Planning for Sprinkler System with Well Water

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maverick_16

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I purchased a house last year that has well water and have the need to install a sprinkler system. This is the first time I'm really having a good look at the installed equipment and ran into several questions. Any help and advice would be appreciated.

Scenario, there are two different stickers of two different well pumps on the pressure tank but both look to be similar 1/2 hp submersible. The water comes into the basement and into a 36 gallon pressure tank before flowing thru a rainsoft gold and silver series water softener / treatment system and into the house. The pressure on the tank tee gauge and on the outside hose bibb gauge are both 42 psi. The pressure tank says it is charged to 38 psi. When running water and looking at the gauge, it looks to use 42 psi off the tank, drop to the cut in at 38 psi when the tank empties, and then build back up to 42psi and hold. The GPM on the hose bibb was about 6 gallons per minute.


1) Is it normal that the different between cut in and maximum pressure is only 4 psi (38 - 42)?
a) Is there a way to tell which pressure switch is installed? there does not seem to be a marking on it
b) Is there a safe way to raise the pressure and or flow with the existing equipment?

2) It would "work" now (with a ton of zones, ~half an acre of actual area that needs water), but I'm looking for a way to increase efficiency and not burn the well pump out in the process. Any ideas on what I should be looking at would be greatly appreciated.




Thank You,

Jon
 

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4 PSI between on and off is not right. It should be like 40 to 60, you need a new pressure switch. The trick to not burn out the pump is to not let it cycle between 40 and 60 while using water like for irrigation. For that you either need to match every sprinkler zone to the size of the pump, or install a CSV so you the pump will not cycle no matter how much or how little water you are using. Pressure switches are adjustable, but I don't think I would mess with the one you have and start with a new switch.
 
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