I am having a problem with my water pressure. I have a well. When I turn the shower on, the water pressure is fine for about 4 minutes, then it goes down to nothing. I watched the pressure gauge on the tank and here is what I saw:

When the pressure was good, the pressure on the tank was between 40 and 42 lbs.
The pressure would slowly creep down to 38lbs.
As soon as it hit 38, it would immediately drop down 18 lbs and stay there until the water was shut off.
As soon as the shower was shut off, the pressure immediately jumped up to 40.

Any ideas what would cause this type of fluctuation?

jlisenbe

Reset the pressure in your bladder tank. To do this you will need to:

1. Determine at what pressure the pump comes on. I'm going to bet it's 38#, but simply do what you did before. Watch the gauge and see where it is when the switch "clicks" to turn on the pump.

2. Whatever the cutin pressure is, the pressure at the top of the tank needs to be set to 2# BELOW that. So, if its 38#, then you will set the tank pressure to 36#.

3. To do that, turn off the system and drain the tank pressure by opening a lower level faucet and running water until the pressure gauge reads zero. Then use an air tank and tire gauge to adjust the pressure in the tank.

4. Turn the system back on and check your problem again.

mikesilvers

The switch turned on t 46. I filled the bladder up to 44. Same results..... any other ideas?

jlisenbe

If the pump is cutting on at 46, and the pressure is still falling to 38 and ultimately to less than 20, then it would seem you have a problem with the pump volume. How long does it take it to recover to cutoff pressure after, for instance, the shower is turned off and the system is down to 20#?

mikesilvers

It immediately rises back up to 40 and rises up to the max of 60 quickly. This all occurs within a few minutes.

jlisenbe

Do this Mike. Turn on an outside faucet and let it run until the pump cuts on. Then, run it into a 5 gallon bucket and time how long it takes to fill the bucket. It should be able to do that in something under a minute. Let's do that to check your pump volume. Do it two or three times to get an average.

Not to slice this too thin, but there is a difference between "immediately" and "a few minutes". I am really interested in the time it takes to get from sub-20 back to 40. Are we talking two or three seconds...half a minute...full minute?