Hello all,
First time posting in here, hoping for some help before I have to spend hundreds of dollars getting someone to come out and look at it. A few years ago we built an addition to my in-laws place for us to live in. To help with the additional people now living on the property, and the desire to have more of a reserve during outages, we added another pressure tank over in the new addition. The main house has a ~30gal tank, and addition has a 119gal tank. This past year we've noticed that when the power goes out, we have little to no water reserve. We're talking flush a low flow toilet one and brush your teeth and that's it for water. The configuration is:
- Well feeds into main house where the pressure switch is located.
- Main house has a 26gal pressure tank.
- After the tank the line tees off with one pipe going to the rest of the plumbing in the main house, and the other pipe heading back outside and over to the addition . Its roughly 50 feet between the two tanks, and the new one for the addition is maybe 3 or 4 feet higher since the main house one is in a crawl space and the new one isn't.
- Line comes into the addition to another tee, with one side going to a 119gal pressure tank, and the other side heading towards the filters and the rest of the plumbing. (see picture - black pipe just to the right of the tank is the line coming from the main house)
- Pressure switch is set to 42/60 in the main house (yes 42, can't remember why he wanted it set like that). We have synchronized the pressures in the tanks multiple times. I just readjusted the addition side so that I get 39-40PSI on the tank.
- Pressure gauge right before the 119gal tank (says 40PSI), another in between two filters(top right of pic and says 42PSI), one after the last filter, and a few others down the line.
At first we thought maybe the check valve down by the well pump is failing since that is the only one in the system and it is letting water slowly drain back down into the well. So I tested this out by shutting the water off to the addition, closing the blue filter so that water in the addition wouldn't drain back, and then draining the water from the spin down filter that is on the right side of the picture. In other words, I assume I would just be draining the water from the 119gal tank and a couple feet of pipe. Pump and tank in main house shouldn't come into play since I closed the main line into the addition off. I was only able to get about 12 litres of water before it stopped flowing. I would assume with my tank set to 40PSI, no additional water coming in, and a full tank, that I would get at least a hundred and some litres of water, or at the very least way more than 12. I tried reopening the main line to the addition, waiting a bit, and retesting a couple times just in case I got the tank when it wasn't filled up or something, but got the same result or worse each time.
When I'm draining the water out, the pressure gauges at the tank and after the first filter drop to 0 very quickly, even less than 12litres is coming out some times.
Any ideas what's going on here? Is my test even valid in this situation or am I misunderstanding how the pressure tank should work on its own?
Thanks!
First time posting in here, hoping for some help before I have to spend hundreds of dollars getting someone to come out and look at it. A few years ago we built an addition to my in-laws place for us to live in. To help with the additional people now living on the property, and the desire to have more of a reserve during outages, we added another pressure tank over in the new addition. The main house has a ~30gal tank, and addition has a 119gal tank. This past year we've noticed that when the power goes out, we have little to no water reserve. We're talking flush a low flow toilet one and brush your teeth and that's it for water. The configuration is:
- Well feeds into main house where the pressure switch is located.
- Main house has a 26gal pressure tank.
- After the tank the line tees off with one pipe going to the rest of the plumbing in the main house, and the other pipe heading back outside and over to the addition . Its roughly 50 feet between the two tanks, and the new one for the addition is maybe 3 or 4 feet higher since the main house one is in a crawl space and the new one isn't.
- Line comes into the addition to another tee, with one side going to a 119gal pressure tank, and the other side heading towards the filters and the rest of the plumbing. (see picture - black pipe just to the right of the tank is the line coming from the main house)
- Pressure switch is set to 42/60 in the main house (yes 42, can't remember why he wanted it set like that). We have synchronized the pressures in the tanks multiple times. I just readjusted the addition side so that I get 39-40PSI on the tank.
- Pressure gauge right before the 119gal tank (says 40PSI), another in between two filters(top right of pic and says 42PSI), one after the last filter, and a few others down the line.
At first we thought maybe the check valve down by the well pump is failing since that is the only one in the system and it is letting water slowly drain back down into the well. So I tested this out by shutting the water off to the addition, closing the blue filter so that water in the addition wouldn't drain back, and then draining the water from the spin down filter that is on the right side of the picture. In other words, I assume I would just be draining the water from the 119gal tank and a couple feet of pipe. Pump and tank in main house shouldn't come into play since I closed the main line into the addition off. I was only able to get about 12 litres of water before it stopped flowing. I would assume with my tank set to 40PSI, no additional water coming in, and a full tank, that I would get at least a hundred and some litres of water, or at the very least way more than 12. I tried reopening the main line to the addition, waiting a bit, and retesting a couple times just in case I got the tank when it wasn't filled up or something, but got the same result or worse each time.
When I'm draining the water out, the pressure gauges at the tank and after the first filter drop to 0 very quickly, even less than 12litres is coming out some times.
Any ideas what's going on here? Is my test even valid in this situation or am I misunderstanding how the pressure tank should work on its own?
Thanks!