Plumbing

[autonomous_unit]

Astral, I think you might have misread the earlier posts... there IS a storage tank between the street supply and the pump. The entire discussion was about WHY the street supply is also plumbed around the pump and "mixed" back into the house inlet with a check-valve.

We have established that the check-valve is faulty and that it perhaps should be replaced to allow the plumbing to operate as originally designed by the builder. However, there was lots of discussion about whether there is any point to this, since the manual valves can be set to either supply the house via pump or via street pressure as it is now. I was just explaining my laziness and desire to avoid an interrupted shower and how that leads me to like the idea of getting the "automatic" switchover between pump and street supply that one gets in theory with the check-valve and bypass.

In the spirit of this work-avoiding discussion, if I get over my laziness and replace the check-valve, I'll be sure to report on how it works and for how many weeks it works before failing again.

[chownah]

Astral, I think you might have misread the earlier posts... there IS a storage tank between the street supply and the pump. The entire discussion was about WHY the street supply is also plumbed around the pump and "mixed" back into the house inlet with a check-valve.

We have established that the check-valve is faulty and that it perhaps should be replaced to allow the plumbing to operate as originally designed by the builder. However, there was lots of discussion about whether there is any point to this, since the manual valves can be set to either supply the house via pump or via street pressure as it is now. I was just explaining my laziness and desire to avoid an interrupted shower and how that leads me to like the idea of getting the "automatic" switchover between pump and street supply that one gets in theory with the check-valve and bypass.

In the spirit of this work-avoiding discussion, if I get over my laziness and replace the check-valve, I'll be sure to report on how it works and for how many weeks it works before failing again.

Good answer. When you go to get the new check valve look at a few different ones. If you blow through a check valve you can evaluate how much pressure is required to open it...they vary quite alot. You might want to get one that opens quite easily. I hope you do get back to us on this as I'm interested in what happens.

Chownah

[phuketsiam]

yeah me too, please let us know what happens

[billd766]

I live right out in the country and the water pressure at this time of year is low to none for days at a time.

I have installed a manual pump to suck the water from the mains and feed it into 8 x 2000 litre tanks.

In the next month or so I want to add another 12 tanks as we have 14 people living on the site and we use a lot of water. From there I use a Mitsubishi 205 pressure pump to take it from the tanks and through 2 filters to get rid of 95% of the remaining crap before it goes to the 3 houses.

I have done some experiments with the non pressure pump, some 3/4 inch pipe and a check valve. With the valve in the ciruit the pressure is fair, but removing the check valve blew all the joints apart. It was not a problem as it was only a test bench and they were just push fitted together anyway.

The more taps and check valves in your system the lower the pressure. Next time you go to the plumbing shop have a good look at the stop valves and see how much of the 1/2 inch bore there really is.

I need to run 3/4 pipe at least 200 meters horizontally and 20 metres vertically to pump water into 2 x 15,000 litre water tanks for irrigation as half of the crops died this year so I have just bought a 1 inch water meter instead of the normal 1/2 inch to improve the water flow.

When I have finished that I need to run another non pressure pump to pump water from the 2 storage tanks across the land for irrigation.