Air lock in well line ?


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Old 03-13-16, 01:32 PM
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Air lock in well line ?

Ok, hopefully I can explain this clear enough to get some help. I have attached a drawing.

We recently upgraded our pressure tank and moved it from the barn to the home. The problem we were having was low pressure on the second floor of the home and since the pressure tank was so far down hill we thought it would help to move it. We put in a 125 gal pressure tank with the pressure set at 60/80.

The well makes about 10 gals per minute with a standard well pump.

What seems to be happening is that occasionally we will not have any water or very low pressure at the home. The pressure gauge on the tank will read may 10 lbs. I will go to the barn, where the pressure gauge is and the pressure will read about 30lbs with the pump running constantly. I will shut the pump off and drain water out of the system, which is very little, should be quite a bit as the entire line should be full of water. Turn the pump back on and everything is fine.

It seems like we may be getting a vapor lock up top somewhere. Maybe between the T and the pressure tank or ?

We did not have this problem before when the pressure tank was at the barn. So the obvious answer is move the tank back to the barn? But that doesn't solve the low pressure at the home.

So I was thinking of putting another small pressure tank at the barn and leaving it set around 50/70 lbs to try and even out the pressure from the bottom up or just a storage tank to take some of the volume out of the equation.

Hopefully someone with some experience can help with this equation.
Thank you for your input.

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Last edited by PJmax; 03-13-16 at 01:47 PM. Reason: reoriented picture
  #2  
Old 03-13-16, 01:51 PM
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Welcome to the forums.

I will shut the pump off and drain water out of the system, which is very little, should be quite a bit as the entire line should be full of water.
Yes....but once the pump is turned off and the pressure drops.... the water won't come out of the line by itself. Some will come out if the line is downhill and air is allowed in at the top.

It shouldn't matter where the tank is as the entire system gets pressurized to the same pressure. You said the gauge at the barn and the one at the house didn't match. Either the gauges are not accurate or you have a restriction between the two.

If the pump is running and the pressure won't go over 30psi then you may have a pump issue or water draw down issue.

Is this old steel pipe that could be plugged ?
What size is it ?
 
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Old 03-13-16, 03:20 PM
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The one at the barn is about 10 lbs higher, but I attribute that to the Barn being downhill and the weight of the water creating additional pressure. Both gauges are new. Same brand, same size.

After I shut off the pump and "bleed" the line the pressure goes back up to normal and 60/80 and functions normally.

No steel pipe, all 1 inch PVC from the well to the house and barn. House is all 3/4 to the manifold and then all 1/2 inch pex through out.

Barn is PVC to 3/4 copper, to pex.

I was thinking that since I have the larger pressure tank at the house what if the barn is drawing more water than the pump can make. Since we now have a reservoir of water at the house in the pressure tank to draw from it's taking water faster than it can be made and getting air in the line from ?? somewhere. That is the part that doesn't make sense. Or not getting air but almost creating a suction behind the water because it's drawing faster than being made. You can tell I'm not a hydrologist. Just throwing out stuff.

cd
 
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Old 03-13-16, 03:34 PM
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After I shut off the pump and "bleed" the line the pressure goes back up to normal and 60/80 and functions normally
I'm guessing this is a misprint..... if you shut the pump off and bleed the line how can the pressure go up ?

If you are at the house.... what is using water at the barn ?

It sounds like we're talking about a sizable run here. One inch pipe is not very large. If you have high demand that pipe may not be large enough.
 
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Old 03-13-16, 03:48 PM
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So I shut the pump off, open a valve at the barn and let it run until nothing more comes out. Shut the valve off and turn the pump back on. Once I do that everything comes back to normal.

We have other people that are at the barn, filling water troughs, washing horses etc.

I thought about the line size as well, but this problem did not arise until we moved the pressure tank to the house from the Barn. We have had the pressure tank, a small 20 gallon tank, for about 12 years and never had a problem. We just built the home and it has 5 bathrooms. We use it as a guest rental. Sometimes guest will have 2-4 baths going at once and the two on the second floor would have very low pressure/volume. When I moved the larger tank up there it solved that situation. We have good pressure and volume now, its just that this problem arises where it seems there is some type of vapor/pressure lock in the pipe between the house-well-barn

cd
 
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Old 03-13-16, 04:10 PM
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Sometimes guest will have 2-4 baths going at once and the two on the second floor would have very low pressure/volume.
Then in my opinion.... 1" pipe is going to be too small.
You could put a smaller tank at the barn but poor flow will still be a problem.

Approx. how many feet from the well to the house and the well to the barn ?

If you had an air problem in the system.... when you opened valves at the ends.... in the house or barn.... you would get air and sputtering water.
 
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Old 03-13-16, 04:22 PM
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Its not poor flow when operating normally which is 99% of the time. It seems there is some type of circumstance not sure what it is but thinking something is happening that is causing it to lock?

About 45 feet from well to house. Fairly level from well connection to house.

About 125 feet from well to Barn, all down hill

After this happens I do have sputtering at the house, but not at the barn.

I put a back flow preventer close to the manifold thinking that when someone opens a valve at the house and the water use is more than the pump can keep up than it was sucking air into the system. But it still happened after I put the BF preventer in.

cd
 
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Old 03-13-16, 04:45 PM
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Air in the pipes won't prevent the pump from pumping water. The air is easily compressible and the pump should have no trouble pumping water up to pressure.

Is there any chance the pump is near the top of the water level in the well so that under heavy demand the water level falls enough to let the pump suck air? Maybe by the time you walk down, shut the pump off, open the valve and wait, the well has enough time to recover. It would jive with most of the symptoms you describe. Next time, just shut the pump off and wait a while before turning it back on. See if it pumps up then. If so, you just might need to lower the pump.
 
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Old 03-13-16, 04:54 PM
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That's good. Hadn't thought about that one. I will try that next time. So just pumping enough water to keep up small demand, but not enough to recover the pressure tank. Interesting theory. The only thing that doesn't jive is that if I go to the barn, leave a valve open with the water running. Turn the pump off it's only maybe 2-3 minutes before the water stops flowing. Turn the pump back on and immediately it runs up to full pressure. I don't know if that would be enough time for it to recover if water level in the well was the problem? But I will try it if it happens again. Thank you for your patience and help. This is definately helping me think through the problem.

cd
 
 

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