Most reliable setup for whole house booster pump

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Steam

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Hello all,

Thank you for this amazing forum. I have been working on setting up whole home filtration for my house, and the information found here has been invaluable. I will be purchasing and installing a system on my house shortly, and could use some help in designing the booster pump system to feed the house.

We are a family of four with two little ones and large demand spikes. Think dishwasher, laundry machine, faucets, and shower running at the same time.

A brand new 2” well has been dug to 65’. PH 7, Hardness 31, iron 0.4, sulphur 5+, slight tannin, TDS 599. The driller’s 1hp temp pump was pumping 23 gpm. From there the plan is:

220v Gould j15s from well 150’ to home
Sediment filter
1.5 cube water softener
2000-4000 gpd reverse osmosis
~500 gallon atmospheric holding tank
Ozone in tank
Repressurization pump
2 cube Calcite filter (highest gpm possible)
2 cube carbon backwashing filter (same)
UV filter
Line in to the home.

I’ve been working on the booster pump once the water is in the storage tank. My initial plan was to use a Grundfos Scala2, though I’m hesitant to do so after reading about them.

My question is, which pump setup is the most reliable to boost pressure from the storage tank to the home?

I’m open to either submersible inside the tank, or sitting on the pad outside. My main concern is reliability, and providing enough gpm to feed the home during peak use. I’ve read suggestions of using a psidekick to regulate the pump as well, though I still need to read up more on it.

Any suggestions you can provide are greatly appreciated.
 

Reach4

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My question is, which pump setup is the most reliable to boost pressure from the storage tank to the home?
Submersible is quieter and has no priming. 1/2 HP 10 gpm would be good for most.

In your list above, you might want to put them into order.

For tank filling, you may prefer a smaller HP pump. Is that water going to be used for backwashing? If not, a lower flow rate may be better. The closer that pump is to the well, that would probably be better. It is easier to push water than to pull water. I am not a pro.

A conical bottom tank with a drain at the bottom would make cleaning sediment easier. This picture shows a flat bottom tank, but the pump could be placed at an angle into the conical bottom. The upper float switch controls the shallow well pump. The lower float switch is in series with the pressure switch that controls the pressure pump to shut that down if the tank runs dry.

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Steam

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Hi Reach4, thank you for your reply.

I like quieter for the submersible, as it will be near our home. I don’t think priming is going to be a problem as the pump would be directly beside the tank and the static pressure inside the tank should keep it primed (the tank will be half buried.) I don’t think 10gpm will be enough for our needs. I’m aiming for 15, and that will likely be limited by the calcite filter’s flow. Do you have a particular pump/setup you prefer?

The list above is in tentative order. Would you change it? This is my current plan, please let me know if you see anything that needs to be changed.
The pump sits about 5-6’ above the water table, next to the well, and will push water about 150’ to the filtration system (I will also be adding a tee for irrigation.)
The water will pass through a sediment filter, then water softener before going through the RO filter, which requires ~12gpm flow, and has between 50-75% efficiency.
From there the water depressurizes as it enters the atmospheric tank which will have an ozone bubbler to help the carbon filter with the sulphur.
At this point, I’m either going to do a submersible or standard booster pump which will repressurize the system to go through the calcite and carbon filters, and finally the UV filter and into the home.
The RO will be controlled by a float switch system, and the well pump will be on demand.
The well side *should* only run a few hours a day and in one or two cycles as it refills the storage tank, and also when the softener needs to be washed or irrigation use.
The house side will run whenever we need water, so it will cycle pretty often, and that’s where I currently am.

Does that setup make sense? Would you rearrange/change anything? This is probably the 4th or 5th time I’ve redesigned it, with input from my neighbor (25 acre hydroponics farm with full RO system), and three different water system companies.

Edit: as the tank will be filled with water from the RO, I don’t imagine we’ll need to clean it very often, but the conical bottom would assist when we do, thank you for the suggestion.
 

Reach4

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Your system is more complex than what I have read about. You might make a post emphasizing the treatment aspects over the pump aspects into the softener forum.

What makes the well pump run during softener regen and RO running? Will there be another pressure tank and pressure switch? I guess so. So you would have the upper float open a valve to to feed pressurized water to the tank. You can have a softener block water during regeneration rather than bypassing which is the common way.

Calcite adds hardness, but your RO filter wants soft water to work with. Maybe have potash injection rather than calcite?
 

Steam

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Okay, I’ll add a post there as well, thank you for the suggestion.

The well pump should be triggered via pressure switch on the pump itself when the RO system is turned on via the float switch in the tank. The same would happen with a regen cycle on the softener (we’re going with Clack, which I’m told can be wired to turn off the RO when it is in a regen cycle, even if the tank float wants it to turn on).

I could, and probably will, add a psidekick to the well pump for irrigation demand, though I don’t think it’s necessary for the filtration demand as it’s “blocky” by design and only turns on when the tank needs to be refilled. The RO produces ~190 gph, so we’ll likely set it to refill the tank when it’s down to 1/3 to 1/2.

We need the calcite filter post-ro to increase the ph, as it is rather acidic. I haven’t read up on potash, thank you for the suggestion.

Here’s a thought: What if I bought another Gould, maybe a j10 or 15, with a psidekick for the booster pump?
 
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Valveman

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The PK1A would work great with the well pump and the booster pump. The CSV will be very useful for the irrigation as well as the low flow 190gph for the RO system.
 

Steam

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Hi Valveman, thank you for the reply. Do you have a brand/model you like for booster pumps?
 

Steam

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I’ve decided on using a submersible due to how loud the j15s is I would use instead.

Does anyone have thoughts on the Goulds 10gs10?

It will be supplying a home with 60psi (ideally) pressure, around 339 TDH, with somewhere around 10-15 peak use gpm.

I’d also still like to use a psidekick with this setup. Is there a specific model I need?
 
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