what I've read it has a fixed cut-off of 10 PSI. Anyone have experience with this unit and know of a Canadian source?
Last edited: