Cloudee1
New Member
Good evening fellas, I must say this has been a rough couple of weeks. I'll skip the rest of my woes for now and jump right into today's adventure.
I got home from work today and noticed a weird humming sound in the laundry room. At first I assumed it was the freezer that was in there, but when I got closer I found that it was coming from the water softener (not really, but it was being transferred from the pump through the water lines). Right behind the water softener is where the water comes through the whole house filter before disappearing back into the flooring. I have a pressure gauge installed there and I noticed that the needle was pinned at the 100 psi mark. It doesn't go any higher than that, so who knows what the pressure actually was. Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that something is going on with my pump and that the humming sound I heard was it busily pumping away. Right away I flipped the circuit breaker to the pump and turned on a faucet to reduce the pressure.
So I head outside and open up the crawl space to take a look at what is going on. The crawlspace is completely flooded. By my estimates, there was close to 50000 cubic feet of water down there. So I jump in the car and head to town to get a new sump pump, cause no matter what else is going on down there, one thing I am sure of is that the sump pump that is at the bottom of my new pool certainly isn't doing what it should be. So I get home, get the new sump pump plugged in and start draining. It still hasn't come close to finishing yet, but it has moved quite a healthy amount of water.
I am guessing that this is what happened... at least with the pump. The sump pump went out who knows how long ago. The water level under the house finally rose high enough to submerge the pressure switch, because when I first looked, it was under water. Instead of tripping a breaker, the water kept the switch circuit closed and hence the pump kept running. Now that the water level has dropped to just 7 or 8 inches I braved turning the circuit breaker back on. There is still too much water down there to go crawling around in it, here in Indiana it's currently about 12 degrees. Anyway, I noticed when I flipped the circuit breaker that the pump started short cycling while water was running. Turning on for a second in which the pressure would jumped about 50 psi and then quickly shutting back off and likewise the pressure would drop that 50 psi back off. I also stuck my head down in the crawl space to see if I could see any spraying water or even ripples on the pool to try and determine if any connections had given out or a pipe had busted, but everything looked nice and calm down there.
So my question now, assuming that I will be able to get under the house tomorrow, besides the obvious of looking for leaks and busted pipes, would I simply need to add air to the tank to fix the short cycling or is there more that I should be expecting to do in this type of scenario. Is there some sort of pressure valve that would have blown out and need reset or replaced. In your guy's experience, given this lengthy scenario, what should I crawl under the house expecting to find?
*Edit
In case anyone is curious, here is what my pressure situation looks like on this side of the tank with the kitchen faucet turned on.
I know it's a bit fuzzy, but the low point is 20 and it is just shy of hitting 60 before dropping again
I got home from work today and noticed a weird humming sound in the laundry room. At first I assumed it was the freezer that was in there, but when I got closer I found that it was coming from the water softener (not really, but it was being transferred from the pump through the water lines). Right behind the water softener is where the water comes through the whole house filter before disappearing back into the flooring. I have a pressure gauge installed there and I noticed that the needle was pinned at the 100 psi mark. It doesn't go any higher than that, so who knows what the pressure actually was. Well, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that something is going on with my pump and that the humming sound I heard was it busily pumping away. Right away I flipped the circuit breaker to the pump and turned on a faucet to reduce the pressure.
So I head outside and open up the crawl space to take a look at what is going on. The crawlspace is completely flooded. By my estimates, there was close to 50000 cubic feet of water down there. So I jump in the car and head to town to get a new sump pump, cause no matter what else is going on down there, one thing I am sure of is that the sump pump that is at the bottom of my new pool certainly isn't doing what it should be. So I get home, get the new sump pump plugged in and start draining. It still hasn't come close to finishing yet, but it has moved quite a healthy amount of water.
I am guessing that this is what happened... at least with the pump. The sump pump went out who knows how long ago. The water level under the house finally rose high enough to submerge the pressure switch, because when I first looked, it was under water. Instead of tripping a breaker, the water kept the switch circuit closed and hence the pump kept running. Now that the water level has dropped to just 7 or 8 inches I braved turning the circuit breaker back on. There is still too much water down there to go crawling around in it, here in Indiana it's currently about 12 degrees. Anyway, I noticed when I flipped the circuit breaker that the pump started short cycling while water was running. Turning on for a second in which the pressure would jumped about 50 psi and then quickly shutting back off and likewise the pressure would drop that 50 psi back off. I also stuck my head down in the crawl space to see if I could see any spraying water or even ripples on the pool to try and determine if any connections had given out or a pipe had busted, but everything looked nice and calm down there.
So my question now, assuming that I will be able to get under the house tomorrow, besides the obvious of looking for leaks and busted pipes, would I simply need to add air to the tank to fix the short cycling or is there more that I should be expecting to do in this type of scenario. Is there some sort of pressure valve that would have blown out and need reset or replaced. In your guy's experience, given this lengthy scenario, what should I crawl under the house expecting to find?
*Edit
In case anyone is curious, here is what my pressure situation looks like on this side of the tank with the kitchen faucet turned on.
I know it's a bit fuzzy, but the low point is 20 and it is just shy of hitting 60 before dropping again
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