New pressure tank but water pressure still very low


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Old 01-07-07, 08:00 AM
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New pressure tank but water pressure still very low

Hello,

We bought our house 1 1/2 years ago and the water pressure was great up until this summer. Before the summer, we were able to take showers in the 2 bathrooms at the same time without almost any pressure lost.

Then this summer, the pressure started to lower but it reached a point where it was constant, not lowering anymore after a few days.

We have a water softener system but didn't know really how it worked and there was an electronic device linking the 2 filtering tanks and on it it said that it was last switched in 2002. We called the number on the sticker on the tank and the person came over. He did an analysis of our water, which was really high in iron and acidity and had a low PH. He suspected that the electronic controlling board was not working properly anymore and that he could re-use most of our equipment to use new filtering material to have better water. We had the filtering system modified on December 1st 2006. The pressure was almost back to what it used to be up to about 2 weeks ago.

Then it got really bad. If you flushed the toilet, no water to wash your hand. Washing machine taking forever to fill... There would be some pressure for about 5 seconds and then it would drop to a tiny flow of water.

I called the repair guy, he had me bypass the filtering system, the pressure was the same. Then he asked me to open a purge valve on the line between our tank and the filtering system. The pressure was good, but the pump started almost right away. So he said that bag in the pressure tank was probably dammaged. The tank was only about 5 gallons, which is not supposed to be enough for a house, but it did work fine for 1 year.

We just finished installing a new 20 gallons pressured tank and it didn't solve the problem completely. We do have a little bit more pressure but we still can't open 2 taps at the same time.

We are discouraged... any help or tip would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
 
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Old 01-07-07, 09:05 AM
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first, you need to determine if your pump is pumping up to the pressure intended. Most pressure switches are either 20-40 or 30-50 psi. That means the pmp would kick at the lower pressure and kickout at the upper.

Now your new tank. Is it precharged with air? You need to check the pressure when there is absoltley no water pressure. It shoudl be 2 psi below the cut in pressure. Adjust if neccessary.

Now, when you run water, how long does the pump take to re-pressurize the tank? Run water until the pump kicks on, turn off the water and determine how long it runs before turning off. Ifit isn;t supplying enough water flow, you will always have problems with pressure.

Now, other things that may have happened. Any valve may have become clogged with minerals. Since you are using a softener, apparently you have hard water so the minerals can accumulate anywhere the hard water flows.

Pipes also can become clogged with mineral build up as well.

Check out the first stuff and get back with some info if you haven't found a problem with any of those items.
 
 

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